Sequel not standing up
The sequel to Lost Planet is certainly not standing up to it’s predecessor.
I played Lost Planet back when it came out. It’s actually a bit of a blur - a white, snowy blur - as much of the storyline has faded from my mind. Not a good sign. It wasn’t a very long game, but I suppose that’s not really a problem when the game isn’t really, really engaging, but I have a thing about games being less than 20 hours. That seems cheap to me.
So, when I saw that Lost Planet 2 had been reviewed on IGN, I thought I’d check it out. As I said, I wasn’t blown away by the first game, but there’s the rare occasion where a sequel will be a better game than the first. Rare, but it does happen occasionally. In this case, no. A game that wasn’t great to begin with lead to a sequel which doesn’t even qualify as good.
Reading through the review, which happens to come out four or five days before the game is actually released - watch this one do poorly in sales! - one has to wonder why anyone would want to play it. It sounds absolutely terrible, and when IGN rates a game 6.0 and they say passable, they really mean passable. I’ve got a standard of not usually playing any game that didn’t get an 8.5 or higher, so when a game gets a score this low I’d never play it.
Basically, it’s incoherent, poorly controlled, animations are overly elaborate and take too long, the game is very unclear in directing the player to what objectives need to be completed, and you can’t save during game play. Seriously. The game is set out as 6 episodes with a few chapters for each episode. Each of these chapters constitutes a playable level. They take about an hour a piece, and you can’t save during it, so if you die towards the very end, you go right back to the beginning of that level. Oh and nor can you have someone jump in for some co-op play.
The game’s difficulty level is also poorly balanced, and all in all it seems an exercise in frustration. Yep, I’ll give that one a miss!
