Everything about this nice-looking, mostly online shooter is cumbersome and unpleasant to deal with in one way or another.
The action has gotten hotter on E.D.N. III. On paper, Lost Planet 2 looks like it ought to be a good (or great) online-oriented third-person shooter. It's got a lengthy campaign full of absolutely enormous monsters, and a lot more varied environments than the arctic-only levels of the first game. There's a full multiplayer component with a variety of maps and modes, and a whole array of giant powered robot armor (called vital suits) to pilot. And it's all tied together by a global character-progression system that lets you unlock a bunch of new weapons and abilities, not to mention some silly new cosmetic doohickeys, for your warrior. By the numbers, that seems to me like a recipe for an all-around entertaining (if not entirely original) action game.
But the unfortunate reality is that every piece of Lost Planet 2 is poorly designed or clumsily bolted onto all the other parts, or both, resulting in an inconsistent, frustrating, and sometimes baffling experience whether you're playing the action or just trying to sift through the byzantine menus. You frequently get the sense that nobody at Capcom ever stepped back and really took a hard look at how all the game's systems fit together, to see if all the mechanics made sense and whether the action was fun to play or not. It's just a roughly made game from top to bottom.
The outlandish akrid bosses are the most memorable thing about the campaign. Lost Planet 2 styles itself as such an online-centric experience that when you go to start a campaign game, you're actually creating a four-player online lobby. You can set your lobby to offline, but even then you're still advised to play with AI-controlled characters that actualy have fake usernames hovering over their heads to simulate the online co-op experience. The game practically requires real players to be any fun, though, since the AI teammates only pull their weight some of the time. Other times, they'll just hang around and not really pitch in while you do all the heavy lifting yourself. At times (mainly when fighting the bosses), the game is so punishing that the difficulty feels like it was balanced toward four real players capable of thinking tactically and not mindless automatons who run around aimlessly, so you'd be forgiven for playing the campaign on the easy setting if you're forced to play it alone. That's certainly the most pleasant way to play it by yourself.
Despite the focus on cooperating with other human beings, Lost Planet 2 makes it maddeningly hard to actually get a co-op game going. You can't bring in players who haven't already reached the point in the campaign that you're trying to play, and likewise you can only join games that are running levels you've already seen yourself. Joining a game in progress doesn't drop you right into the action but merely leaves you staring at a static menu screen showing the players (both real and fake) who are currently playing. Presumably, you'd eventually get to join in the action at a checkpoint, but 15 minutes was the longest I could stand to look at that unmoving screen before quitting out, so I never got to test that particular feature. Other shooters have certainly gotten the chapter-selectable, drop-in style of campaign co-op right--Halo and Gears of War come to mind--so it's hard to understand why this one makes it so tough to just get in and start shooting with friends.
The action is too slow and clunky to keep up with other modern shooters. Whether you're playing with friends or bots, the unbalanced difficulty is made a lot worse by the distance between checkpoints. If you run out of what passes for extra lives while fighting one of those bosses--and when's the last time you remember a shooter that had a finite number of lives?--you could find yourself losing 30 or 45 minutes of progress as you zoom way back to the last time the game meted out a checkpoint. As archaic as that is, it's not the worst of the game's messy campaign infrastructure. At one point in the back end of the campaign, I was playing an online-enabled game, on the off chance that someone might randomly jump into the action. My Internet connection dropped out for a second and disconnected me from Xbox Live, at which point the game abruptly cut to a black screen with a "Disconnected from host" error message. In a single-player game. That set me back at least 30 minutes of progress and incidentally made me never, ever want to play Lost Planet 2's campaign again.
It doesn't help that the campaign isn't really much to write home about, anyway. It takes place some time after the first game, when the previously snow-covered planet E.D.N. III has undergone a rapid warming due to ongoing civil war, developing deserts, jungles, and vast oceans. With the focus squarely on co-op, the missions start to feel generic, almost like a primer for multiplayer, after a while. And since the story shifts from one warring faction to the next between every episode--with most characters wearing face masks and having no obvious names--it's hard to keep up with or really care about the events of the plot. The best part of the campaign is the sheer, ludicrous size of the "category G" akrid monsters, which should be familiar to veterans of the first game. You'll spend most of the campaign in this sequel shooting at human enemies, but every once in a while a boss monster will trot out that's so big it puts almost any other video game boss to shame. Too bad these guys aren't as fun to fight as they are impressive to see; you generally spend 10 to 20 minutes shooting them in glowing weak points, and soaking up a ton of damage from unavoidable attacks, until they finally die (or you do, and revert to the last checkpoint). Having been weaned on Contra in my youth, I'm no stranger to shooting things in glowing weak points until they die, but this is just excessive.
Unlocking new gear is more complicated than it needs to be. The game's competitive multiplayer is a little more sensibly designed. It's got your standard run of deathmatch and territory-control modes, as well as variants on kill-the-VIP and capture-the-flag (or in this case, the akrid egg). The vital suits are available in the campaign but they play a bigger role here, since there are all manner of huge suits that can accommodate not just a pilot but several hangers-on who can fire from the sides. Heck, sometimes they aren't suits at all but more conventional vehicles like helicopters. There are a lot of ways to mix the vital suits and other gameplay-variable elements into the different modes that can change up the action. The typical ranked and custom multiplayer game types are available, as well as a faction match that lets you pick one of the five sides and compete over a lengthy period of time for global supremacy.
It's too bad that the action in the multiplayer shares the same basic clunkiness of the campaign, though. The core controls just feel awkward, slow, and unresponsive compared to the better shooters on the market. You have to stop moving to change weapons. It takes what feels like forever to get up after getting knocked down. The sprint move feels slower than the regular movement speed. The grappling hook only works on a few surfaces, you can't use it in the air, and it takes way too long to get you on top of a ledge. The list goes on. The aiming and shooting are serviceable, but the movement isn't nearly as streamlined and accessible as it should be to make Lost Planet 2 feel as playable as other contemporary shooters. It's almost as if the game prioritizes long, flashy animations over basic playability. Both modes lean too heavily on meters and numbers, too. The thermal energy from the first game has been modified so that here you can use it to heal yourself and repair vital suits, but it still feels unnecessary. There's also a "battle gauge" that determines how many times you can respawn in the campaign (yes, you respawn, with a timer, even in single-player). The last thing I want to do in a heated firefight is micromanage multiple gauges and statistics that dictate my survivability, but there you have it.
Seriously, c'mon. The campaign and multiplayer modes are unified by a de rigueur character level-up system that parcels out new weapon types and plenty of for-looks-only armor and clothing options to customize your online fighter. But this system is perhaps the most baffling of all, since the game does a poor job of communicating information to you about virtually everything that's going on, from the amount of experience you gain through both the campaign and multiplayer matches to how your online characters from each faction level up and how or when you unlock new equipment. You mainly cash in experience points on an in-game slot machine to randomly unlock new weapons and abilities, but I repeatedly wasted my points receiving new online titles and emote animations more frequently than I got real new gear to use. Talk about frustrating. It's telling that I actually had to go to the game manual to clarify some of these obscure, unintuitive systems. Ask yourself how long it's been since you had to rely on a manual to enjoy a game like this.
It feels like Capcom barely missed making a great game with Lost Planet 2. It looks fantastic; the multiplatform MT Framework engine that powered Resident Evil 5 last year is still pumping out truly great visuals, the enormous akrid bosses being the most prominent example. With faster and more responsive controls, a better multiplayer framework, and a smoother character progression system, this one could have been surprisingly competitive in its category. But with so many problems holding it back, Lost Planet 2 is hard to recommend against all the other great shooters already out there.
I'm never quite sure whether to trust Brad on his campaign experiences considering his general lack of ability in shooting stuff. However I played a chunk of the Multiplayer and Co-Op demos and these criticisms seem pretty accurate.
" It's almost as if the game prioritizes long, flashy animations over basic playability"
Yeah, this was especially annoying. I'm just wondering how this would have reviewed if you had 3 friends prepared to play through the entire campaign with you, and a stable internet connection.
As for the people complaining about the review itself: Brad has spent the last several months playing Deadly Premonition. When it comes to bad games, he knows what he is talking about ;)
I also dislike the Lost Planet games. It's funny how people try to justify shortcomings of the game by saying "it's just a Japanese thing". Just because Japanese gamers don't play games with the same complex camera controls of western gamers that shouldn't be an excuse for poor design.
" the game is designed arround beeing played in coop, so not taking the time and trying to actually get a coop game going (cmon, you tried for 15 minutes?), and then rate the game based on single player experience (which is awful, granted) is kinda... b(r)ad... "
i agree. this review is too subjective for my taste, pretty much comes to the point in regards of the 'lack' of classic single player though. i loved the original lost planet and will definitely pick up the second, at least we now know the little discomforts that stand in the way. avoiding them is simple: play it the way you're supposed to (with your friends, not dumb AI) and you're good to go.
I "sorta" enjoyed the first Lost Planet so I was hoping this one would turn out better. Playing the demo and reading this,and other, reviews made me lose that hope though. It's a shame, it could havre been so much better.
" the game is designed arround beeing played in coop, so not taking the time and trying to actually get a coop game going (cmon, you tried for 15 minutes?), and then rate the game based on single player experience (which is awful, granted) is kinda... b(r)ad... "
It really shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes to get a match going. Longer than 2 minutes is quite terrible.
Also, I am glad that I am not crazy.. I really wanted to love the multiplayer when I got the demo, on paper it sounded amazing, but actually playing it... ughhh CLUNKY. And this coming from a hardcore Monster Hunter fan.
My biggest gripe with the game is that the grenades are insanely overpowered with massive instant death range, and the regular guns are quite weak. Also the grappling hook was junky and unreliable, plus not being able to use it in the air made it a deathtrap. The knockdown animation also lasted forever, which was shitty =/
Glancing at the review and listening to Brad on the 'cast is giving me a sinking feeling about this game. It doesn't help that I have it sitting at home either. I'm not a Lost Planet campaign apologist but I really enjoyed the first one despite some of the flaws near the end. Hearing that they've done away with that is a def. bummer.
I wholeheartedly agree. I loved the hell out of the original Lost Planet, but Lost Planet 2 just feels like a clunky, wishy-washy game that doesn't know what it wants to be and ends up being bad all around.
Hmm, well, it's a good review and I can understand where Brad comes from but playing this game in co-op, it's really great. There is alot of interaction and teamwork which makes the game alot of fun. And you know, just like in Resident Evil 5, I like the clunkyness. It makes the game feel different, heavy and sort of.. Well, just different, but good in a way. I cant really explain it but I think that the clunkyness adds to gameplay experience. I must be stupid but I really really like Lost Planet 2. It doesn't feel and look like other shooters, it's not fast like Quake and it's not slow like Rainbow Six, it's something else. It feels like some lost arcade game which just resurfaced and it just really dig it.
My recommandation is, yes, the game has it's faults and if you don't like clunky controls and lots of stun animations, you will get irritated by this game, but if you have some friends to play with (co-op is a must), liked Lost Planet 1, then go for it! This is more of the same deal, more vital suits, many more weapons and customization options. It's a bag full of goodness for us who like Lost Planet.
I don't think you can fault Brad for playing this game single player and not co-op. Yes, the game is clearly aimed at multiplayer, but that does not excuse certain problems. Left 4 Dead is a clearly co-op centered game, however the difference between this and that is that you can play by yourself and still have a lot of fun because the game is balanced properly and your team mates have competent AI.
Even if you do have 3 friends with you that still leaves a lot of other annoyances that make up the very mechanics of the game. Like how it is possible for the enemies to end up camping a respawn point and instantly hitting you into a knockdown loop until you are dead. Couple that with the fact that everyone shares respawns and you can get some real bullshit moments.
And waiting 15 minutes to join a game is horrible. You can not defend that waiting time and be expected to be taken seriously. I play WoW and when I queue for a dungeon it sometimes takes up to 20 minutes. But, again, the difference between that game and this one is that I can still continue to play and do other things in game while waiting. Here, you are just looking at the scrrn when nothing is happening.
" I play WoW and when I queue for a dungeon it sometimes takes up to 20 minutes. But, again, the difference between that game and this one is that I can still continue to play and do other things in game while waiting. Here, you are just looking at the scrrn when nothing is happening. "
Well, the thing is that in WoW, you are searching for a party too hook up with. In Lost Planet 2, Brad had joined a game, but you cant join a game session on the fly (much like RE5) so you have to wait until they hit the next checkpoint in the game. Which took more than 15 minutes.
Not defending the game, just clearing it up a bit. :P
I must say though, that the AI is pretty strange. Sometimes it's super cooperative and comes to your aid with T-eng when it's low and battle enemies with deadly precision... Other times.. They just walk into a wall and wander around for a minute. And I noticed in the review; you do not spend EXP on the slot machine, but the credits you earn. the EXP is always added to your faction that you play as in SP, or have chosen to play as in MP. So you don't de-level by using the slot machine but yeah.. Hard to get good stuff outta that thing!
The review says a lot about the game itself, but I'm not crazy about repeatedly reading "compared to other shooters", you're reviewing Lost Planet 2 for fucks' sake, not Gears Of War 3. The reviewer pointed out some of the game's weaknesses, but if every other paragraph contains "compared to other shooters", I'm not sure what to think of it. Those other shooters are close to being milestones of multiplayer game design. Rarely, if ever, will a game surpass or even approach their quality. I'm not trying to be too harsh, of course, this review wasn't saying "Hey, this ain't Gears of War so fuck it" but it was pretty fucking close to that.
Lost Planet 2 should be treated like Borderlands or Left 4 Dead. Yes it can be played alone with an easy difficulty, but why would you do that? those games are terrible on your own, I agree with the review in that way.
But it's meant to be played 4 player, with 3 mates on voice chat and a tougher difficutly. Thats when the game becomes hella fun. Theres parts in the game that require such team work its crazy.
On the first chapter theres a huge bridge with several VS on the other side, the only way across was for me to crawl acrosswith a huge shield, the others followed me behind the shield picking off pirates until we were close enough to grenade the VS.
I feel the review would of been alot more positive had the whole GB crew played through the game together, but I can understand why that's not possible :(
Guys, don't fault the review. 15 minutes waiting for a game to play is horrible. The idea that you also need to reach that part of the campaign makes it worse. Imagine if nobody ever played it single player, then at the onset of the game it might never have games beyond the first chapter.
This reminds me of Street Fighter 4 "matchmaking" (or un-matchmaking) where searching for games gives you 3 bad ones that never work and repeating the search still gives you the same 3 bad ones. And then, there were no lobbies. And then, people can still quit matches. And after every menu selection or match or game, it would dump you to the main menu. (Forcing you to hit 5 more buttons to get back to searching for games.) Designs like these are archaic at best.
Almost every review that I've read for this has little to no info about how the game plays with four human players. That's the way the game was designed, and that's what Capcom wanted when they made the game. Should Secret Armory of General Knoxx be faulted because Crawmerax requires four players to get a solid and serious attempt at it?
Nonetheless, I understand where Brad was coming from in his review. I haven't played the game yet, although I plan to. Once I do, I'm more than positive I'll share my own thoughts with the community in my weekly blog.
Through it's whole development I kept getting vibes of "No, yeah we are gunna make that better, but look at this big monster!" or "A bunch of customization online, and same with the campaign". Always saying things positively, never saying what exactly they need to work on BECAUSE maybe *they didn't know how to make the first lost planet better. =\ Ah well.
" Almost every review that I've read for this has little to no info about how the game plays with four human players. That's the way the game was designed, and that's what Capcom wanted when they made the game.
I'm guessing it's a product of the review process. The press is getting these games early so there's only other reviewers around to play with, and as stated in Brad's review, the co-op lobby system is buggy and arbitrarily requires that your progress is synced up, both barriers to trying out co-op. It seems like it would be a giant headache to even get a co-op game of 4 players started, as you'd need to pre-coordinate between all players when you'll start playing and which chapter, instead of having something as simple as drop-in / drop-out.
If the game was meant to be played co-op, why wouldn't Capcom put more effort into making sure it works properly?
Sounds exactly like the problems I had with the first game. I could not finish it. I rented it and played for one hour. Everything felt so clunky and imprecise.
@Brad: "It seems like Capcom barely missed making a great game in Lost Planet 2." You spend two screens worth of text crushing it. It seems like Capcom missed by quite a wide margin.
Guessing that this fits in the realm of clunky controls like RE5. Glad that if I want tons of action with huge giant bosses, I'll just stick to Serious Sam HD or Painkiller.
Yeah kinda sounds like the first game. Awesome fun to fight giant bosses and kinda cool design, but the gameplay isn't really that fun. More games need giant bosses like Lost Planet and Gears of War 2 though.
I played the demo and was one of the most boring experiences of this game generation. Kind of glad to see the demo was representative and I missed this "opportunity"
Ah, I can understand Brad’s frustrations and see why he rated the game low, based on the reasons he listed.
My brother and his friend played 6-7 hours straight of co-op yesterday on hard with no AI-partners. They feel this is a game of the year candidate. But they enjoy hard games, and the co-op makes restarting section still fun.
The only 3rd-person shooter I can think of recently was Uncharted 2. Is this what Brad is comparing LP2 to? I don’t know if Alan Wake counts.
I only played the first one so far, and find the controls were fine once I increased the sensitivity. The aiming becomes much faster. I do not mind the long getting-up animation. That’s how the game is, and I guess I accepted that.
" Knowing Brad's incredible skills with videogames and hearing that a big part of his issues involve staying alive, I have my doubts about this review. "
This review pretty much nails it for me. After playing both demos, I was super worried. Then, watching people play it on JTV, I just know this one isn't for me. (Kinda wish it was, though. It looks super fun. It's just not fun to play, for me.)
yeah... this looks rough. Is Capcom that out of touch with the rest of the shooter world? Or did they just take too long to come out... like 2-3 years too long?
" So many old Japanese game design choices that make the game terrible, wish they would either go full boar with Japanese game traditionalism or leave it all behind, not this half baked crap trying to cater poorly to western gamers while retaining all the terrible stuff from their own gaming culture. Dead Rising has similar issues :( "
A perfect summary- especially the comparison with Dead Rising. They could have been great games but the Japanese just can't grasp the basics of Western third person game design.
" Lost Planet 2 should be treated like Borderlands or Left 4 Dead. Yes it can be played alone with an easy difficulty, but why would you do that? those games are terrible on your own, "
What? I played the majority of Borderlands by myself, its an awesome single player game.
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