Lost Planet is one of those super-hyped games on the 360 last Christmas season. Superb Graphics, Superb Gameplay, Superb so forth.. Right before It came out, all the retails had in store demos, and when I played the game, I thought it was just god awful. The controls felt so slow and inaccurate that I couldn't get any joy out of it.
Well, the other day, I read an article on 1up from creator Keiji Inafune, who is also the creator of Megaman and Dead Rising. When creating the game engine for Dead Rising and Lost Planet, he assembled all of his friends from his glory days in early Capcom history. All his pals that spent those lonely nights developing Megaman 2 with him were all back developing these 360 titles.
Being of like mind, they designed both Dead Rising and Lost Planet with Megaman in mind. After they finished the game engine, the lead developer came to Inafune and said, "my work is done. we can now bring Megaman to the next generation."
After hearing this, I was astounded. This was the main impetus behind developing Lost Planet? To further refine their next-gen Megaman engine? Maybe I misjudged this game.
So.. I set forth to find a copy of Lost Planet and give it a fair shake. Perhaps I overlooked the love behind the money.
Lost Planet is about a new planet found by humans to further their exploration in space. It is a desolate frigid iceberg. One day while attempting to further their understanding of the planet, Aliens known as the Akrid attack the humans. "Holy crap! There's aliens in dem hills" Humanity gets their ass kicked, but develops mechas known as VS to battle the Akrid.
Thus, the war between humans and aliens begins.
You are Wayne. One of these common workers on the planet, to further mining and expanding the human society on the planet, when a gigantic Akrid attacks and kills off your father.. figure. When you run away, you're lost in a snow storm in pass out. Then a girl with huge breasts and a tight outfit despite subzero temperatures finds you, along with this dork and a mysterious scientist. And you go around and do some missions for them all while finding your purpose in life.
Typical animu bullshit. The story is absolutely ridiculous and the plot doesn't make any sense. For the longest time, you're fighting this organization that wants to terraform the planet, but you keep trying to stop them. Isn't that the damn point of being on this planet in the first place?! You want humanity to be able to inhabit this planet. Why is your goal to prevent this?!
Eventually you find out that terraforming the planet will kill everything on it. Well, let's do it. Light the shit up. ugh..
Anyways.. the story really isn't the reason I got the game.
What's really ironic about this whole experience is the gameplay. I'm playing this game for the gameplay. And that is also the most annoying thing about the game. The annoying story is really only fueled by how annoying the gameplay is, otherwise the story would just be hilariously bad. Something to jest about.
Just like my original expression of the gameplay, it is slow, unresponsive and an overall pain in the ass if you want to pull off any sort of precision. Nearly all bosses require you to fight in a VS, which are incredibly slow. Jumping takes an extra second to get lift off the ground. There's no quick movement to dodge away from attacks. You really have to know the boss strategy and have patience in order to effectively win the game, which doesn't translate in multiplayer at all.
Pain in the ass.
What's worse about this game is the single player is the only thing you can do these days. No one is playing multiplayer because there's better things out there these days. Everyone is playing Rainbow 6 Vegas or GRAW.
360 games are such fads. The media hypes the shit out of them, and everyone is playing when it first comes out. But 6 months later, the online rooms are vacant. 360 gamers have moved on to their next overly hyped game and playing that multiplayer.
Of course, the failure of multiplayer for Lost Planet is partly due to the horrible gameplay. How are you supposed to get all the multiplayer achievement points when you can't play multiplayer? Gamers are off playing their new game for achievements, and left this game behind.
People seem to think that the Wii is a fad, but jesus.. How are 360 fps games not a fad? Gamers move from one game to the next and retailers only retain the cash difference between the New price and the trade-in price.
This over-saturation is ridiculous. Their are too many games out, and too many games coming out to justify paying $60 per game. Honestly, this only decreases the quality of games and makes them "snack-size" rather than something you can really sink your teeth into. Even Resident Evil 4 I could really sink my teeth into, but it wasn't enough. It was a 10 hour game.
Anyways, Lost Planet is crap. I'm through kidding myself that this game is something special. Unfortunately, Inafune, your gameplay is just too annoying. I wanted to like this game, but playing it just pisses me off. You can't even beat the final boss, goddammit.
Don't buy this game and rent other games instead. The Single player really isn't worth your time.