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| Our hero, Wayne! |
Fight larger than life insects such as this! |
Well for a start the PS3 version looks just as good as its predecessor. The graphics are crystal clear with smooth lines, and the sun glistening off the snow is really quite something. Huge akrids infest the screen and although they’ll rip your larynx out given half the chance you can help but stand back a bit and admire the attention to detail that Capcom have lavished upon them. However, a few seconds pass and you of course blow them all to smithereens but they were pretty while they lasted.
One thing that annoyed me from the off however was that after I sat and watched through a good five minutes of narrative intro, I found that the look wasn’t inverted. After playing countless first and third person shooters I simply cannot handle the ‘normal’ setting. So, as I do with countless other titles, I hit Start, fully expecting to change the control setting in Option in the pause menu. To my dismay such an option is not available meaning that you have to quit out of the game completely, go to the options menu and then restart the game. So if you’re like me in this respect, be warned.
Also slowdown was apparent in places that neither I nor Miss Haze seemed to notice in the 360 version. In a firefight with some surly Space Pirates and a huge spindly-legged akrid with a huge glowing rear-section full of juicy T-Eng (I’ll get to that in a minute), I noticed that the engine started to creak as I was bombarded by rocket launcher fire and huge stabs from the akrid’s two giant claws. Nothing to really worth hurling the controller about but it was worth mentioning for those of you who like a good 360/PS3 comparison argument!
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| The explosions are breathtaking at times. |
The cut-scenes are beautifully rendered. |
Anyway, I’ve got ahead of myself slightly. If Lost Planet has completely passed you by then I’ll fill you in on some details. Your hero with the most un-heroic name imaginable, Wayne, witnessed the death of his father after a vicious attack from a ‘Green Eye” akrid – think oversized insect monsters baying for blood. Knocked unconscious in the furor, Wayne wakes up to find himself on a cold and barren, yet akrid-infested, planet E.D.N III.
Although evil in every possible way, the akrid do have their uses. They carry thermal energy known as T-Eng. T-Eng is vital to your progress throughout the levels. Wayne is equipped with a T-Eng harvester see, and he needs all this thermal juice to last out there in those anti-social arctic conditions. So your T-Eng meter slowly counts down as you make your way from set piece to set piece only to be replenished again after you’ve killed some monsters. T-Eng is also acts as a shield so you don’t die every five seconds so it comes in pretty handy. That’s all you really need to know as the game’s plot is rather hammy and the real emphasis is on huge explosions and monsters and mechs, which is no bad thing in itself.
The Playstation 3 version of Lost Plant contains all the previous downloadable content from the 360 version and includes the all the playable characters from the PC version. So here you get everything bundled in to a more than spacious Blu-Ray disk. Like its console counterpart, it also supports 16 player online multiplayer with all the modes and hilarity that we’ve come to expect.
However, for what is essentially a year old game I can’t help but feel that Capcom could have done more with the game to raise its appeal to newcomers. Another level perhaps? Or maybe even something less grandiose like actually adding footprints in the snow? A small point I know but it is little touches like those that add that certain something to a game that really help with immersion. Also, although it does contain all the extras, charging full price for last year’s thrills does irk somewhat.
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| It’s real David vs. Goliath stuff! |
How do you like my shotgun? |
LOST PLANET: EXTREME CONDITION VERDICT
Lost Planet is still a very good game, maybe not as great as it was back then but still a very enjoyable experience. With only a month to go until GTA IV and if you’ve got some money burning in your pocket then you’ll get some fun out of this for sure.
TOP GAME MOMENT
Running through the snow with explosion either side and gunning down akrid with aplomb.
