I make no apologies, I haven't posted anything in a LONG time. I've been too busy playing games to write about them. I plan to make a first half 2010 wrap-up post in the future, we'll see it that happens.
Anyway, I need to vent about Lost Planet 2. I really liked the first Lost Planet, that demo that came out right around e3 2006 really blew me away. Then when the full game came out it along with Dead Rising really solidified the Xbox 360 and Capcom as the start of the real 'next gen gaming'.
It is just plain shocking to me how wrong things went with Lost Planet 2. To me it seems like some big wigs back in Japan heard about the crazy 10+ million sales Call of Duty was getting year after year, thought to themselves, 'What's the closes thing we have to these western online shooters?' some told them Lost Planet still has an active online community and then went with that. Lost Planet 2 really seems like a game made by people trying really hard to make a great competitive shooter, but had no idea what makes a shooter good. Like Aliens trying to make a cake, they are able to make something that looks like a cake but they missed the point that a cake needs to taste delicious.
The controls in the game are just plain bad, they are sluggish and unintuitive. The closest thing to conventional shooter controls is B-1 which is 5 of 8 in the list. Obviously they weren't quite sure who would like what so they had tons of control and gameplay options, thinking hopefully someone would find something that works for them. Even if you can get past the weird control scheme, which I'm sure you can. You can't get past how sluggish they feel, the responsiveness of your input is a slave to long animations, and realistic things like getting staggered and knocked down (not fun). On top of all this the weapons I had access to didn't feel good, they were all gimped in some way, super slow reload, no sustained fire, slow movement, low ammo.
The game tries so hard to force you to play multiplayer that you actually have to fish around in the menus to setup an offline game, even then forces you to roll with three AI team mates with fake gamertag names like 'Death Summer', gross. So after hearing all the bad things about this game I scoured the menus before starting to make things as easy as possible, all I wanted to see were the big mechs and big bosses. I ended up playing offline, easy, with friendly fire off. So here are some crazy conventions they force at you. You can only save at the end of full chapters (which can be three of four missions long), your AI team mates can run ahead at start triggering events without you. They have tons of killstreak like in game popups that keep showing up, but they don't seem to do ANYTHING, no challenges, no achievements tied to them, the game just wants to let you know all the time that you have killed 10 guys in a row with a shotgun.
The story in the first Lost Planet wasn't great, but it is exciting and crazy. Dead father you are trying to avenge, waking up with amnesia, falling in with a band of space pirates, giant glowing buglike aliens, and big smack talking battles in mechs. This games 'story' is nothing more than four faceless, nameless, dicks going in to wipe out other faceless, nameless dudes in short 5-10 minute 'mission' burst. If you are lucky you might find a few buglike aliens to shoot along the way, but more often than not you don't see one. To add insult to this horrible setup after you fight with your guys for an episode, you then switch to a different group of faceless, nameless guys that look kind of different. The best part, when you switch to the new group you are level 1 again, so after all this time leveling up my guy and not really getting anything useful from it, now I can start all over again... unbelievable. It is shocking that they advertised this game with hidden unlockable characters Wesker from Resident Evil, and Marcus and Dom from Gears of War. It just highlights even more how generic and forgettable their own characters are in this game.
The game is so at odds with itself, in the first game the 'hook' was literally a hookshot that let you do some cool vertical climbing and combat, getting in giant mech suits with huge guns, and killing lots of bug like aliens with glowing weakpoint bits, then watching them freeze and shatter as they died. They missed almost all of this in Lost Planet 2. Going through the first 2 episodes, about 4 hours of time and 20 missions I rarely found an occasion to platform or climb with my hookshot, I rarely found a mech to use and when I did I didn't have it for very long. I rarely fought the buglike aliens, except for the rare giant boss battles which on easy difficulty never felt very fun. It just felt like going through the motions, running from point A to point B and killing some faceless human whatevers along the way. No soul, nothing to set it apart from the vast sea of far more competent shooters out there.
After the first night of playing this some weird feeling came over me, I thought "I can finish this game on easy, I know I can, I should do it just to say I did". I felt like survivor-man or some other weird reality TV show where people are forced to do horrible things for others amusement. After two more nights things were starting to wear on me, I started to look for a lifeline, something to keep me going. I checked out the achievements for the game, at that point I had 3 story based ones for a total of 30 points. One more mind boggling design choice showed up, almost all of the 50 achievements in the game are hidden. So no clues or hints on things I should try to concentrate on in this game that I am forcing myself to finish anyway. My last hope? Gamefaqs, I though "I'll just see how long this game is and maybe get some tips for achievements and secrets that I'm probably missing". Well as of almost a month and a half after this game came out, no one has made any sort of faq or guide for this game, that is shocking and telling.
I could write much more, but I'm out, I'm done, there are many better games on my shelf that are fighting for my time, Alan Wake especially is very mad I've wasted my time on this game while he waits.
Capcom, get your crap together please, you shouldn't have release this game.
