Lost Planet 2 demo impressions
And that is one of the smaller creatures!
As some of you might know, a co-op demo of Lost Planet 2 was released via Xbox Live yesterday and obviously we had to play to it. GodisaGeek team members Aaron and Asim were on hand to get partied up on Xbox Live and bring us their impressions of the demo. Have a look at what they thought and if you want to hurl general abuse at them, please do so via the comments. 🙂
[PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE IMPRESSIONS]
Aaron’s Impressions
From the moment we stepped into the demo it was apparent that we were playing Lost Planet. Anybody who played through the first short/clichéd but still very fun release will feel right at home here, at least on the control front. You can still feel the Japanese production values through and through right down to the Japanese named bots that inhabit your game if your emo enough to not have any actual real world friends. Alas just in case you are that very person the co-op demo does allow “randoms” to join you on your quest. Everything about this demo feels much grander than the original Lost Planet the obvious thing to point out when talking about this is the humongous enemy that inhabits the demo arena. Now it wouldn’t be an understatement to say this thing takes a pounding. I believe it took us two tries to kill the thing. Our first try was with a couple of random Xbox Live folk and as you can imagine that was a resounding failure. The thing about this game is that in addition to your own T-Eng (thermal energy), your continues are based on a team bar which you naturally have to share. So having people you don’t know eat away at your reserves with the usual Xbox Live antics is not the best experience. Second attempt was much more entertaining as we took a couple of bots with us into the fray. Predictably the A.I isn’t all that great and probably won’t last very long but do a decent enough job. The plus side of this is they won’t endlessly respawn eating away at your “continues”. Fighting the actual beast is immense amounts of fun when things start to become more co-ordinated. I can remember me and Asim trying to strategise to allow me to enter the belly of the beast at one point, which was definitely a weird experience once I got there. You essentially get swept away by the digestive system of the beast and on your way try to do as much damage as possible (Yes, you do come out the other end). Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that this is the best way to inflict large amounts of damage which kind of put a downer on my trip.
A lot of the weapons make a welcome return. Rocket launchers, gattling gun, shotguns, those anime inspired VS mechs and an assortment of grenades. All of them feel pretty identical to their previous incarnations. Of course there are a few new weapons, most notable the plasma grenades that have quite a large radius of explosion. The graphical effect that accompanies it was quite a surprise, for a second I thought I was summoning an Aeon from the Final Fantasy series. The mechs were a pleasure to drive, sacrificing mobility for sheer firepower but allowing you to hover across the level for a short period of time. Sadly from what I could see the larger dual driver mechs were not present in the demo, which was somewhat of a letdown as it would have been nice to have seen how these handled.
It is graphically what you would expect of a Capcom game and most definitely an improvement over the previous incarnation. Although it was a small area the whole area is covered in foliage which moves about as you trod your way through it to your target. While not as impressive as the previous footage we have seen of the jungle environment it still manages to look quite nice. Although I do wish they had given us a larger area to explore as this one is pretty small.
Overall I was impressed with the demo as it managed to entertain me whilst most demos generally don’t. I’m looking forward to ploughing through the co-op experience with the GodisaGeek team as I’m certain this will be the best way to experience the title much like one of Capcom’s other titles Resident Evil 5.
Asim’s Impressions
First thing I have to say is that the menu set-up for the co-op is great, if you are in a party all you have to do is press the LB button and “voila” an invite is sent to anyone in the partied up with you. Anyway, let’s move onto the game shall we?!
For our first run we decided to (well it was more a mistake on my part) team up with two random people and go for some four player co-op action. I can honestly say that didn’t go very well at all! First off as soon as we got into the game one of the guys on our team decided to be a complete idiot and started to shoot all of us. The rest of us promptly ignored the idiocy and moved on; ignorance is truly bliss in some cases. I moved forward a little and first thing I hear from Aaron is “it doesn’t look as good as the videos does it?” I agree with him until I move forward a little bit more and this huge ugly creature emerges from the water below. The term “disgustingly beautiful” comes to mind! From then on pure chaos ensues as both our team-mates go off to do their own thing and us GodisaGeek lads are trying to familiarise ourselves with the controls/game mechanics. Although while I was getting used to the Lost Planet way again I managed to get inside the huge creatures mouth which was rather cool! I was dragged through the body in what can only be described as a river of sludge while shooting glowing pulsating bubbles and many spiders. Just as I was beginning to enjoy myself I was excreted out through the creatures’ backside, how lovely eh?! We eventually figured out what we are supposed to be doing but unfortunately we were too late as our other two “team-mates” had died so many times resulting in a game over screen. Boo!
We head back into the menus and we both agree to play two player co-op so we can actually complete the objective! This time round we get into the game and decide to read the “help” signs planted at the start. Surprise surprise, they do the job and we are familiar with the controls plus we now know what we are supposed to be doing. The game mechanics are pretty much exactly the same as the original Lost Planet but obviously a few new additions have been included to compliment the co-op play. You can now throw thermal energy at team-mates if they need it and there is also an injection gun which can be used to give your chums a temporary energy boost. It is clear Capcom have given the co-op play more than just a passing thought and built some game mechanics around it. Back to the giant creature though I think, you basically have to kill him to complete the demo but that is no easy task. There are loads of weapons (the mech suits also make a return) lying around the place to help you take it out but it soaks up a lot of hits so it can take a while until you do some real damage. It also has many attacks which can hurt you a lot, they range from stomping on you (Aaron will tell you all about that) and some weird electricity burst which is very hard to dodge (it does major damage too). To kill this beast you have to target the glowing orange spots on its legs (it has six of them) and when you do enough damage to one it will just burst open. As mentioned before you can also go inside the giant creature (very cool!) however I don’t think that does much damage to the creature at all. Now I won’t bore you with our detailed attempts of trying to take out the giant creature but I will say it did take us another session to finally complete the demo mission! Yay, for us! 🙂
So what did I think of this demo? Well it’s very good; I can see it being a lot of chaotic fun if you play it with a couple of mates. Lush visuals, giant creatures, variety of explosive weapons and online co-op, I think those are the ingredients for a good fun game. I will openly admit I am one of those people who didn’t finish the single player campaign in the original Lost Planet. I think I just lost the motivation to play it after a while; I was actually more interested in the multiplayer. The design was very old school, very Japanese and I think that gamers expect a bit more than that these days. The inclusion of co-op is something that was needed and thankfully Capcom realised that. The single player campaign will be decent enough but co-op will be the “proper” way to play this game. In closing, I think if the rest of the game can match up to quality of the demo or even surpass it then Lost Planet 2 will be a quality game.
UPDATE: After a few more plays of the demo and tips from Paxton (see comments) we can add that there is a large mech available in the demo (hidden away at the back) and the beast can be taken down from inside by attacking a weak point which is nicely hidden away. It is rather hard to take accurate shots at this weak point though because you are being “carried” away by a river of sludge and being attacked by many “spiders” so just make sure you’re ready for a tough time! 🙂
