Lost Planet on Xbox Live - Pure Addiction
by matt @ 6:43 pm. Blogged under Gaming (Xbox 360)
If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I’m quite a hard person to please. When it comes to the Xbox 360 I’m even fussier; last month I slated award winning Gears of War (and still stand by that decision). This month, rather pleasingly, I became completely addicted to the demo version of Lost Planet on Xbox Live. I loved it so much that within a week I phoned my wife to have her buy the full game for me whilst she was out shopping. That decision has not disappointed; hours of immersion on Lost Planet pass by in the blink of an eye. Get up early enough on a Saturday and fight against a large population of Japanese players, not something I’ve come across before - but finally handy for the year I spent learning Japanese at secondary school - “Hajime mashte”.
Initially the first thing that stands out on Lost Planet is a negative aspect, but let’s get that out of the way… you can’t run very fast. It would have been nice to have a run button, perhaps something which enabled short bursts of sprinting power. However, it is compensated by the fact that you carry a grappling hook which can be fired at a fair distance to lock onto walls and cliffs. Indeed if you could do both, it might be impossible to be killed at all by the opposition.
Undeterred by the slowness of my character’s running speed, I played on and found the other parts of Lost Planet most enjoyable, namely:
- The layout of environments and the destructiveness of elements contained within them (towers and walls can be blown to pieces). Plenty of hiding places - reminiscent of ‘Duke Nukem‘.
- Various types of weapon - Bazookas for blasting, Shotguns, Lasers, Rifles and Energy Guns for sniping.
- A range of different grenades from inflatable figures to spinning discs.
- Vital Suits (VS) - huge armoured walking / leaping machines that can be entered and used to blow away the enemy and cause maximum carnage.
- Weather - yes snow storms move across one or two levels so you can’t be a sniping camper for the duration of a match.
In the full game, as well as team and death match style gameplay options, there’s ‘Fugitive’ (whereby you play against hunters trying to stop you from raising dataposts), and ‘Post Grab’ which is a team vs. team spawn point capturing exercise (Star Wars Battlefront fans will appreciate that a lot).
There are one or two minor bugs to be fixed; I did once fall through a perfectly good bit of snow outside a building and landed 200ft inside a cavern which just wasn’t there (I died). I’ve also discovered that on snipe mode you can stand facing a wall and zoom to maximum scope, letting you see through the wall, no firing through it, but much easier to spot potential victims without getting sniped whilst doing so.
On the whole I’m now a Lost Planet addict, it’s certainly nothing cutting edge, but great fun and well thought out. I’d liken it to Halo meets Star Wars Battlefront on Planet Hoth, which in itself explains why I’m such a big fan.
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February 23rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Oh, you get Halo 3 multiplayer with the early Crackdown realease, btw…Might tempt you…
February 27th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Can we have a review on the Nintendo Wii please! had a go at the weekend playing call of duty and was addicted! Have heard people saying that it was very difficult to get along with but it’s all good in my opinion! and a good workout.
February 27th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Personally I found it awkward and a bit frustrating compared to the precision you get with a standard controller (a lot of these games aren’t designed with the Wii controller in mind and they are kind of “bodged” to fit) the home grown Wii games are where that console shines…
Plus the graphics on the Wii are absolutely terrible in comparison, it’s like going back in time 3 years…
Still, it’s cheap!
February 27th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Have to disagree with you there Fink. There is a part on Call to duty where you are suddenly attacked by a soldier and in order to get past him you have to wrestle with him quite literally! with two controllers in either hand(bit like that part in saving private ryan) took me 6 attempts to get past him! very scarey do you get this kind of thing with the 360?? nah. As for precision, would you get exact precision if you were in combat and fighting for survival? with fear and adrenalin kicking in I don’t think so. I would also have to disagree with you about the graphics, ok so some of the Wii sports games are a little poor particularly the images of people but they are meant to be just fun! especially as you can design the characters to resemble yourself and then store it into the controller to transfer your Wii personality onto your friends Wii’s, After using a wii all weekend and forfeiting a karaoke so I would get sole use of it for the evening I am definitely going to get one of these! only disadvantage is having to get up off the sofa and do a bit of a workout
February 27th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
In CTD on the Xbox/Xbox 360 you do wrestle, just with the analogue sticks…
Precision, I take your point, but I’m old school, mouse and keyboard is where I grew up, so even the standard xbox controller is seriously clunky to me, Wii just took it a bit too far towards “wobbly” from my perspective, dare say it improves with practice…
Graphics on the Wii are certainly serviceable, but not much better than the gamecube imho, certainly nowhere near the frame rate and resolution (and therefore native clarify) of the 360/PS3 (that was all I meant) it’s not the Wii is *bad*, just not on the same level as the expensive machines…(but having a very large TV does make resolution problems stand out rather)…
And getting up off the sofa and waving things around (for a bargain price) is exactly why the Wii is outselling the 360 and the PS3 by a massive margin! It’s already looking like the Wii has won the “next gen” console war, simply by not trying to compete on a “better than you” hardware spec level (and coming up with a novel control system that has got a lot of previously “non gamers” off their arses…
Still not sure it *really* suits “Run and Gun” games though…I’ll take some convincing…