LOST PLANET 2

Price               Rs 2,999

PUBLISHER      Capcom

DEVELOPER     Capcom

DISTRIBUTOR  Milestone Interactive

PHONE              022 42764000

Email              sales@milestoneinteractive.com

PLATFORM       Xbox 360, PS3

On paper, Lost Planet 2 sounds like a gold mine for action junkies. But in reality, it is broken, clunky, repetitive and underwhelming. Throughout our time with the game, you get an empty feeling as you grind away level after level, killing weird looking enemies and gigantic bugs. Rarely do you feel the kind of emotion that grips you while slaying Chronos (God of War III) or even some of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition’s bosses for that matter. It was more like “Oh look, another giant bug with glowing yellow markings telling me where to shoot them”. “Oh look another bunch of enemies interspersed by a gigantic boss fight”, and so on.

Lost Planet 2 takes place nearly ten years after the original. For reasons we couldn’t care less about, pockets of tropical and barren areas have begun sprouting up all over the planet of E.D.N. III. This allows players to experience something other than snow-covered mountainous peaks that pretty much dominated the first game. While we do appreciate the change of scenery, the visual fidelity achieved by these levels feels a bit underwhelming when you compare it to the likes of an Uncharted 2 or even a Crysis.  

The USP of Lost Planet 2 is bug hunting with three of your friends, and if you’re lucky enough to have three other people to co-op with, the game can get pretty enjoyable. Taking down bugs nearly a hundred times your size with your buddies is somewhat of an adrenaline pumping experience. The problems arise when you play the game solo. For starters, it’s strange that Capcom went with the sort of mission structure they did, because it made the campaign feel like a bunch of disjointed maps strewn together randomly.

To play the campaign, you have to create an offline lobby with four stupidly named bots that try and simulate the feel of actually playing co-op with real people. Every level is broken up into multiple areas and on completion of every area, you and your squad are judged on your performance. Constant breaking up of levels in this fashion destroys any sort of continuity the campaign could have achieved. What’s worse is that you play through the campaign as faceless bots, so there’s absolutely zero emotional attachment to any of the characters.

In nearly every level, you’ll grind your way through a horde of dumb enemies only to end things each time in a colossal boss fight. Now, these bosses are impressive no doubt and the first few times you’ll genuinely feel scared going up against such behemoths, but after a while, it just lost its novelty. And pretty much every boss comes with a glowing in-your-face Achilles heel, so there’s really no thought process involved behind killing them.

Making matters ever worse is the unintuitive control scheme that, for some reason, hasn’t been tweaked or changed since the first one. And ironically, the first game faced flack for the very same issue, which makes you wonder if Capcom are just plain defiant or stupid! A more responsive control system would have at least halved the number of deaths you’ll have in the game. Why have the crouch button the same as the movement button? Sure, you can change the control scheme in the Options menu, but that doesn’t change the fact that character controls and movement are just plain clunky.

Then there’s the insanely stupid difficulty curve associated with most Capcom games. While playing with four people it can be justified to a certain extent as you actually have humans working towards the same cause, offline, where the bots pretty much do nothing, you’re better of playing on the easiest difficulty setting. Even on that setting, some of the bosses feel cheap and they magically regenerate all their health while you’re about to dish out the killing blow.

Things do fare a lot better on the online front, where you have a bunch of versus modes to choose from. Unfortunately, there are hardly any people playing the game, which makes finding a well populated server really tough.

What the most about Lost Planet 2 is the fact that, if made well, it would have been the epitome of awesome action games. It definitely has its moments that stand out while playing in co-op, but if you’re the kind of guy who prefers his games offline, kindly stay away. There’s much better stuff coming to shell out your hard earned money on.