When the first screens trickled out describing Capcom's sci-fi epic, the anticipation for what might become a new franchise favorite quickly spawned a following eager to dive into the action that it would promise. Gears of War had shown players the destroyed beauty of its world, filled with the ruins of what had once been a civilization of hope. With Lost Planet, Capcom would take them deep into the frozen heart of humanity's future as they attempt to settle a distant world after fleeing a home that has begun to die. By blending third person, old-school flavored action with flashy graphics and walking weapons platforms, Lost Planet has some of the ingredients that it needs to bring a new experience to the table. But it's a trip that might leave more than a few players feeling the cold.

Lost Planet attempted to terraform my 360.

A Hazy Shade of Winter

Lost Planet appears to take place in the far future as mankind seeks to colonize a world that they have named E.D.N. III, leaving behind their homeworld as it has either succumbed to a slow death or is in its final throes.

The first wave of colonists have made planetfall and were doing a decent job in eking out an existence until the Akrid made themselves known. The native inhabitants of this rime covered paradise, the Akrid are terrifying, insect-like monsters that had begun to make life all but impossible on E.D.N. III. The first wave was pushed back as a result as the colonists had no weapons with which to fight the Akrid. However, they discovered that the Akrid held within themselves a kind of thermal energy that could be harvested and perhaps used. This, along with the development of Vital Suits, piloted mechs that were armored and armed with a variety of weapons, brought the second wave of colonists to E.D.N. III.

But there were those that had been left behind from the first retreat and exist outside of the society founded by the colonists. Called "Snow Pirates" by everyone else, these scattered survivors dotting the surface of the planet use VS mechs to fight for precious supplies while trying not to get killed by the Akrid. When the story begins, Wayne witnesses the death of his father when he fights to save his life against an Akrid known only as "green eye". Wayne manages to escape as a result, but falls victim to an avalanche of ice and snow that buries him in his VS until he is rediscovered by snow pirates.

He also discovers that much of his past is missing with only fragments reminding him of what had happened to his father and that he knows how to fight in a VS. He also has a strange device attached to his arm that allows him to use thermal energy to heal himself, but remembers nothing about how he had gotten it. The snow pirates that had found him also have their own agenda and as Wayne will discover, his search for his past will lead him to save the future of the world that humanity has decided to call home.

The story behind Lost Planet is filled with a lot of ambiguity. If you're expecting Capcom's latest to tell its story in much the same way that Gears of War has in at least making some effort in explaining some of its conventions, or Dead Rising's scheduled storytelling that came together in between those moments of harvesting the dead, you won't find much of that here.

Gameplay

The third person action of Lost Planet is going to draw some comparisons to Epic's Gears of War, but the action and the challenge of both titles are distinct from each other in several ways. There's no cover system, but it won't be missed here. The third person controls will take a little getting used to with every button seeing some use in the game. There's even a button that will immediately turn the player 90 degrees to face what's behind him which will happen often as enemies run, fly, and roll around the screen as they use much of the open space that is available. Many of the title's eleven missions take place out in the open with the rest sending the player deep beneath the surface as they explore abandoned tunnels and facilities led behind to rot by the first wave of colonization.

By default, Auto Aim is active and will adjust your fire to attack certain threats that are near your crosshairs with flashing brackets that indicate where your shots are really going. Unfortunately, it also makes shooting directly at certain things if the screen is cluttered with bad guys such as flocks of flying Akrid more difficult than it should be as your shots may tend to go where you don't want them to. Fortunately, you can turn this off in the configuration screen and the Auto Aim doesn't lock on to everything that can be shot, including many weak points on powerful Akrid or bosses, meaning that you'll still need a delicate touch to practice your aim with.

Key to Wayne's life is the thermal energy that he will collect from destroying barrels and storage tanks along with the enemy whatever it might be. Thermal energy continues to decrease at a steady rate keeping the player from simply standing in one place for too long and lending a sense of urgency to survive. When Wayne gets hurt, thermal energy (or T-Eng), is automatically used to try and heal him. When T-Eng is gone, Wayne's health will start to decay. Some weapons in the game will also use this energy and VS mechs will draw on it as well, causing to fall faster. Many of the areas are also filled with opportunities to max out Wayne's T-Eng right before he gets thrown into the grinder where he may need every drop to survive the bosses. Like Dead Rising's time limit, it works without making the player feel too constrained.

Wayne can also use a grapple to get up in the world, pulling him up to ledges or rooftops or even across open gaps. It's a nice tool that feels as if it has been given short thrift in the game as it isn't used all that often, but when it is, it can mean the difference between life or death. The controls for the grapple make it easy to use, but for whatever reason, Wayne can't look straight up or higher than a certain angle forcing him to get some distance between himself and a ledge he might want to climb or what he might want to shoot. Lost Planet's outdoor levels are pretty open to exploration along with a few indoor ones offering alternate ways to get to where you need to go, and the grapple can get to places that might have hidden weapons or secret rewards that are tallied at the end of the mission. It's not Bionic Commando, but it does open up certain opportunities for exploration.

Scattered across the areas that he'll be exploring are data posts that he can activate to update his PDA map and inject some much needed T-Eng into his system. They're more valuable as T-Eng boosts in the field than as map aids, though, as your PDA map is pretty useless. I hardly ever used it in my playthrough. Your PDA will also allow you to reconfigure your controls and check to see what your goal is, but you'd better do it in a safe place because the action won't stop just because you're in it.

Vital Statistics

Vital Suits are also going to get a lot of use especially against the Akrid bosses that Wayne with face. Armed with a variety of punishing weapons, they'll protect the player as long as their armor holds out. Unlike Wayne, T-Eng doesn't regenerate their health and it runs down faster as it helps run the machine. There are also several different types of VS in the game, each one with its own abilities such as being able to hover or drill through solid rock.

Wayne can even take the weapons off of these and carry them around, but only one at a time and he can't hang these extra large versions on his back or keep them when he switches to something else. But he can carry them to another VS and mount it on the armor, or change up what weapons are already on it for ones that may be buried in the snow or on a VS that is about to go up in flames.

Each different kind of VS has a distinct look and all of them are filled with a lot of detail as jets boost it into the air, or speed it across a snowy field to avoid a rain of missiles. A VS might even have the ability to transform itself into a sled that can take Wayne quickly to where he needs to go, or a drilling tank allowing him to get through underground passages blocked by rubble. And when they go, they spark and keel over while warning the player to eject. VS suits add a new twist to the formula, turning some of the firefights into full blown artillery matches as gatling cannons spit fire and rockets send greasy smoke into the air as they hit.

VS suits and their weapons also have some odd quirks. Splash damage isn't done well against foes, other than against Wayne, and its weird watching a gatling gun at point blank range miss a target as bullets dance around them when the sights are pointed right at them...even with Auto Aim. You also can't step on bad guys, crushing them beneath your pneumatic feet aside from nudging them around, but that might just be a personal preference of mine. They also don't move too quickly across the snowy landscape, although some are faster than others especially if they can transform into vehicles or glide using rockets.

Fire and Ice

Lost Planet tries very hard to bring an action packed, cinematic feel, to the game and it succeeds in some places but not so well in others. The frozen wasteland that is E.D.N. III is dotted with the bones of the first colonization attempt as abandoned buildings and forgotten highways lie half buried in the snow and rock, lending a sense of vast desolation to many of the mission areas. Tunnels and icy plains infested with Akrid can make many of these places feel left to the elements and the natural terrors of the planet, 'lost' to humanity's efforts to tame it. It might not have the detail of Gears of War close up, but it easily succeeds in creating an atmospheric experience.

Capcom's artists have also created a complete menagerie of monsters along with a cast of detailed characters with faces that display plenty of emotion and animated action to occupy this waste and the cutscenes that display them show them off. The voice acting is pretty good, although much of the dialog shares in several unintentionally cheesy moments especially when you fight other humans. The cuts look and sound great, but the story that they try and stitch together comes off as fragmented. Wayne, in particular, can be seen tumbling through snow during the game, jumping across small ledges, and getting into VS units while punching up the control console to seal him in. When he gets smacked with a missile burst or a charging VS, he'll go flying in a dramatic way which looks good but doesn't do much for the gameplay aside from possibly setting the player up to get juggled by another attack.

The Akrid, in particular, look fantastic along with the range of attacks that they are capable of carrying out as they swarm, spin, and jump at the player like the living organisms that they are, defending their world. The alien feel of facing these things will be with the player through the entire campaign. The bosses, in particular, display their lethal evolutionary edge with wicked spines, twisted, chitinous armor, and savage attacks that Wayne may find himself facing without a VS to protect him as he tries to hunt down the weak points to inflict massive damage. Many of these awesome encounters will follow special patterns of attack and timing, challenging the player not only to survive but to try and discover the best way to kill these avatars of annihilation before getting killed...or dying from a lack of T-Eng as it relentlessly ticks away.

The blowing wind and crunching snow, rumbling quakes from deep beneath the ground, and the whirring engines of the VS as they power up add plenty of detail to Lost Planet with plenty of special effects blazing after every bolt of shot lead or curling wisps of energy flowing around Wayne as T-Eng heals him. The smoke and fire, in particular, can literally blind the player from near misses as Wayne staggers to get away from the explosion. The music by Jamie Christopherson, who was also responsible for several pieces in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, is a great blend of sci-fi inspired action and drama making the player feel as if they are a part of a cinematic action experience. Lost Planet's presentation easily makes it a showpiece for what the 360 can do.

Worms

Dead Rising's gameplay made it easy for players to get in and start swatting the dead, creating an experience that was a lot more fun than frustrating. Lost Planet blends both modern technology with old school action to bring players something that will have them wonder how exactly veteran gamers had managed to grow the kind of patience that led them through the first Mega Man or Battletoads. Coupled with a relatively short single player campaign that lasts only a handful of hours, and several players may think twice before donning their snow boots.

The checkpoint system in the game is one of the reasons that controllers may end up broken as players are often sent back to the beginning of a mission thanks to some of the cheap deaths that the game will occasionally throw at them after spending nearly half and hour exploring and killing Akrid. Fortunately, it does save before a boss battle allowing some mercy, but be prepared to repeat quite a bit of the game simply to get to where you had died. Because of the deep snow and the distances involved in getting to where Wayne need to go as he slowly trudges his way there, this can also test players' patience as they repeat the journey to get to where they died. Transitions from above to below ground do not necessarily save your progress, something made clear in the demo and which hasn't really changed unless a cut scene is involved or a boss battle is next.

Several of these progress crushing deaths are from being juggled by what is trying to kill Wayne. Thanks to overly dramatic animation work that has him tumble, fall over, and take a breather before getting back up when he's hit hard, the player will spend more time waiting for him to get his ass back in gear before they can at least try and get away from what wants to turn them into a frozen corpse. It doesn't help when Wayne finally gets back up on his feet, only to get thrown back again by missiles, tentacles, fire or whatever else the enemy will throw at them during all of his acrobatic klutziness, juggling him into death. One boss in particular is rather good at this which doesn't make sense since the bosses following it are cakewalks thanks to the goofy difficulty that doesn't seem to scale with any consistency. Perhaps Frank the freelance reporter from Dead Rising should have filled in for Wayne since he never seemed to have this problem.

Wayne also has a problem in carrying over any of his weapons from the previous mission. When he starts a new one, he begins with his default store of T-Eng, a machine gun, and some 'nades. Forget the plasma rifle or disc grenades that you might have grabbed earlier. They're gone until you find them again. It isn't a huge issue, but does he have to chuck his gear every time he gets back to HQ?

The enemy can also display a tendency to be pretty dense, such as when Wayne snipes someone from a distance while their friends continue to stand around as if nothing had happened. Or even better, when the target continues to stand where they are after surviving the first shot without taking cover or even running away. Granted, not every enemy is like this, but enough are to make it feel as if Wayne is the smartest man on the planet. He also hits like a scarecrow when he smashes someone with whatever he's got in his hands as they'll more than likely get back up, unless he's already softened them up with a few shots.

The story is pieced together in between the missions, dropping hints of a conspiracy involving a ruthless and mysterious organization. But while Dead Rising had managed to tell its story by giving the player more information as they had managed to survive in between outings with the dead, Lost Planet's narrative seems to lack its knack for explanation. Not much is given about why colonists decided to make their home on a frozen hellhole like E.D.N. III, or what E.D.N. actually stands for, or why Wayne sometimes heads out to cross the 'hard way' while everyone else apparently takes the easy way to where they need to go, if just to give a reason for the player to fight through Akrid. It does tell enough to get an idea of what is going on, but unlike others that have done a decent job in describing enough of the world around it to involve the player, much of Lost Planet's world is left without explanation. Not even the included art book that comes with the Collector's Edition provides much insight, other than some excellent artwork.

Collector's Edition

The Collector's Edition contains an extra map along with a bonus CD stuffed with media. The three webisodes released to promote the game are on there along with a Fan Kit to build your own site with, icons and banners, wallpapers, a Windows Media skin, scans of the art used to create the world of Lost Planet, and the soundtrack in mp3 format. In addition to this, it comes in a fancy steel case along with a pocket sized art book. The swag's not bad overall, especially the inclusion of the soundtrack which offers a little over half an hour of the cinematic sci-fi music spread across fifteen tracks.

Multiplayer

There are several multiplayer game types available for those that want to take the action online. Supporting sixteen players with up to four teams fighting across a handful of maps, there are four modes of play available. Elimination and Team Elimination are your standard deathmatches. Post Grab scatters several data posts around the map for either team to activate and control. Whichever team controls the most posts by the time the game ends is the winner. Fugitive makes the host a fugitive that all other players must hunt down and kill, while the host must try and stay alive for as long as possible. Many of the maps are large and look great. They can also be reconfigured to alter the location of certain things such as data posts in order to keep things more interesting. Everything from the single player campaign is available, although the small number of gametypes is a little disappointing. But there is still something fun about blasting someone with a laser cannon twice your size that you'd just taken off of a VS.

The player starts by selecting a model from a small collection of avatars that they choose from and can customize these with an even smaller number of camouflage patterns and even go so far as to select a voice mask to go along with it adding another layer of anonymity. But as the player continues to rack up points online in ranked matches, they can unlock additional goodies to distinguish their avatar. In regular, non-ranked, player matches, though, you won't earn any points.

Capcom has also added what they call a "Battle Gauge" to multiplayer which fills with points earned through kills or completing objectives such as activating data posts. Players also have individual battle gauges that can decrease when they're killed or when they kill players on their own team. When the battle gauge is exhausted, the player can no longer spawn back into play or the game can abruptly end, which has led to several hosts boosting the gauge limit on their games to the maximum level as it can't be turned off.

But multiplayer is not without its own share of issues, not the least of which is the quirky lobby system. As it is, their lobby system pales in comparison to that offered by titles such as Call of Duty 3, Gears of War, or Rainbow Six: Vegas which seem to offer a far more stable experience in getting into the games that the player wants to join. There's also no 'refresh' button that you can use to bring up the latest list of games as it seems to do this automatically. This can also mean that the list that you are looking at might not necessarily be the latest one.

It also has its share of connection problems, leaving the online portion of the game feeling pretty sparse compared to its peers. There are quite a few games with one or two people in them, but those pushing sixteen are somewhat rare. Connectivity problems often generate a 'Game Canceled' or 'Not Available' warning, the list refreshing showing the listed game now gone. When a game ends, it can also kick the player out to an empty lobby screen as they wait for another list to come up since map rotations aren't in challenging them to try and connect to another match. I've even been kicked from a game when the host tried to start it up more than once or twice, hitting the lobby as it says that the game is no longer available for whatever reason. Capcom is listening to its fans, as they have stated before, and patches are being released to improve the experience.

Front Lines

Lost Planet can offer plenty of action for players that can put up with some of its frustrating problems as they face ruthless snow pirates, monstrous Akrid, and the climactic boss battles that pack the screen with desperate, thumb blistering fights for survival. But even that might not be enough when other titles provide as much excitement with fewer issues both on and offline. As beautiful as the game is packed with furious and brutal confrontations for the next generation, it can feel as if it plays much like a traditional, old-school experience which may not be appealing to some. Despite the ice freezing over Lost Planet's moments of greatness, however, players that manage to dig through will still discover a unique, sci-fi action adventure as they explore and fight for survival against Capcom's extreme conditions on a world far from home.