Multiplayer
Lost Planet has 16 player online battles with eight large maps, and four different game modes. The obvious deathmatch is present along with team deathmatch, as well as fugitive mode and a domination style team based mode called ‘post grab’, in which teams try to secure as many data posts that they can. Hopefully more maps will be added in future through the Xbox Live marketplace
Due to the maps being large, you’ve got plenty of areas you can reach with your grapple hook, so that alone adds an interesting twist to the multiplayer gameplay element. Another nice feature I rather liked was the scoring system at the end of each map that allows you to level up your online character.
Conclusion
Lost Planet is a good game, that has that straight forward ‘if it moves, kill’ it attitude. It’s a full on game where you can just run around mindlessly killing anything in your path or you could just run right to the end of a level. You don’t need to make any important decisions, and there’s no downtime thanks to lots of thermal energy being available from almost anything you kill or destroy.
The main attraction of course, is the huge bosses, and fighting these creatures really enhance the gaming experience a great deal. At the end of the day though, they’re just large, well animated and thought out bosses – there’s nothing special or unique about them or their AI. Overall Lost Planet is one of those mixed bag affairs, which has equal good and bad elements to it. We’re got huge boss battles, varied mechs, decent visuals and a good online mode. Capcom could have put greater thought into the plot though because it seems to be a widely complained about feature of this game.
Would I recommend this as a purchase? No I wouldn’t. I was lucky to get £5 off for this title so I got Lost Planet for £35 instead, and even now I don’t feel too happy with my purchase. I was hoping for a lot more gameplay then what I actually got, so I can’t remotely see me holding on to this title for very long. On that basis I’d recommend renting this title out instead of purchasing it.
Rating 7/10
Pro’s:
- Superb Akrid design
- Indoor Akrid areas are well designed
- Great visual effects
- Varied types of customisable VS (Mechs)
- Huge bosses that are intense
- Multiplayer levelling is a nice touch
Con’s:
- 11 short missions
- Poor storyline that is all over the place
- Single player campaign has little replay value
- Confusing FMV elements with stale voice-overs
- Wayne is a wimp and falls over too frequently
- Utterly poor ending just doesn’t help matters