Short Version: Lost Planet 2 gives you: tons of different locales; a wide array of unlockable weapons; a ton of characters; awesome vehicles; and huge monsters. Unfortunately, it somehow loses the premise that made the original game so appealing with a complex control scheme and lackluster online play.

Lost Planet 2 has been one of my most anticipated games since I first got my hands on it at Comic-Con ‘09. The second I walked up that giant hill in the demo and saw this giant Akrid rise from the water I knew this game was for me. You had to climb on the monster and shoot all the glowing orange areas of his body, but what really put the demo over for me was the ability to be swallowed whole by the beast only to destroy him from the inside before he would eventually dismiss you from his bowels. The demo was great, but does the final product lose the simplicity that made the demo so fun?

Story and Sound

The story in Lost Planet 2 is nothing special, but that being said I wasn’t really expecting an epic story line and so I wasn’t too concerned when there wasn’t one. The story line follows a bunch of different factions as they wage war against each other. The first mission puts you in the shoes of a mercenary that must infiltrate a jungle pirate mining area and blow the whole thing to hell. After this mission, and eventual boss fight, you then jump into a group of NEVAC soldiers who are on a mission to capture a giant gun mounted on two trains. The story progresses in this matter and it can be a bit tricky to follow, but it all comes together in the end where some key characters stop fighting each other and team up to defeat a greater evil, NEVAC. It’s a decent final chapter, but the last boss is a bigger let down than Fable 2’s – well, maybe not that big.

The music in this game is pretty well done and is for the most part an orchestral soundtrack. The generic main menu theme that plays in the (you guessed it) main menu can be changed to any other piece of music in the game at anytime by simply hitting the ‘RB’ and selecting something else. The music is by no means as epic as Halo, but it suits the game just fine.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Lost Planet 2 is fun, but made extremely complicated by the controls. Grasping the basic play mechanics is easy, but it feels like there were so many different things that the creators of the game wanted to fit in that they over-crowded the button layout. I honestly couldn’t figure out how (and still don’t know how) to roll, which is a pretty crucial element of the game.

Overlooking the complexity of the controls you still have solid core mechanics, which is really what it’s all about. The grappling hook is easily used and quickly becomes a key component in fighting monsters and bad guys. The ability to grab onto a nearby ledge and propel yourself upwards to a higher vantage point always makes you feel bad ass, but you also have the ability to simply hang on the ledge of a cliff or a ceiling and drop down on your enemy to catch him completely off guard. The hook is great, but you realize quickly that it can only be shot once your player has landed on his feet. So you can’t pull a Tarzan and swing from area to area, which is a little bit of a downer.

One of the most hyped features of Lost Planet 2 is the cooperative play. The game promised to deliver an experience like no other, unfortunately it only partially delivered on that promise. The coop is tons of fun, but if you are playing with an inexperienced friend then you are going to be failing missions pretty quickly due to the Battle Gauge located at the top left-hand side of the screen. The Battle Gauge works in increments of 500 points so every time you capture a data post you gain 500, but every time you die you lose 500. Die enough times and it’s “MISSION FAILED”, something that is severely irritating if you have put 30 minutes into a level. Once you have some skilled players to work with though you need to constantly communicate and strategize in order to distract VSs or a monster Akrid.

The split-screen coop that was promised is brought down in awesomeness because of the tiny screens that each player is given. Unlike Halo’s split-screen multiplayer, Lost Planet 2 follows more of a Call of Duty: World at War multiplayer screen layout. This means that each one of the two players gets about a fourth of your television screen. This makes the split-screen gaming feel like a last minute addition that really should have been tweaked before launch.

All of this being said the coop is fun. Once you get into the experience there is a ton of fun to be had by teaming up with a group of friends and taking down giant monsters. Cooperative play becomes especially essential on the third world’s boss when you have to work together to load a huge cannon, energize bombs, put out fires, and get on the cannon to shoot the monster before he swallows your train whole. It’s a rewarding experience with some bosses that you and your friends are going to want to revisit over and over again.

The online play is okay, but nothing overly special. There are a very small amount of different playlists, where Data Post Battle and Elimination are the primary modes and though they are certainly fun they are also pretty damn difficult at times. On top of the difficulty, however, is lag. Every time you play you experience lag and will often die as a direct cause.

As an example I present to you a scenario that I personally experienced: there was a man on a turret, so I (being the sly and illusive man that I am) decided to sneak around behind the turret and blow the man sitting on it to kingdom come. I loaded my rocket launcher went up behind him, and with his back turned completely to me I took aim. All of a sudden the turret had pulled a 180 in the span of .001 seconds and launched a rocket killing me instantly. That was not fun and expletives filled the room quicker than the turret had turned around. So the online has great potential, but the lag is really what killed it.

Character customization plays a huge role in the online battles, and your custom character can even be used in the single player modes after you have beaten the game. To unlock new character parts, weapons, emotes, abilities, and Nom de Guerres (nicknames) you must collect credits from mystery boxes that are obtained by killing things in the story mode. The credits can then be used in a slot machine that randomly gives you different things to edit your character with. This can be a huge pain in the ass, especially if you have spent time getting 10,000 credits that result in you getting a ton of Nom de Guerres that you will never use.

You also unlock character parts by completing the story mode and leveling different characters up. The real nostalgic awesomeness comes from Albert Wesker, Frank West, and the console exclusive characters that you can choose to be, but the only catch is that if you want to kick some ass as Wesker online then you are going to need a save file from RE5 (the same goes for Frank West and Dead Rising). If you decide to go through the campaign as one of these cool unlockable characters then you will quickly realize that they seem pull a ventriloquist act and speak without moving their mouths.

Graphics and Setting

Lost Planet 2 has some pretty awesome graphics, and you really notice this the second you see you come face-to-face with a giant Akrid. The ability to latch on to the monster and start pumping lead into the weak orange-glowing areas on the beast is pretty darn beautiful, but the way the monster has been done graphically makes the experience that much more awesome. The graphics aren’t the best you’ve ever seen, but they certainly standout from your average Xbox 360/PS3 game, and that’s all we really asked for.

The lush environments of Lost Planet 2 are really brought to life by the awesome details, although the level layout is somewhat tedious. After your third jungle level you feel like you’ve passed that same tree a few times already, but the game addresses this problem by having a wide array of locales ranging from deserts to the deep reaches of space. In total you have levels showing off snow, sand, water, space, and even cities, most of which never made an appearance in the original Lost Planet. It’s all here and all of it looks awesome.

Conclusion

This game couldn’t live up to the insurmountable hype that it has been given in the last few months, but it is still something awesome that should be experienced. The over-crowded control scheme, glitchy online multiplayer, and lame split-screen are really the only major concerns that I had with the game. Looking past those problems there is a great game. 4-players simultaneous action is never boring and the graphics are some of the best on either system.

Capcom did a good job of creating a 3rd-person shooter that brought something new to the table, but it seems like they tacked on too many features last minute and forgot to work on the things that players really wanted from this game and that’s simple controls and glitch-free online play. Hopefully Capcom addresses these issues in Lost Planet 3, because they certainly have massive potential in the series. The game is worth a try, and though it’s certainly not for everyone, there will be a few people (myself included) who will really enjoy it.