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Lost Planet 2
  PS3Shooter_3DUC  
  opened by paleface at 03:06:58 08/28/11  
  last modified by paleface at 12:27:18 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=PS3; cat=Shooter_3D; reg=NA]
           
I liked the first Lost Planet game (see entry 1206) quite a bit: crawling through snowdrifts on an ice planet, sometimes jumping into a big mechanized suit to fight, was a refreshing twist in third-person shooters, and on the whole it was well executed.
 
The sequel, on the other hand, is awful. Or at least, the first twenty minutes or so are awful--I can't vouch for the rest, because I don't want to play it anymore.
 
Apparently it was decided that making a fun single-player adventure was pointless, so instead they made a co-op game with pretty much zero story--sure, there will be a fairly generic cut-scene here and there--guys flying out of the ice into jungle areas that I guess were caused by what happens (OMG spoilers) at the end of the first game)--and there's radio chatter in your ear from your generic military leaders or whatever, but even in most of the first twenty minutes, the game really just plopped me from point to point with no explanation as to what was going on or why I should care.
 
If you're playing by yourself, which I was, you can opt to have up to three AI dudes trooping along with you. I opted out of that, because I didn't want the game to play itself for me. I probably should have let it do that, though, because playing the game myself was no fun: basically, you run through some jungle, run into a bunch of bad guys, get shot up, respawn somewhere around whatever the previous checkpoint was, and run back to try to shoot through some more of them.
 
The point where I gave up was when I came to the first enemy base, or something--again, there was no explanation, it was just there in my way, basically a big shaft drilled in the jungle, with gun turrets and guys with machine-guns all around inside it. Apparently I had to destroy it. But it was clearly designed to be a slog-through grind, with vicious turret crossfires at pretty much every point--just made for pure punishment. The game gave me no motivation to clear it out, so, after the first few respawns or five, I stopped. Done.
 
I think it also has more traditional deathmatch-style multiplayer--the first one did, anyway. But if it comes down to rolling around on the ground--or shooting around the map on your improbable zip-line, knocking someone off their feet, and dropping a grenade at their feet that KOs them just as they're getting up, like the first one did, I'm not interested.
 
Oh, and cranking heat eh control points or something. Although annoying as heck (find post in ground, mash button repeatedly until post comes out of ground a little more) sorta made sense in the first game, where you were in Arctic conditions, and had to collect "heat energy" to survive. But in this one you're in THE JUNGLE. IT IS HOT. And yet you're still running around in big insulated suits, still rolling around on the ground like you're rolling through snowdrifts, and still collecting "heat energy" like it's a really vital resource in this sweltering sweatbox.
 
The graphics are better than the first game--they don't have the weird pixelization the earlier one did, at least on PS3.
    
references:
· Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (PS3)

 
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