Lost Planet 2

[englishbob]

Full game this time. First off, this game (360 version) hates being upscaled to 1080p via HDMI, it tears all over the place. Setting in the dash to 720p makes it tear free.

First off the bat, it looks pretty stunning. The cut-scenes are rendered using the ingame engine, and they really look good. Presentation is top too (don't know what IGN where on about).

There is quite a lot to this game and I am slowly finding out more about it, such as customisation of weapons, outfits etc. There are quite a few menu options, and a full Training mode which is a pleasant distraction, a bit like those MGS VR missions. They have their own leaderboards too, so it all plays out a bit like "The Club".

Online mode seems good, the lobbies worked well and I was able to have a game up and running in about 2 minutes. Seemed to work a lot like the first game, so if you where a fan of these, you'll probably like these too.

Campaign (Story), with all its stunning looks and action, is, for want of a better word, poor. Created with co-op in mind, it is playable offline, but your squad are mostly useless. Of course this is nothing new in a game of this type, they hunk around not doing much and spouting predictable future army speak it makes you groan.

Campaigns main failing though is its save points. On my first play-through, I played for about an hour, and got to about the 3rd or 4th mission of Chapter 1, a sizable chunk. However when I returned to the game later, I had to start ALL OVER AGAIN. This is unacceptable, and in truth maybe the game gets even better later on, I cannot play a game like this, I just cannot dedicate massive amounts of time to clear massive chapters so that I can save progress.

This aspect brings the whole package down. I just cannot be bothered to do the whole lot again. Which is a shame as I WAS enjoying it. Therefore I am shelving it in hope it may get patched to fix this. Not bad for a game thats not released until Friday!

[Spatial]

Think it's due for release on Tuesday in some sort of global launch.

Personally the save system sounds like the kind of nightmarish mistake that an amateur studio would make. The first didn't have this checkpoint problem so why the hell did they introduce it? Sounds like it's too big an issue to patch easily so it may never happen - explains why they're flogging it so cheap.

Shame I was too slow in cancelling my order before it was dispatched

Makes me worry about how Dead Rising 2 is going to turn out tbh.

[Kongster]

There is a bit of slowdown here and there when things get a bit hectic, certainly on the PS3 version anyway. Co-op is great, lots of fun to be had there. Single player on the other hand can get a bit frustrating mostly due to the AI.

Only played it for a couple of hours so far and it seems alright still.

[hudson]

Well jealous. I got an email from Shopto on Thursday and Friday saying my copy had been sent out. No sign today.

[Kongster]

I got the dispatch email on Friday and it turned up today. Hopefully yours will turn up sharpish.

The tee is not bad by the way

[EvilBoris]

When will capcom sort out the upscaling/tearing Issues?

How many games have they made that suffer from this 3,4, 5?!

[dataDave]

Lost Planet 2

Campaign on hard seems to be astonishingly hard, but it does give you quite a few checkpoint retries before ejecting you back to the menus. I lost all of my attempts on the first main part that would normally require some co-op work, in 4-player I imagine each player would take a particular route to reach their own checkpoint, but as I'm playing it I get to rinse out all of those sections by myself one after the other - I can see many people missing out on big chunks of the game by just spamming through co-op.

I've selected to play with no AI back up, however prior to the run up to the point where I'm stuck I was joined by some dudes. They're gone now that I actually need them which is pretty cool, because I'd be killing them anyway. Speaking of which, you can set the team damage to either None, blowback (physical 'body being thrown/blasted away' effects only but no damage), or no damage or effects whatsoever.

I know it's early doors so far but gone is the ability to just get in a VS and sprint to the boss checkpoint. You are seemingly forced to completely eradicate the stages of all life before being allowed to trigger the next cut scene and following objective.

What I like about this is you are forced to take a tactical approach to clearing out the groups of enemies. I've just lost my rocket launcher by dying in a silly spot, and I had to work damn hard to get back in there and get it back before I could even think about killing the enemy VS that was in my way. If you have a piece of mission critical weaponary then make sure you don't act like a daft sod with it. The games handling of weaponary seem very much like the Gradius games, if you lose them half way through or burn all the ammo pointlessly then you may as well start again. Luckily I've not been THAT stupid yet.

I've had to restart mission 1-1 three times now but each time I'm doing better. The 2nd time I thought I've be clever and take in a sniper rifle with me but that just ended in me instantly getting my head blown off each time I went to zoom in. At first things seemed totally impossible but I'm able to get up to where I'm stuck, and then progress that little bit further, with each attempt. So it's not quite the smashing your head against a brick wall made of pure death and cemented with anguish as that hilarious review stated, yes, you have to restart the levels which might seem tedious to some, but each time you try you feel significantly boosted in your knowledge of where and when something's going to happen.

It's good to see they've not wasted any time trying to create some deep backstory this time around involving your useless dad and some sacred VS suit. You're thrown straight into the action with a group of faceless dudes that you don't really care about, you just want to jump right in and start blowing **** up and that's exactly what you're given.

The music and presentation in general all seems nice and epic so far. Lovely designed menus and plenty of customisation for controls, however they don't seem to be catering for any lefties again. Which I don't care about because I'm luckily not one of them.

Online is an absolute blast. I've only had a couple of games because I want to cane campaign first, but there are already people on there at lvl 25+. I'll have a few more games after I get onto mission 2.

[hudson]

Ahem

Sounds good, Dave.

The tactical approach business sounds like what I hoped for. Tackling missions with friends etc.

[dataDave]

Campaigns main failing though is its save points. On my first play-through, I played for about an hour, and got to about the 3rd or 4th mission of Chapter 1, a sizable chunk. However when I returned to the game later, I had to start ALL OVER AGAIN. This is unacceptable, and in truth maybe the game gets even better later on, I cannot play a game like this, I just cannot dedicate massive amounts of time to clear massive chapters so that I can save progress.

This aspect brings the whole package down. I just cannot be bothered to do the whole lot again. Which is a shame as I WAS enjoying it. Therefore I am shelving it in hope it may get patched to fix this. Not bad for a game thats not released until Friday!

Strange. I get to select Mission 1-0 or 1-1 when I start again from the menu. You can't surely expect to restart from each mid-level checkpoint? ><

[englishbob]

I got the terminology wrong, but the concept is the same. I understand there are about 6 episodes in the game, and that they are set up into Chapters, with 0 being the prologue. Chapters are futher sub-divided into "missions". I got to Episode 1 Chapter 1 Mission 4 (I think) which took about 1+ hours. What the game doesn't do is save between missions.

When returning you have to start again at Episode 1 Chapter 1 (there is no mission select) , effectively losing over an hours worth of progress. It really needs to save per Mission, not per Chapter.

EDIT - got it wrong (again) Edited to put the correct things back in!

[Neon Ignition]

I've played a small number of games online with the PS3 version and I've done Chapter 1 in the campaign and so far it's a mixed bag. A lot of it at the moment is due to difficulty getting players which is purely down to it not being out yet. Multiplayer wise I'm 50-50 with the maps as some aren't as good as the one in the demo. I'm gonna hold off the map pack and see how I go. This is one of those games that's literally done in a new nights or on the playlist for months.

[dataDave]

I felt sick after eating enough for about nine people yesterday so went to bed early. The difficulty is EXTREME!

I need to 1-life my way up to my current sticking point so I can fluff it enough times to work out what to do. I hate dying before then.

[Kongster]

Online versus play was rather unforgiving in that there were so many players levelled up to Level 32. Already! And I was only levelled up to level 9 myself haha.

[hudson]

What do high level players have over low level nubs? Better weapons or something?

Mine should hopefully turn up today.

[dataDave]

What do high level players have over low level nubs? Better weapons or something?

Mine should hopefully turn up today.

I completely jizz-blasted a lvl25 player at lvl1 so I don't think there's anything in it apart from aesthetics and maybe starting weapons going off of the customisation options.