Lost Planet 2

Ostensibly, Lost Planet 2 has been built with multiplayer in mind. As a single player experience is competent but slightly underwhelming. [June 2010 p72]

It feels like a completely different experience with real players at your side; an experience that betters the original and features some of the most intense, visually stunning battles we've seen on this generation of consoles. Just know what you're getting yourself into. It's hard, frustrating and at times a very unfair.

Lost Planet 2 is much more than your average sequel and a completely brand new game that doesn't share much with original Lost Planet. It both looks and sounds better and the multiplayer is really good. But unfortunately, many of Capcom's new ideas fails due to horrible AI and somewhat bland boss fights.

Fast, frenetic, and frequently spectacular in scale, Lost Planet 2 will do the job if you have an itchy destruction finger, and provides some fun and well thought-out times in co-op. But ultimately, it's just all about the carnage, and frequently seems to have no care for the needs of the solo player.

When you're battling against the biggest bugs the game has to offer, Lost Planet 2 can be a blast particularly with a few friends. It is however a fundamentally frustrating experience, with control issues and questionable design choices that reduces the overall enjoyment the game has to offer.

More forgettable than its predecessor, Lost Planet is brilliant nonetheless.

Lost Planet 2 literally tries to do everything a shooter should, but it doesn’t mean much when the game is plagued with minor issues and dull gameplay.

Unfortunately its also plagued by some rather serious design flaws that could've been solved if Capcom had taken a look at what the competition was doing. If you can look past that than you'll enjoy this game, but you might have to deal with some frustration along the way.

Highly recommended arcade action – only if you have two or three companions willing to participate. Single-player experience is killed by brain-dead AI. [Issue#192]

Capcom is in Lost Planet 2 completely focusing on the multiplayer and as a result of that: the AI is completely crap. You have to play this game with more players and then it will be fun. On your own it could have been a lot better, but the AI is ruining it all. The graphics could also have been better and another annoying thing is the limited amount of savepoints. It isn’t a really bad game, but Capcom could have made more of it.

At its core it's a potentially great action game and it's very good-looking, but it explains itself so incredibly poorly and has such an awkward structure and poor checkpointing that a lot of the fun is ruined by interminable frustration – not to mention the fact that it's basically unplayable as a single-player game.

Lost Planet's sophomore effort attempts to improve on past faults while shifting direction into an entirely new territory, but the overall feeling is muted. The game can be an enjoyable, fun adventure, but only if you're willing to share the experience with friends (or strangers).

Lost Planet 2 is filled with too much mediocrity to be a great game, but it is decent, and odds are that if you like third-person shooters, you'll at the very least enjoy the multiplayer modes. Just don't expect this to be the phenomenal game changer.

I'm also not a big fan of the heavy focus on human enemies, and the weak VS (think mechs) presence in the story, whereas I felt the first title offered up a little more variety in its run of the mill bug slaying (I do give props to LP2's awesome bosses though!), and the really bland multiple angle storyline of LP2 is awful in comparison to LP1's single protagonist, which wasn't all that great either.

At first, Lost Planet 2 seems to have it all. Unfortunately if you take a closer look the game has many flaws, which provide more frustration than fun.

For nearly every aspect of the game, awesomeness comes with a caveat. The shooting mechanics are responsive, intuitive...and annoying as hell. The run-and-gun style works just fine - as long as we never let a bullet touch us. [June 2010, p.66]

Almost equally fun and frustrating whether played in co-op or in single-player mode, it's a game you'll both love and hate in the same breath.

Lost Planet 2 is an ambitious and enthusiastic title that is sadly lacking in focus, with a single player experience that falls some way short of the competition and a multiplayer campaign that is diminished by unconvincing AI opponents.

It looks nice, but the controls are clumsy, the story is indecipherable, and the gameplay lacks variety.

Lost Planet 2 simply doesn't live up to the developer's grandiose plans. Other than the game's beauty, the big, challenging bosses, and the infrequent fun that can be derived from four-player co-op, this is a gaming experience that can easily be passed up.

Lost Planet 2 has the potential to be a great game, but the different gameplay elements aren't polished enough. So in the end, Lost Planet 2 is a mixture of a lot of stuff, but nothing in the mix is better then mediocre.

Bad game design, technical issues, and a botched character progression system lead to a game that feels like it's trying prevent you from having any of the fun that would be possible with four people playing together, taking out skyscraper-tall bug monsters.

The combat's big and forceful, but you can only shoot dudes for so long when you know that your reward will just be more dudes to shoot. [June 2010, p.118]

Lost Planet 2 is a game the world will forget in just a few weeks. The action is brutal and presented in a fashionably way, but the game makes too many mistakes to really impress. The controls feel too clumsy, but the flaws are easier to overlook when playing with some buddies.

Lost Planet 2 is a disappointing sequel, and there are too many other, better options out there to warrant a visit to E.D.N. III.

While the multiplayer does add a little something to package, it’s obvious that the campaign – the true co-op campaign - is where the main focus is. As good as the game looks, and as huge as the bosses are, it’s not all that fun to go through alone.

At first, Lost Planet 2 seems to impress with wonderful graphics, huge bosses and 4 player co-op. The sub-par AI for both enemies as allies, the hampered controls and the lacklustre design really strangle the gameplay. Playing alone is enough to annoy you completely, but even in co-op it’s repetitive and frustrating. This abomination is only good as therapy for casual gamers who crave graphics and online chat, but who don’t care for decent gameplay.

This sci-fi sequel seems like it should have everything you need in a shooter, but a shocking number of design missteps suck out much of the fun.

Just do yourself a favor: buy some insurance for the controller you'll invariably throw across the room at one of Lost Planet 2's seemingly endless design and interface issues.

On the outside it’s a very good game - graphics, sound effects, music are all fantastic. Everything else however, is bad and lets the game and the whole series down.

Lost Planet 2’s primitive control system, simplistic combat and numerous design flaws all combine to crush any enjoyment underfoot and rapidly turn it in to a pitiable, depressing title.

In the build up to its release, Lost Planet 2 was seriously hyped up but as is so often the case in the games industry it sadly fails to live up to its billing offering nothing more than an at best an average shooter and one that is left to hardcore fans of the original rather than the gaming masses.

Even worse, the game's not much fun to play. Each of the six episodes have a series of chapters full of unclear mission objectives; most times, Capcom doesn't give you hints on what to do next, so instead of making progress, you fumble around repeatedly blasting the same monster and/or revisiting the same old areas hoping for some clue, anything, to stand out.

It looks amazing but baffling design decisions suck every ounce of fun out of this disappointing sequel.