Every time I sit in my chair to play some PS3, I constantly stare at
this game on my shelf. Sometimes I put it in, and I try to force myself
to like it. I just can't anymore. In the end, I question if spending the
$60 was worth it. It's another example of high hopes meeting crushing
disappointment, a common staple in today's market.
LOST PLANET 2 (ALL CAPS because Capcom thinks it's some sort of cruise
control to capitalize every letter on all of their game's names.) is a
game developed by Capcom. It's the sequel to the first, "LOST PLANET:
EXTREME CONDITION", which I can say, despite the fact the first was
graphically inferior and had a lot less in terms of content, it still
had what this game failed to deliver on.
The indigenous Akrid.
I was so hyped for Lost Planet 2 from playing the demo, I needed the
game so badly. I went out and bought Just Cause 2 and some PSP games
just to tie my dangerous hunger for a good shooter over. Did this game
deliver what I so desperately wanted? Well, to an extent, yes, and also a
big no. My friend kept insulting it for lame reasons, and I could never
really get him into it, but with the way it is now, I wouldn't want to
even bring it up at all in conversations pertaining to recommendations.
To start with, unlike in the first game, you are playing a nameless Snow
Pirate, your own character. I guess it "is" fitting that you have no
real sense of identity because everyone is wearing masks or has a beard
to cover up their mouths. It's just laziness that they didn't bother to
animate lips, but when it comes to a game like this, do you really care
for that or do you care to shoot things? I'd prefer the latter myself,
honestly. Too bad there's no damn Akrid to kill.
I need to wake up and stop trying to force myself to keep playing this
game when it's already a joke the way it is. I watched all of the
trailers for this game and got hyped, I wanted to believe that there
would be some amazing squad combat moments in this game. Unlike other
people, I can look past the faults of partner AI in any game because
even if I was playing with humans, "I" am the one always doing the most
work regardless. I feel so betrayed now after playing it for, what, 50
hours now? Two nights ago the game's news ticker just informed me I
already reached that many, and I always aim to get at least 90+ hours
before I do reviews.
I just can't make this enjoyable for myself anymore, not unless some serious changes are made.
First, I feel the need to debunk most of the people paid to review this
game. Most of the complaints they made are groundless and are bald-faced
lies. I'll clarify for you before I begin:
They said the PS3 version has graphical lockups and 1-second hitches. It does not.
They all played terribly, and insulted the game's controls. True, this
game has MANY controls, and so many hidden types of combinations (Hold
L3, Triangle, and press R1 to remove Battle Armor), and the infamous
merging of the VS (Hold L3 and R3 then move them outwards), but it makes
it a lot more intuitive, I love big control schemes. This game also
came with a thick manual, which I approve of.
And one last thing, I have to debunk the infamous train level's
complaints. The train level is not as bad as it seems. If people were a
little more open minded and, you know, EXPLORED there wouldn't be so
many problems. I learned how to jump between trains without falling by
watching the enemy AI do it. Though they did these crazy things I
thought certain death, I adapted. Too bad this generation of gamers
expects the game to play itself for them and bosses to keel over the
moment they aim at them. Sooner or later, when you buy a game it will
only take three minutes to see the ending.
Hey, brainstorm, there are two switches on the side of the railway gun's
top. I wonder what they do, OH WAIT THE COMPUTER IS TELLING ME THEY
TURN IT!!!
Common sense, please. What makes me laugh the most is when people try to
write it off as justifiable to suck at this level because of a map on
the right side of the screen that displays all of the controls for the
railway gun, but not where your character is on it. True, having an
arrow pinpointing where you are would help, but it's not necessary.
There is an onboard computer that explains everything to you when you
approach it, it's hard to believe people cannot figure this stuff out
for the life of them. Like dying is such a bad thing, my god, if you're
playing solo with AI partners, they do all the busy-work of loading ammo
and charging it for you anyway. So you don't really have to do anything
but turn the gun, fire it, and occasionally repair it with coolant
devices in the center of the car.
This map is basically the top of the railway gun. It shows where to turn
the gun faster, to load ammunition, the crane for loading ammunition,
and the T-ENG chargers for the shells to make them do more damage. And
trust me, it does help to make sure you fire shells when they are Green
and not Blue.
I find it amazing people can't even figure out where to load ammunition
that they pick up, when there is a very obvious loading bay at the
middle of the gun's chamber where the shells go.
Let's get straight into the game itself and the combat.
When you first start the game, it's going to be rough. You have to use
standard weapons, but as you play the game and level up, you'll unlock
more.
First, I will mention the slot machine. Everytime you kill an enemy with
melee you get a box. Killing an enemy with gunfire will randomly spew
one out. Bosses and big Akrid will always drop tons of boxes. Boxes give
you credits, and you spend these credits at the slot machine to unlock
new emotes, titles (Noms de Guerre, or "Names of War") and weapons. The
Slot machine costs 2000 credits to use, but once you get everything from
it, it will start to cost 10,000 credits.
When you get the 10,000 credit slot machine, you will eventually start
to unlock every single item in the game. Even items and character parts
that you would have to get from leveling up factions. What this means
is, you don't have to play all of the factions unless you want trophies
for getting them to Level 99, you will unlock all of the weapons and
character parts by playing the slot machine, and it's very easy, and
fast, to grind for credits.
Not only that, when you reach Level 80 with a faction, you can use
character parts from other factions on that faction. Here's an example:
I have parts for all factions, but I have level 80 Femmes Fatales. I can
use all of the armor and whatnot from other factions, so I'd
essentially have a seriously deranged character. A bearded man with a
curvaceous body and what not. That's how it works. So you don't ever
need to play different factions unless you want some trophies.
I love the Femmes Fatales' character parts too. You start off with an azn girl who has hinted-at buttocks and striped stocking.
You then move on to Jungle Pirate FF, and it's bondage themed with
chains and a bra with plenty of jiggle physics. Too bad you're always
looking at your character from the back.
After that you get the Sandraider FF, and it's the most obvious. A
skintight, one-piece body suit with belts of ammo all over it. One of
the styles actually has a naked chest except for the cape, showing
underboob. It also comes with tights and thigh-high high heels with belt
straps on the front. It shows off the butt very well.
Then there is the Waysider outfit, which is basically a cowgirl style one.
Finally, the NEVEC FF is a a skintight suit. If you wear the white
colored pants, you can see how the butt is very well rounded and such.
Mwa hahaha.
All factions, however, have special head parts. There are two for each.
Femmes get the Carpetbagger Leader FF which is just the same as the
Carpetbagger one anyway, the azn one. Then there is Sandraider Leader,
which is a cute tomboyish face with short brown hair and an ear piece.
It is the only face in the game that doesn't have a mask all over it or
any type of beard, making it the best. Sadly, they don't come with any
models.
The customization video made this game look up to be really robust, but
it's very limited. There's not enough costumes and Capcom is wasting
their time on offering a certain armor from a certain series that has
almost no fans outside of Japan and is more abandoned than the "Tales
of..." series when we could use a lot more distinction. There are tons
of emotes and titles, but, as a certain metal singer would say, it ain't
no big thing. Saints Row 2 had the greatest customization ever seen in a
video game, everyone could learn from it.
The gameplay is very solid, and it's robust. A lot of people complained
about the grappling hook being limited, and while I agree after enjoying
Just Cause 2, I slightly can't agree because the game is so damn small,
and you're always in confined spaces so I never really notice or enjoy
the use of it while I zip through the levels in mere minutes.
The aiming system looks based off an old PSX game. Medal of Honor and
Medal of Honor Underground (The only games in the series that were
actually good). It used the reticule that went all over the screen from
first person instead. It certainly isn't cookie-cutter, but maybe I
haven't played enough of the socially-accepted FPS(Read: generic FPS
that only mouth breathers play) in this day and age to see why people
are calling it generic when I've only ever seen something like it once.
Whatever guns you have selected at your loadout are what you will see.
Everything in the level is pre-set, so it's always the same thing every
time around. All enemies, weapons, posts, etc. It's kind of sad, really.
But about the weapons, you get what you load out with. So for example,
if there is a STANDARD weapon drop in front of you, you may see a GUN
SWORD, your partner will see a MACHINE GUN. But whoever picks it up gets
the drop, and it is gone. VS and Battle armor don't change though. The
same applies to grenades as well. I don't like this system too well, and
I don't like the fact enemies do not drop their weapons upon death
anymore because it makes getting ammo for certain weapons hard if you
want to get titles for them.
You can also use abilities, you have two slots. Half of the full list of
abilities take two slots. I personally think there are not enough slots
for abilities. There are tons of skills you can use that would really
come in handy to make a fine team if you had some friends. Two slots
just is not enough. Three or four would be acceptable with how much
there is. From increasing EXP you earn, to more damage or defense, and
other misc things, that's what these do. My personal favorite is T-ENG
Weapon Master II, I never overheat with my Plasma weapons anymore, and
they cost almost zilch T-ENG to fire.
I bought this game for two big reasons:
1. Capcom is a respectable company that does indeed listen to it's community, but for LP2 they listened to the wrong people.
2. With a subtitle like "KILL BIG", I came into this game wanting to
fight Akrid with friends or alone. I wanted to fight hordes of infinite,
dangerous creatures. I was lied to. You barely get any Akrid fights,
and the only memorable fights with them are when you fight bosses. And
even then, most of the bosses are re-hashed from the first game with the
exact same move sets, and are all easy to defeat. Jesus christ the
FINAL BOSS ONLY TAKES THREE SHOTS. There are so many new types of Akrid,
like giant wasp enemies, evolved Trillid (We saw a giant Trillid Akrid
in a screenshot, but it was nowhere in the game), evolved Chryatis, more
dangerous ice worms, and much more that only made an appearance in
rarity.
The Giant wasp enemies only appear TWO TIMES in the whole game. My
judgment is that if you can kill them, that's where their only true
appearances are. In EP1, Chapter 2, there is a hidden route you can
take. At the end, you fight a big wasp. Later on in the last chapter of
the game, you fight the other one. It only takes 1 shot to shoot one
side of it's wings off, and it's toast after that.
..............
There are also these spiked dog-like Akrid, and they are loads of fun to
kill. You can shoot their legs off, and sometimes blow off both at
once. They writhe and scream in pain on the ground while orange T-ENG
gushes from their wounds. It's so satisfying to shoot arms off giant
Akrid and utterly decimate them as one guy with small arms fire. But you
don't get to do this as much as you should.
But no, you don't fight them. You fight human enemies mostly. And the
enemy is terribly stupid. Also, there is some VERY WEIRD glitch where
enemies just randomly drop dead for no reason at all, even if playing
solo with no AI. Just shooting their general direction kills them. It's
like the fear of being shot at literally stopped their hearts. They are
also very cheap and unfair most of the time, I notice when they attack
my partners.
I never die in this game, I'm throwing that out right now. Even on my
first playthrough, I never died. Not once. I'm telling the truth here.
The only reason I have deaths racked up on my stats now is because I
joined games and committed suicide trying to get the 444 deaths trophy. I
probably have over 400 to go still.
There was one time that one of my partners was grappling over a wall.
THE SECOND his head popped up over that barricade, he was instantly
one-hit killed by an enemy sniper with no warning whatsoever. Not only
that, the enemy AI is just like F.E.A.R. 2's. They literally shoot you
from across the map with shotguns and still manage to land hits, but
it's okay, because I have a Plasma gun and I always get headshots for my
kills. And, they also unfairly always know where you are.
Every single mission, the majority of enemies that you are fighting are
human. They are all opposing pirate factions. The game also never
explains the hostilities each of them present to each other for no
apparent reason. Like in Episode 3, the Waysiders are escaping from a
giant akrid that just tore up their train. Then for no reason, the
sandraiders shoot them down and try to kill them. Then the Carpetbaggers
show up with their railway gun from the previous episode, and they
start attacking them for no reason.
This just makes you bang your head against the wall because of what
happens at the end of the game. The Over-G Akrid needed to be stopped,
so everyone bands together suddenly to fight it. Why weren't they
working together BEFORE to survive from this extremely dangerous
wildlife that messed with their stuff in the first game? It's like the
Akrid are suddenly an endangered species, when they literally covered
the entire screen in the first game.
NEVEC was working to destroy all of the Snow pirates initially anyway, so why wouldn't they rise up and fight back?
Thinking about the story in this type of game is dumb, but the story is dumb and it had to be given a scathing once-over.
A general complaint in this game is what happens when your character
gets stumbled by the trembling of the ground, or getting knocked down.
It's downright unfair to fault the game for this. When you get stumbled,
it doesn't take as long as they exaggerate to get back up, nothing bad
ever happens when it happens either because mostly you only stumble or
fall down when giant Akrid scream at you or giant worms come up from the
ground. Then there is the problem of teammates throwing grenades at you
if Friendly fire is on blowback, but it's a meritless, groundless
complaint. They get up a lot faster than the guy in LP1.
The first game could be faulted for it, but you have to remember, he was
knee deep in snow fields and had a lot of heavy gear on. Just like the
Snow pirates now, they have all of this heavy armor and whatnot on, it
only makes sense it encumbers.
But you know, you won't get knocked down if you roll or jump from danger.
The story goes on in a series of six episodes, each one shorter and
easier than the last if you can believe that. There is no game here.
There's just nothing to do, I can't make this fun anymore. There is no
randomization, there is no epic moments of squad combat (aside from
merging VS in a certain chapter, but that doesn't last more than two
minutes.)
I just cover my face with my hands and shake my head. This is like the
next Hellgate: London, I swear. It has such solid ideas, but Capcom
really screwed the pooch with this one. When you first play, it's fun,
honestly. But it wears on you because there is no unique experience each
time. It's just too short!!!
Compare this game to the first. It's like comparing the anime made today
to Neon Genesis Evangelion. It just makes you say "Man, what the F***
went wrong?". The first game had lots of levels, and each level took AT
LEAST 30 minutes to complete. All the way you're fighting against fast
respawning Akrid drones, lots of big Akrid, and some pockets of Human
enemies thrown around. They didn't exclusively use anything but Akrid,
and it was a war for survival on a Hoth-terrain. Not only that, each
level was effectively timed as you were constantly using T-ENG to keep
warm in frigid environment.
A complaint is that it's not "you against the world", and I agree with
it, honestly. Coop should have just been a bonus, and limited to only
two or three people in one game. I personally think 4-player coop is too
big and crowded, I prefer small teams of people you can trust, or that
one stranger who can actually play the game much to your surprise. You
only need two people in this game to man all of the VS most efficiently.
There's only one VS that requires three but it's not really necessary.
You need just two people to Merge VS, to pilot the Osprey(Helicopter)
and use both guns, and to efficiently manage a lot of things.
With that many people, they'll probably be too busy trying to rush for
the rare occurences of VS in the game, or trying to get in and make sure
they get the kills. Too bad for them I'm a crack shot with my plasma
gun.
And unfortunately, that is the case.
I honestly think I'm the only person in the game who knows that one of
the VS that is a common occurence early on can activate data posts
without exiting it, and they do it a lot faster, too.
The story is easily forgettable, it means nothing, and no character from
the previous game returns. It's simply a story told featuring a variety
of Snow pirates, the people living on the planet and that they are
constantly killing each other.
There is one gigantic problem with this game, and I've been hinting at
it the entire time. This game is just Too. Damn. Short. Every single
area is way too short, and you don't get to enjoy anything. Every time
you finally find some good weapons and find an awesome VS like the
Hardballer (Advanced model, one of the most well-rounded in the game and
it's plain awesome), the CHAPTER is over, and you have to start fresh
on the next area, not getting to carry over anything, not even the T-ENG
you had.
There is an extreme shortage of VS suits, and it's so boring without
them. These things were made because they helped people fight against
the Akrid, but the case of this game is that the enemy controls all of
the VS on the god damned planet and you have to destroy it all. You
can't eject the enemy from VS in Campaign either, so you have to find
it. Thank god they can't get in VS that are laid out on the map, though.
There's only two Osprey helicopters you can pilot in the whole game,
and they don't get any usage at all. There were some cool new VS like
these hoverbikes that you can fire normal weapons off of, but they
barely got their uses at all.
The best VS moments were only in three places, and they are all practically end-game.
In E4C3, (Ep4,Ch3), you can merge VS and get this uber mech of doom that
shoots a giant laser that practically insta-kills everything. Only
downside is it can't jump, but so what?
At the end of E6C2, you get this big room and you pilot Hardballer VS.
You fight against a few waves of enemy VS using all sorts of cool lasers
and have a spot to regenerate your T-ENG. Then the boss you fight is
one of the merged VS.
At the end of E6C3, you fight two giant worms like the ones from Level 4
in the first game. You can use Hardballer VS against them, but it's a
PAINFULLY easy fight from then on, since there are three of them.
Once again, I stress that it's an EXTREMELY short experience, it leaves
you wanting too much more, and they hyped the game up for these reasons.
It's a true shame they don't deliver.
Even as I'm writing this review, I feel so bad to be making it so
scathing when it shouldn't be. We've come to know Capcom for a certain
"résumé " of sorts for their games since RE5, but Lost Planet 2 is
missing too much. It's like they had to rush it out to meet their
release date. There is no jump in and jump out gameplay. This is
game-killing bad, considering the way it is set up.
For one, if you ever search for a Quick match, you always find games
with just ONE PERSON, and they are always PLAYING. You aren't going to
wait for them to finish the area so you can join, and the people who
host never wait for people. It's downright pathetic, but it's
understandable now that I've gotten into the meat of the game.
There are so many cool types of VS that should have made appearances in
the main game, and used against big hordes of Akrid. There is a new type
of VS that can transform into three different things. A submarine thing
that shoots infinite torpedoes and flies around. It transforms again to
fly around and use it's mounted guns. In it's normal form, it has two
melee blades that utterly decimate any enemy and it moves very fast
while using the guns it has mounted as well.
Capcom recently announced a patch tomorrow on June 7th, and it's
extremely shallow. The less-than-bright people that form the community
that this game has wanted it to be even easier than it already is, and
I'm going to tear into it as well. Noobs got their way, and they
probably will again, this game is probably doomed now. Very unfortunate.
Let's start:
#1. The attack power of players doesn't matter, the host will usually
get the kills on bigger enemies because of this crappy American netcode.
Let me put it this way so you understand why upgrading firepower is pointless:
If you join someone's game, it doesn't matter where they live, you
CANNOT fight big boss enemies efficiently. Here's an example, I joined
someone on 1-3 at the Salamander boss that you can go inside of. I take
the VS and get the VS Shotgun and Gatling and go to take his legs out.
It takes SIX shots from that shotgun to even get it's leg withered down,
but if I was hosting, it only takes 1 shot for each leg. It's not the
problem that people can't do damage, it's because the networking is
poor.
If you're the host, it only takes you two shots from a charged Plasma
Gun II (Or two shots each normally) to tear the arms off a Chryatis (The
two armed thing with a giant butt you can grapple on to). But if you're
not hosting, you can't really knock anything off of it and you'll waste
a ton of ammo until it dies from sheer attack.
The best example I can give you is the Chapter 1-2 boss fight, the one
with the big Akrid in the water that shoots Ice at you. If you're not
hosting, you can't knock it's arms off. All you can do is make it's
health bar go down little by little. And more often than not, the host
is usually not smart enough to know what he's doing and it takes twenty
minutes to down something that can be killed before it can even attack.
Fortunately, when it comes to killing human enemies and smaller Akrid,
this netcode problem isn't an issue. Especially if people learn to aim
for the head, it's very fluid. I'm not sure if the networking affects
enemy VS, but those sub-mechs in 4-4 and 6-2 did take an awful lot of
punishment when I had joined.
#2. The animations are not a problem. I don't understand why people
constantly complain that being temporarily stunned by shellshock is such
a bad thing in this game. If you hate it, don't get hit, it's not hard
to avoid any pain and suffering in this game.
#3. The sprinting speed is fine as is, I don't know why you want to put
more speed into it because every single level in this game, except for
the last areas in EP6, is just too short to fully take advantage of it.
If there was a mode that involved giant snow fields and long dungeons
like the first game, hell yes this would be an awesome advantage, but we
don't even go to remotely large places. Also, the fact you have a
grappling hook and are always in confined spaces, why sprint when you
can zip around? Not to mention, ahem, rolling.
What the game needs is more coop and campaign modes, and better online
features. It's a solid game, but the right choices are not being made.
Defensive fanboys will probably say you just have a terrible internet
connection, but when around 4MBs is the best you can get for American
internet compared to the 80MBs Japanese people have, and over a 100MBs
speed (Going to be 1GB in 2012) that the South Koreans have, the point
is moot.
This networking issue also comes into play big time if you chose to play
the very dull competitive mode. I've always had it in for people who
play deathmatch or anything like it. It's an objectiveless, meaningless
and boring mode of play that doesn't even feature Akrid, and you just
shoot each other. Any redneck can get into it, and it's made terrible.
People often complain that they can't even hit anybody point blank in
it, but they get one hit killed with shotguns.
The people who play just that mode, why exactly did you buy this game,
too? A game that was being advertised solely for it's bug hunting and
big fights, of which there are none sadly, just to play something that
doesn't do anything for you overall in the game.
The minority of a community that even plays it all complain about the
Femmes Fatales faction being the most played, and even going as far to
call anyone playing them a flaming homosexual. Not in those words
exactly, obviously.
Also, it's funny the kind of DLC they have for it. There are only map
packs, but they're just rehashed ones from the first game. Hey, it could
be worse, at least it's not $15!
Easily made puns aside, there's something else. You have to admit, it's
quite sad to own the American version of a game and when you go online
to play coop, you see the lists dominated solely by East Asian Players.
i.e. Japanese, Chinese, and South Korean.
The Femmes Fatales aren't even voiced in the game. They have no grunts,
no screams, nothing. A lot of people have speculated that because of the
X360's limited DVD space, they cut a lot of content out of the game. If
that's true, I wonder if they cut out more than just another episode
that is most likely as small as the others?
In closing, I can't begin to question this enough. RE5 was good, but it
was only good because of all the DLC and the Mercenaries mode. If RE5
had no Mercenaries mode, I would have traded it in after beating it, as a
matter of fact. But because Mercenaries and it's DLC is so
highly-replayable, RE5 is a game that I can easily go to in any
downtime, it's so replayable and still so very fun to this day. Why
couldn't Capcom do that with Lost Planet 2?
I will continue to watch it, because I think there is still a chance
this game is redeemable somewhere, but it's almost completely doubtful
now. I was so pumped and wanting one of my other friends to get this
game, but I'm not sure I'll make him waste his time now. In the end,
it's just a disappointment. It's unfortunate it had to turn out this
way, it had the makings of a fine game, but something messed it up.
Somewhere along the line, it got ruined.
