[Review] Lost Planet 2 (XBOX 360)

{To start, I’d like to state that I never really played much of the first Lost Planet.}

Lost Planet 2 has seemed to get a complete makeover with graphics and gameplay, at least ideally. While the “fresh coat of paint” certainly looks impressive, it’s merely a cover up for the lack of good, polished gameplay. Don’t get me wrong, the graphics are very nice, but this is one of those situations where it doesn’t really matter how nice the game looks.

The gameplay aspects almost seem to want to make the player fail. If you thought Halo’s Marine AI were bad for just shooting dead grunts or the AI partner in Army of Two was bad, you haven’t seen anything. Lost Planet 2 is only ever good if you have 3 friends to do 4-player online co-op with, otherwise the AI’s inability to help you do things that require at least 3 people and their general inability to function autonomously will just ruin the whole experience.

The levels look impressive and are very large, but the minimap is utterly useless. The voice acting isn’t that great, but the soundtrack is very nice. The poor mission direction and design mixed with a crappy save and checkpoint system which sometimes forces the players to repeat missions that take an hour or longer to complete, leaves me wondering why the regular campaign mode even exists.

Overall, I’d rate Lost Planet 2 as 6.5 out of 10, putting it in my “Average” category. I just cannot recommend this game to anyone as a full-priced regular game, but it would certainly be something to get from the bargain bin just for the multiplayer.