I’m posting this late, but with good reason — this demo is FUN. I decided to download something I’ve heard a lot of good things about and ended up with the Lost Planet demo. I should have quit an hour ago but I was having too much fun to stop.
Lost Planet, by Capcom, looks very promising. Capcom is on FIRE right now! Dead Rising was fantastic and now Lost Planet is looking even better.
I actually should have said Capcom is cool. I mean real cool. Freezing, even. Lost Planet, set in the 22nd century, is one cold place. Everything is buried in snow and from what I gather, you have to maintain a certain amount of thermal energy to keep yourself alive. It seems you have a life meter and an energy meter. Defeated foes drop glowing orange energy that you collect. This energy can be converted into life as well as maintain heat. This is what I gathered from the demo — I haven’t read any previews or the like. Just going strictly off what I experienced.
The demo consists of two missions — destroy the hive of the Akrids (the bad bug-like creatures that have infested the planet) in one and take out the Pirate’s stronghold (there’s good and bad Pirates. You can guess which kind you’ll be) in the other. Both end with boss fights that are challenging but not cheap.
The game controls well, with little details I really like. While fighting a larger monster, the closer I was to it as his claw came crashing into the ground, the more it made me stumble. I couldn’t shoot or even manuever myself while I was stumbling. It’s attention to detail like this that always gets me. The animation of your character (the game is played 3rd-person) is excellent. The guys that did the animations for Just Cause could learn a thing or two here. Trudging through the snow feels just like that — plodding and tiring. The weapons in the demo are standard shooter fare – a machine gun, a shotgun, rocket launcher, the works. You can also mount armored mechs. While I’m not a huge Mech fan, this was fun and again, easily controlled.
Maybe I was a little too harsh earlier dismissing the 360’s future line-up. Lost Planet looks like it will be a great game, one that I’ll definitely be adding to my wish list!
I think “Just Cause” is possibly the worse name for a video game. It tells you nothing. The game involves you, a super secret government agent, fomenting revolution and mayhem on a South American Island. It’s a Mercenaries-style game, a Cuban sandbox, if you will. What I can’t figure out is what the name refers to. Am I a loyal government agent, helping the revolucionarios and their “Just Cause” or am I a free-wheling mercenary who enjoys running over helpless old señoras on the sidewalk, “Just ‘Cause” I can. Because honestly, I can’t really find the motivation to do the former when the latter is so much funnier. There may be a revolution going on, but I’ve got civilians to harass.