Lost Planet

[Renzokuken]

I know this game has been out for well... forever, but I finally got around to finishing it (Not exactly, stuck on the last boss fight). Wow this game is bad. There is so much wrong with it, but the vital suits and giant fucking bugs just appeal to me.

The story is weak. So very, very weak. Your father is killed by a giant bug, you're pissed and you want to avenge him (it ends up evolving into something bigger, but still just as lame). Fair enough, it makes sense. But all the cutscenes leading up to it (and following it) are just cliche after cliche after cliche. There's about 15 missions (I think, wasn't really counting) or levels so to speak, and about after mission 5 I just skipped every cutscene, because it just plain wasn't interesting and it made me not want to play. I just wanted to rampage around in a robot suit pwning bugs.

The graphics are meh. Sure, they don't look bad, but take for example the machine gun. It looks like a cardboard cut-out. When you shoot one bullet, it looks like three shoot out. You'd think they'd put just a little bit more effort into making the weapons a little more believable.

The characters are cliche too. There's a semi good looking girl, a wiz-kid 10 year old boy, two traitors (one betrays you, one betrays the bad dudes), and the big bad guy is a skinny Asian with an afro (seriously, wtf?). The game just slowly screams JRPG as the game goes on with some of the hairstyles you see.

So the game isn't that great. I still enjoyed playing it and I'm actually really looking forward to Lost Planet 2 (4 player co-op against big fucking bugs? yes please), and I've already played the demo which was very impressive. I definitely wouldn't pay for Lost Planet 1.

PS: I wouldn't call this a serious review, just some musings after I finished the game.

 

[Aurora]

I just happen to have finished it yesterday. It wasn't that bad when it comes to shooting the bugs. But shooting the human enemies was ridiculous. A full clip of assault rifle bullets on normal to kill just one? Really? Lame. And then I tried a vs gattling gun on them. It doesn't even have any effect?! What the hell. If my character got hit like that, he couldn't even move or shoot anymore for over 3 seconds. Who thought of that crazy mechanic?

Then the archievements. Collect hidden coins throughout the levels. No, just no. It's a game with a timer. How does this fit in the game? Or the archievement for starting like, 1000 multiplayer matches. Who's even going to play that game for such an amount of time?

The story had the most crappy ending ever. Like Renzo said, totally cliche. And you don't even really feel like winning the game in the end. It's almost as bad as prototype's ending. Almost.

Still, I enjoyed shooting those bugs. They scattered and froze really nicely, especially in the snow levels. And the boss fights were awesome. Finally a game where I had to try more then 2 or 3 times in a row to win a battle. So satisfied when those ugly bitches finally screamed in agony and died. To bad the the majority of the later boss fights are against other mechs. I wanted more bugs. >:[

Lastly, the first person view sucks. You can't even see your weapon! But if you like mindless shooter action, it's certainly worth renting it for a day. I finished it in about 8 hours, including retries.

 

[Emperor Pan I]

Oh man, I thought this was going to be a thread about where people liked the game. I got all angry ready for nothing.

Yeah this was bad. I came into this with high hopes. The concept was pretty interesting. But the aliens were more interesting to kill than the people like stated above. I refused to finish it on the grounds it turned into a stupid flying gundam game thing at the last boss. Bullshit.

Extremely disappointing.

 

[Aurora]

The bugs were interesting, but the mechs spoiled the fun. Especially at the end indeed. The energy sword really failed.

And did any of you actually found a mech with a working chainsaw thingy?

Also, why is it that you lose thermal energy while standing right next to a 50 ft wide lava stream? I was like, whut?

And Pan, here's how it ends if you still want to know:

Spoiler

You destroy the enemy flying mech. You get zapped by that harmonizer attachment. You stumble out of your mech. The Frontier thing collapses. Gunshot. Screen goes black. One year later that chick and the geek are shooting those waypoint things everywhere. It heats up the area where they land. That turns out to be the secret project of Yuri. The guy you played appears, but doesn't recognize the others. What the fuck, memory still gone after a year? Game ends. Aurora is disappointed.

By the way, beating that giant worm for the achievement was sort of cool.

 

[Renzokuken]

Also, the whole Frontier Project, wasn't it just terraforming the planet? What's so bad about that?

 

[Aurora]

Because

Spoiler

it would kill all that's left alive on the surface. Only those NEVEC soldiers were safe on that huge orbital platform thing, and all snow pirates would be instantly killed, along with the bugs/Akrid. The original plan was to let the pirates see how awesome NEVEC was so that they would be able to end the was peacefully, but that afro guy betrayed Yuri and stuff.

Weird plot twist. It came a bit late, but it saved the story from being totally lame. Now it was actually not that bad in the end, if it wasn't for the idiotic voice acting.

 

[Renzokuken]

Hmm, but isn't that flawed? I mean, in the first level of Lost Planet 2 it's all rainforests and lush green grass and it's apparently set on the same planet, just X-amount of years later. Obviously we stopped the Frontier Project, but the planet is temperate (at least on the level I played) and the bugs are still around (and more awesome). So, what changed?

 

[Emperor Pan I]

So, what changed?

The writing staff.

 

[Aurora]

No more spoiler tags from this point.

 

[Aurora]

Remember those guides post things you had to activate? The ones that also gave you energy? Those were part of that secret project of Yuri, the one who was betrayed. He wanted to place those all over the planet, and then activate them all at the same time. You see that happening on a small scale at the end of Lost Planet. It melts the snow over a large piece of land all at once, and reveals green grass right away. I bit cheap, but meh. Apparently they did it on a large scale before part two, which warmed up the whole planet at once.

The reason that they didn't do that right away was because that afro guy thought it would take to long. He just wanted to blow up a whole bunch of that goo in the middle of an Akrid hive and warm up the whole planet at once. But since that would also kill all snow pirates, we had to play this game...

 

[christianb]

This thread bummed me out. I was planning on picking this game up in the near future...

 

[Aurora]

Renting it for a day or two can still be a lot of fun. It's just not worth spending about 20 to 30 bucks on.