Snow, pirates and aliens can cause so much grief!

Gameplay: 6
Graphics: 8.5
Sound: 6
Controls: 5
Longevity: 6.5

Overall: 64% (2 stars/below average)

Capcom and Innovation

Capcom's venture into third-person shooters is not an unfamiliar jaunt for the company. In fact, many have heard of Resident Evil, of which many iterations of the series has occurred over multiple series (both current and last generation). With that said, it would be hoped that innovations would be made to items such as the gameplay mechanism (which could be applied to an IP), graphics, sound, controls and the longevity of the game itself. Sadly, Capcom is not exactly known to be a company for innovation (heck, see the Street Fighter series and the aforementioned numerous iterations of Resident Evil for that), and it really is unfortunate that this game could not have been a shining example of that considering the great lengths the company went through to create a new and original product.

The Story

The plot focuses on Wayne Holden (who solely goes by Wayne throughout the 11 Chapters of play) who in the beginning witnesses the death of his father at the hands of an alien, known in this series as Akrids, known as "Green Eye." In an effort to exact revenge against this creature in the prelude chapter, Wayne vainly attempts to destroy the creature in his Vital Suit (which is referred to in this game as VS's) and is quickly destroyed outright. As a result, he is frozen in his VS and loses all awareness and memory of his past with the exception of this event.

He is revived by a small group of snow pirates led by Yuri, and accompanied by Luka and her brother Rick. Precious little details are given about the three, other than that they need help, and they have an operational VS with which Wayne can pilot (and he does so quite willingly). The enticement? They are on a journey to rid the world (known as E.D.N. III) of the Akrid, which Wayne has very much grown to hate (only with the precious little memory he has to work with) and they hope to do so with their rag tag group.

Gameplay

The story itself I wish would drive the story as much as another memorable shooter on the 360 known as Gears of War. However, the story is very much forgettable and you will find yourself easily skipping over it. Every mission starts with a very brief overview of objectives. Once the mission starts, you are usually informed of what to do from the off, with the quickly noticeable number on the top left corner of your screen known as "T-Eng" (Thermal Energy) starting at 1,000 and draining down, along with your life bar.

Thermal Energy is one of two "life bars," if you will, that is constantly draining to power the suit that warms Wayne's body on him (due to the extreme cold of the planet that the humans for some reason wish to live on), to become an energy source for any plasma or laser weapons that you pick up, and to become a (major) energy source for various mechanized weapons (known as Vital Suits or VS) found throughout every mission. Your thermal energy will also do one other major thing, which is restore life to Wayne, should he take a blow to his personal being from an alien, weapon or human. You can restore by killing enemies (who drop red heat spheres which disappear after a few moments due to the cold environment), or by destroying remains of vehicles or oil drums which themselves are a heat source (or derivative thereof).

The weapons that are offered to your character include the machine gun, the shot gun, the sniper rifle, the rocket launcher, grenades and the plasma gun/laser gun mentioned earlier. For the Vital Suits, you get derivatives of these weapons for dealing with the larger boss characters of the game.

As the game progresses, your bestiary of alien opponents gets more varied and much more complicated to defeat. Even further, and without spoiling the story, humans get added to the mix to further complicate matters with their own VS's (though the aliens, who themselves are hostile to humans, do not attack these human opponents as a side thought). Yet it all falls quite a bit due to control scheme frustrations, which will be discussed in detail later.

Graphics

The graphics of Lost Planet is some of the best I have seen since Gears of War. The character models are quite detailed and interact with the snowy environment in believable fashion. The explosions in this game are a true work of art, as they are some of the realistic I have seen in a video game in the nearly 15 years I have been in this. Lastly the physics engine at work behind all of this is amazing, as this enhances the experience of the graphics you see before you.

Unfortunately, I wish I could say this was all done without a hint of slow down. But there are times that slowdown is evident and it is not at just the periods you fight the major bosses. Anytime you cause a chain of these aforementioned explosions, there will be a great deal of slowdown. Anytime there is a lot of snow whipped up on the screen by opponents that roll on the ground (just because that is part of their attack) and they hit you, the game will slow down considerably. Anytime a large opponent is on the screen and is preparing an attack against you, a noticeable slow down will occur. Usually, these instances are limited to about 10% of the game time that you play... which can be annoyance for some of those who don't like slowdown (which I can tolerate as I am a PC Gamer).

Sounds

The Dolby Surround sound logo is one of the first you will see when you go into the game. Yet what you are greeted with are sounds which I wish would live up to that standard, considering I have the system which very much supports it and then some.

The machine gun in this game hardly sounds like a machine gun and more sounds like a last generation (or even further) rendition of it. Capcom would've helped themselves immensely by recording an AK-47 at work, as even a free PC games rendition of it (i.e. Warrock) sounds much better than this one does. The bass reception of the explosions, when close, is not as deep as I would have liked, given the size that they are portrayed on screen (sometimes blinding the player's view). When a large creature dies, there is no resounding "thump" to go with their death on the bass end, suggesting no weight...

The music soundtrack to this game is just as much forgettable, with the only decent one being the soundtrack on the start/mission screen. All others are very much relegated to being hardly noticeable.

Controls

The bread and butter of any shooter are the controls, as it will dictate your actions on screen. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, this games controls very much resulted in gameplay complications, which it should not.

The first item that is really noticeable is the responsiveness of the controls themselves. There is a "feel," if you can call it that, of a slight delay from pressing the button to the action created on screen. The fact that it registers in my mind throughout gameplay during a majority of missions is something that should not be there, as I was fully able to aim with ease and no issue in other shooters but it does not feel like I can respond as easily with this game.

The second item is the fact that I have to down press a button to reload my weapon, as opposed to pushing a shoulder button to doing the same. Also, if my weapon runs out, the game waits for me to try to use the weapon again, rather than automatically reloading it for me (which is supremely annoying when I am fighting for my life against a huge creature and get eaten or destroyed as a result).

The third item is quickness of turning. Though Capcom presents you with shoulder buttons to turn 90 degrees quicker, that is not what you always wish to do when you are tracking a target that is moving around you quickly, but is not moving at 90 degree turns. It really feels quite clunky when you are losing track of targets because of this aspect.

The fourth item is the use of the harpoon system, which feels restrictive when I cannot look nearly straight up to fire it. The game restricts the field of view to around 60 degrees upward, so that you have to walk back before firing it (which may lead you to falling down if you're not careful). Why the restriction, Capcom?

The last item is the of the control pad to zoom in and out while a majority of movement is used with both joysticks. The control pad is out of the way, esp. in the heat of the moment, so it leaves you with that one view (esp. if you happen to have a sniper rifle).

Maybe I am spoiled with Gears of War, but perhaps that the control scheme was so intuitive and innovative that a lot of other companies other than Epic, such as Capcom, should have learned to streamline button placement and not overly complicate it.

Longevity

There are 11 missions in this game, which will take you anywhere between 20 minutes to at most 45 minutes a mission to complete. On average, the game can be completed in about 6 hours if you look for everything and go for every achievement within the missions. Quite short for even a shooter.

Multiplayer mode helps a bit in extending the longevity of this game by adding 4 modes: Fugitive, Elimination, Team Elimination and Post Grab (Capture the Flag). The Multiplayer modes are supported with up to 16 players on XBox Live, and have 8 maps (9 if you got the Special Edition of this game, and 13 if you got SE and both map packs from XBox Live Marketplace for 800 points). To add, you have the ability to gain levels online, with any kills you do (whether they be VS and/or humans) adding to your points and any kills you suffer being taken against you. You can go up to Level 99, but the achievement in the game is at Level 50, with little incentive to go beyond it.

There have been numerous problems online that have been ongoing despite the attempts by Capcom to fix the issue after a patch released on March 2, 2007. The main issues remaining are the host suddenly quitting during the game (usually when s/he is suffering losses) and racial issues (due to people being unable to understand what others are saying).

Conclusion

Capcom brings to the table a shooter with awkward controls with a forgettable story and multiplayer issues. At this time, the game runs for $59.99 (which is a bit much for the score I am giving). If you are interested in killing bugs and humans in the cold, which this game offers in spades, then I would suggest that you wait for the price to drop. Otherwise, I suggest that one looks elsewhere for a shooting experience, as the XBox360 offers quite a bit of this genre.