(Disclaimer: I am a huge Lost Planet fan. It is one of my favorite singleplayer console games. I love the controls, the technicality, the level design, the bosses, the difficulty, the sense of urgency from the rapidly decreasing T-Eng. I also love co-op. It is always my favorite feature in any game that includes it. For me, Lost Planet + co-op was a winning combination.)
Okay, finally got the game today. 2p online with a buddy, no AI (so can't comment on that), hard diff. Since I have not played it in singleplayer, I cannot comment on that aspect. Played a 6-7 hr marathon (I'd play more, but work tomorrow and all that). Finished the first 2 episodes in that time.
And it is glorious. This retains pretty much all that was good about Lost Planet (the controls and basic gameplay being mostly unchanged was essential to this being a worthy sequel for me - the last thing LP2 needs is to make 'improvements' by simply making it more similar to every other shooter out there. It retains its uniqueness, and fans of LP1 will really appreciate that. If you hated LP1, I don't see how you'd see this differently.
Now, what it adds:
- The online co-op is fantastic. So much fun. We've had some really cool and challenging battles. The encounters so far have been pretty nice, whether infiltrating a base against human enemies, or fending off multiple large Akrid, dueling a squad of enemy VS'es, or hunting down a gigantic Cat-G Akrid. I'm also quite liking the level design so far. It's not vastly open, but there are usually some good alternate paths you can take to flank the enemy from various directions (works especially well in co-op).
- All the various small gameplay additions are very nice. Repairing VS'es, being able to hang onto the side of an allied VS, how healing isn't automatic, being able to shoot T-Eng at allies to heal them. Good stuff.
- On top of T-Eng (which you use to replenish your health), there is also a battle gauge which increases by 500 each time you activate a datapost. Goes down by 500 when you die or when you get a VS destroyed. You can respawn at datapost, but have to restart the entire level (3 levels per episode, each of which consist of multiple missions). Because you have to restart the entire level (or whatever it's actually called), you might have to redo some of the other missions before it. I can see how it can annoy other people, but it's extra incentive/pressure for us to not get wiped out. We've died a few times so far.
- There's some extra character customization as well. You earn new ones via some slotmachine thing, very random. It can be as useless as emotes (some drunken moves, or being a giddy schoolgirl) and titles ('I've covered wars', Princess, Least Valuable Player), but you also get new weapons (haven't unlocked any myself, but they replace some of the default ones, eg. handcannon instead of rocket launcher) and new abilities.
- New abilities: One of my disappointments when LP2 was initially announced was that T-Eng wouldn't be continuously decreasing throughout the game. I loved that feature in the first game, but tolerated the change because it was co-op (other players not managing their T-Eng properly could potentially get annoying). First off, it's pretty well-balanced in LP2, because healing costs you a whole lot of T-Eng, and getting hit will drain it very fast. Now, LP2 gives you character abilities which you can change around. The two default ones are 1) prevent your T-Eng from decreasing constantly, and 2) prevent your health from decreasing constantly when your T-Eng is zero. As soon as you gain new abilities and replace those, you can pretty much have the settings as they were in LP1, though it doesn't seem to decrease as fast. The new abilities can be pretty cool, from evasion (longer invincibility frame when rolling, but take more damage if actually hit while trying to roll), VS master (repairing and controlling a VS drains less T-Eng), or Recover (get more health back when using the harmonizer).
There are some potential negatives:
- (360 version, installed) framerate may have dipped a little occasionally when tons was happening on screen. I can only think of one specific instance where I overtly noticed it. It has pretty much been a non-issue for me so far.
- It might be bad in singleplayer or with AI, I don't know. In 2p, we haven't needed AI, and I haven't encountered any scenario where I feel 1p would have been impossible/overly frustrating (but, again, only first 2 eps so far).
- You can't join mid-session, and you can't join others if you haven't unlocked the mission yet. This is also a non-issue for me, since I always play through the whole campaign in full co-op with the same people.
Overall, I'm absolutely loving the game so far. It has pretty much met or exceeded all my expectations as both a Lost Planet and a co-op fan. If you are a Lost Planet and co-op fan, I give my highest possible recommendations for this game. Unless things changed drastically for the worse, this will be very very strong GOTY contender for me.
I give the game a 5/10 so far. 6/10 if the ending gets better.
