Luckily the Akrid are more lively foes. They aren’t great battlefield
tacticians, mind you, as they follow the universal run right at you strategy,
but they’re basically fast-moving bugs so that’s OK. The best thing about the
Akrid is that they come in all shapes and sizes. The smaller scurrying and
flying ones aren’t much bother, but the giants have a nasty habit of rising up
from under the snow directly in your path. Even though a strange trick of
evolution has caused these creatures to evolve with bright orange glowing spots
on all of their vulnerable points, it can still be quite a bit of fun to battle
these behemoths.
Overall the best part of the game is the boss battles. Each one is a unique
experience against some monstrous Akrid (even on an Akrid scale) or elite super
soldier. The boss battles are an enjoyable experience due more to their look
than the challenge they present. The bosses are memorable, the locations in
which the battles take place stand out, and there’s a whole lot of shaking,
noise, and action involved. On the other hand, the bosses so blatantly telegraph
their weaknesses and attack patterns to you that they may as well be posted on
the walls of the fight locations. Again, the game is more about look and feel
than it is about the challenge.
The game includes a number of multiplayer modes that each support up to sixteen
players per game. In addition to the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch
equivalents, there are Fugitive and Data Grab modes. In Fugitive one player is
the fugitive while all others try to hunt him or her down. Kill the fugitive and
you earn the right to be the next fugitive, and since you can only score points
while you’re the fugitive this is a good thing. Data Grab is a team-based mode
in which a team must take and control all of the data posts in a map to win.
These latter two are pretty enjoyable modes, but you’ll be at a distinct
disadvantage until you can memorize the layouts of the game’s large maps.
I did enjoy my time with Lost Planet, but I couldn’t shake my feelings of
disappointment. If more work had been put into the enemy AI, storyline, and
thermal energy system, I think that Lost Planet could have been one of the great
ones. As it stands, it’s worth checking out for its novel aspects, but you may
want to rent it first before investing $60 into it.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
76%. Lost Planet is more about style than it is
about substance.
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