Looking Back At: Lost Planet 2 (Review)

if i had to guess which game in the lost planet series was most people's favorite i'd pretty confidently say it was lost planet 2. before revisiting the game for this series it was certainly my favorite having a good time taking down giant acreage with mates was where my mind immediately went whenever somebody mentions lost planet and it was the desire to play this specific game through again that was the inspiration for this series but does it actually deserve to be remembered in such a positive way in this video we'll be taking a deep dive into lost planet 2 in order to answer that question if you haven't watched the first episode in this series where we go through the first lost planet game i recommend you do that now with that being said let's take a look back at lost planet 2. the first thing you'll probably notice about lost planet 2 is the presentation of its environments thanks to the efforts of wayne luca yuri and rick from the first game edn3 has been warming and is now home to new environments like dense jungles and desert plains the game is running on the empty framework 2.0 engine an upgraded version of what the first game ran up capcom highlighted character interactivity and better vegetation as two big bonuses provided by this new engine last time i mentioned the snowy expanses of the first game held up so well because covering things in snow was a good way to avoid needing extra details like vegetation so it makes sense that with new capabilities the developers wanted to try their hands at new environments like jungles this being said however development actually began on the older engine first and so it doesn't fully represent what the engine is truly capable of for reference dragon's dogma and resident evil 6 both use modified versions of the mt framework 2.0 engine i think this makes lost planet 2 more impressive though i was surprised to learn about the development switch because every aspect of the presentation has been improved massively when comparing it to the first game in particular i want to give praise to how the opening was handled we begin in a sort of tutorial prologue in the snowy hills where we can familiarize ourselves with the controls and how the game works coming from the first game this all feels very familiar you can obviously see visual improvements like everything being a bit sharper and more detailed but it's still comfortably the frozen wastes of edn3 we then hop in a helicopter and crest a hill where we see a huge green jungle complete with lakes and waterways the marketing for this game heavily promotes the jungle so it's not like this was a secret by any means but by having us re-familiarize ourselves in the snowy areas of edn 3 first it manages to cause some form of surprise when we first see it and helps us have a greater appreciation for the different environments we'll soon be exploring the game is split into six episodes and each one takes place in a new environment in addition to jungles we have bustling city streets and alleys large desert expanses and futuristic military bases both on the planet and in space around it the visual distinction between all of these is great and helps make the start of each new episode extra exciting each episode can be further divided into chapters each of which contains a few small levels for you to complete these levels are a lot smaller than the missions present in the first game while the old missions could feel quite linear the reduced size of those in lost planet 2 makes the issue impossible to miss what you'll be doing in those levels can also be pretty mundane and straightforward sometimes you'll just have to fight through the level and make it to the red finish line signifying the end other times you'll have to capture and hold an area and each episode has a few boss arenas which are usually the highlight by far though the biggest thing you'll be doing is activating data posts these function as checkpoints to respawn from if you die and by far the most common mission objective is to activate all the ones present in a level as the game goes on it gets pretty noticeable that you always seem to be doing the same thing over and over again but if it's fun to do that then it's not so big of a deal so how does the game play lost planet 2 is still a third person shooter with gameplay split between when you're on foot and when you're piloting one of the vs's most of the old guns are back including your trusty assault rifle which is what you'll be using most of the time there are a few new additions to spice things up a bit and in general i felt there was usually more weapon options dotted around the levels than in the first game the shotgun in particular feels really good to use especially when shooting the glowing acreage weak spots movement speed has been increased and there's an ability to sprint which is great for closing distances levels seem to have been designed with a lot more verticality in mind giving you way more reason to use the grappling hook real care seems to have been taken when implementing this too it would have been easy just to slap a few platforms around and call it a day but instead everything feels like it's there for a good reason these all come together to give you a lot more choice in how you engage with each level and finding a way to fit your playstyle into each new challenge makes it very enjoyable thanks to the warming of the planet your thermal energy supply no longer ticks down passively sprinting and operating a vehicle still causes small decreases and you'll now have to manually activate your harmonizer to consume some energy to heal damage in the first game i felt like it was an interesting concept executed in a not very satisfactory way because energy was so abundant that worrying about it proved to be a non-issue and the instant healing made you effectively invincible from a story perspective this time around it makes sense for it not to be consumed constantly but i still think it's a bit of a shame that it's just dropped completely having to manually activate your healing however is a great change because it makes every situation a lot more dangerous you can't just run out into the open and absorb bullets while taking out the enemy at your own pace anymore cover and obstacles to block attacks are a lot more important this time around there are also weapons and sometimes fies is hidden in boxes that can only be opened by shooting some thermal energy into them these usually contain more powerful weapons than what you'd otherwise find so it's a nice reward if you've been doing well and have thermal energy to spare enemy ai has had a bit of an upgrade humans are now fairly accurate with their shots and will move around a lot more than they used to sometimes they can also do some fairly smart things the guys with flamethrowers often seem to hang back and wait until i was close to jump out and attack me they still do a lot of strange things however the most common being to completely ignore you and stand in place often they won't even react when you shoot them which is pretty funny it's not overly common but it and similar things happened enough for me to realize the ai still isn't quite where it should be i'd say most of your activities can generally be split into four categories those being fighting humans fighting acred fighting on foot and fighting in a vs i feel that lost planet 2 doesn't really balance these as well as it could have you'll be fighting other humans a lot more than you'll be fighting acred and you'll be fighting on foot a lot more than in a vs when it comes to vs combat i think it might have been due to a difficulty balancing issue any challenge the game could offer would be trivialized if it was consistently possible to get all four players into a vs you can see the effect this has in action during a level towards the end of the game in which everyone is given a vs and the enemies drop like flies before an outgunned boss goes down with ease the solution seems to have been to limit the amount of vs available to players and you're also far more likely to find a weaker model than something like the ptx 140 which was fairly common in the first game what you do get is still fun to use but considering these are a big part of what separates the game from similar competitors it's a shame that they weren't utilized more i think another reason these things is because the variety on offer with them is so good we now have multi-seated vs that can be piloted by three players and another that can transform into a floating jet type configuration it's even possible to combine two separate vs's into a single unit i don't think this is possible to do playing alone but the fact that it's there and all the rest is really cool the most memorable thing about the acred is the boss encounters these are usually always at the end of each episode with some others thrown in between two the first game had boss fights too but they were never really challenging and sometimes felt like they were just a regular acreage enemy type scaled up to be a larger size each boss here however is a lot more unique both in terms of visual design and how you go about defeating them one of my favorites is one you face early on the six-legged salamander i found this to be a really well designed and fun fight i think capcom were pretty happy with the job they did on him too given that he was in most of the promotional art for the game you're given a big open space to fight him with hills dotted around to help you get some elevation there's a few things you can do to take him down like shooting his legs or the large core on his back when he's down you can even hop into his mouth and do some damage on the inside the other bosses are a lot of fun too but don't quite manage to match this one special attention has to be paid to the battle with a giant red-eye where you and your team could man a railway gun to damage its weak spots outside of bosses acred are still very fun to fight but i just wish we could have seen more of them their encounters are scattered a bit too few and far between those with regular human enemies in the background gameplay you might have noticed some objectives and medals showing up on screen these objectives are a bit like side quests that guide you and give you rewards for playing a certain way these can be pretty basic like kill all vs to incentivize you not to just sprint through a level but other times they can be quite helpful like the ones that point you towards using a weapon or tactic that you weren't aware of depending on how well you do you'll get a bronze silver or gold medal and your points will be totaled at the end to give you a performance rank this and the yellow boxes you collect during the levels give you points which you can use to unlock new customizables for your playable character this whole system is very arcadey but could provide you with a good reason to replay certain levels if you're not happy with your performance rank you've also probably noticed by now that we won't be playing as wayne this time around and nobody else from the old crew makes an appearance either instead we can use our points to customize five different blank slates each from a different faction each episode is dedicated to one of these factions and they all join up at the end for the final episode as i mentioned earlier the game opens in a snowy field and we play as a snow pirate mercenary after stocking up on some thermal energy the crew is transported to the jungle to undertake a sabotage mission against the jungle pirates after successfully blowing up their mind the crew starts to evacuate after making it to their extraction points however they're attacked by a giant acreand which are now referred to as cat g acreage killing the acreage causes the heat to drain from the area and the snow pirates realized that for some unknown reason somebody intentionally led them to the catchy's lair we then shift to play as an elite nevick division called task force first descent they're infiltrating a carpet carpetbagger city which is a new faction that network has been tolerating and working with up until realizing that they've recently acquired some dangerous new technology this turns out to be a huge train-mounted railway gun and the carpetbaggers managed to escape with it before nevitt can capture the weapon after fighting a catchy it's revealed that the members of task force first descent are all clones of ivan solitov the father of yuri from the first game because ivan betrayed nevick the clones are constantly sent on suicide missions as they're still useful but can't fully be trusted because of their original treachery they look exactly like yuri from the first game and even use his same voice actor but we don't get any more information on this the next episode is told from the perspective of the waysiders a snow pirate s group who live out on the desert they're returning from a tough raid when they're attacked by a huge worm-like catchy acreage named red-eye after escaping and regrouping they run into the carpet baggers and their railway gun which they seize control of and use to fight and kill red-eye they travel onwards towards their home but discover it's all buried under snow in the distance they spot a giant glowing orb and decides ahead for its location we then hear from nevick and learn that the giant orb is the over g acrid a huge new acreage which will trigger a new ice age thanks to its thermal energy usage it's currently growing and nevik wants to let it reach its final form kill it using their satellite weapon neos before finally grabbing all its thermal energy and leaving this is obviously a bad plan for all those who've grown to call edn3 their home and many of nemic's troops defect and decide to try and stop their plan it's these ex-navic forces we now play as and we begin by escaping a carpetbagger prison after deciding the best way to stop nevig is to board neos they set off and infiltrate a navic base they fight their way through and destroy one of nemec's new experimental weapons before stowing away on a shuttle headed for nios the next episode is with the vagabundo sand pirates they raid and capture a nevik battleship and use it to defeat a spider-like catchy acreage they see the thermal energy potential of the ovg and decide to head towards it with their new weapon it's then back to the navic defectors on the spacecraft they successfully assault and capture the neos space station and leave it in the trusted hands of task force first descent who have now switched sights while the xnavik squad descends back to the planet's surface they send out a radio transmission to all the people still on the planet asking for their help in fighting the ovg the waysiders and vagabundos use their huge weapons to help the ex-navic squad fight through a city consumed by the ovg eventually they find its main core and send the precise gps coordinates to task force first descent back on nios they fire the weapon but it isn't enough to kill the acreage so they decide to sacrifice themselves and crash the space station into it this causes huge destruction but does manage to kill the acreage the snow pirates from the beginning of the game pick up those still on the ground and lift them to safety just before the destruction from the impact reaches them everyone wakes up on a beach surrounded by a huge sea of thermal energy which is now so abundant it charges everybody's equipment with ease everyone living on the planet has successfully saved their home and presumably now that there's so much thermal energy available they no longer need to fight and raid each other anymore leaving us with a hopeful feeling that the planet can finally see its citizens living together peacefully and cooperatively we then see an unknown acreage fly past everyone without showing any signs of aggression perhaps indicating that with the death of the oviji all the rest of the acreage have been rendered peaceful furthering the hopeful note that we end on the story is nice enough but it's pretty straightforward and doesn't have anything deep or complex going on if you enjoyed the story of the first game i can see how this could be a bit disappointing with the ivan clones being as close as we get to hearing anything about the old squad this story is also pretty much just told through cut scenes at the start and end of each episode with very little going on in between it's cool that everybody bands together to fight this final threat at the end but the presence of some of the factions does feel a little bit tacked on the most obvious is the vagabundos it's possible to completely miss seeing them in the final episode depending on what route you take to reach the ovg's core considering their own episode is a bit like a duller version of the waysider episode in that it's hijacking a large moving weapon in the desert and using it to defeat a catchy acreage it made me realize that inclusion was a bit of a missed opportunity still it's nice that we were given the opportunity to jump around to these different factions as it could have gotten boring if we had to have just stuck with one like the snow pirates or the ex-nevic commandos i feel like this shift in story focus and direction may have been in response to some of the criticisms leveled at the original game story i myself said the gameplay of the first game was where most of the enjoyment was to be had and if the developers listened to when that was said at the time it makes sense for them to shift where their focus was out for the sequel it's also likely because of the major change that the sequel brought for player co-op i've purposefully avoided talking about the co-op aspect of the game until now because i've been trying to provide a view based upon a solo experience i did this because i wanted to show the base of the game before explaining how co-op fits into the experience and how it provides an explanation on some of the other design decisions when this game originally released in 2010 i played through the campaign with friends and i remember it being a blast for the playthrough i did for this video i decided to do everything solo because i wanted to understand if it was the game itself that was fun and enjoyable or the experience of playing it with friends i strongly believe that pretty much anything can be made fun by doing it with friends and there are many games that remain special to me even though they're objectively bad just because of memories made with friends what this line of thinking made me realize is just how much of lost planet 2 has been designed around cooperative play what struck me first of all was how when playing solo your ai companions are given names to simulate user names you might see online at first i thought maybe i was overblowing it but then i saw things like zz mic 13 zz and realized it was very much intentional the arcade-like aspects and character customization make a lot of sense for a co-op focus game too some of the customization can get pretty wacky and since they are showing cut scenes it provides a fun opportunity to show off to your friends a bit the levels being shorter was also likely an intentional change to favor co-op because if one player has to leave mid-game you wouldn't have to lose much progress a stripped-down story was also probably a good choice because long-cut scenes would likely end up being ignored and talked over a big reason capcom's monster hunter series was doing so well in japan at the time was thanks to its co-operative focus and seeing as up until very recently those games had a bare-bones story at best it makes sense that part of this design philosophy would be implemented into lost planet too so does this all mean that the solo experience is bad i'd say not really because there is still a lot of fun to be had sure it's annoying when your ai partners leave you to activate data posts on your own meaning you have to mash queue for much longer than you would otherwise have to it's annoying too when it clearly makes sense for a group to split up and do objectives simultaneously like when you have to capture and hold an enemy's data post while defending your own but in the grand scheme of things these aren't too bad other times however it's a bit more pronounced i mentioned earlier the fight with red eye using the railway gun this was clearly designed to be done with four humans because there's a lot of aspects to its operation that require good communication you have to find shells dotted around the train and bring them to the loading bay load them up and energize them rotate the railway gun at short notice before you can actually fire the thing this presents a bunch of organic roles that players could take up for example you could designate one guy as the ammo gatherer another who collects thermal energy to energize the shells and so on the fact that you're not forced into predetermined roles or classes to do this is great playing solo however it becomes a bit more of a slog because you end up doing most of these roles by yourself it's still a lot of fun but not nearly as much as it would be with other people there's also a separate multiplayer mode and character progression and unlockables are shared between the two modes on the pc version however the game was using games for windows live like i mentioned last time the service has been shut down leaving this strange legacy nonsense that you have to overcome to even start the game there's plenty of guides available so i won't go into it but my method to get it running only lets me play on system link which i think is the most common and easiest method on pc on xbox 360 and ps3 however you won't need to worry about this but you might have to use the lost planet discord or subreddit to organize a game due to the low number of active players so all this being said does lost planet 2 deserve to be remembered so fondly i'll say a tentative yes a lot of the good memories come from playing with friends but the game is very much intentionally designed to be this way and in this regard it succeeds at what it sets out to do beneath this though there's still a very solid base with interesting designs and concepts that are a lot of fun to engage with i think that word fun is where lost planet 2 excels the most it's not got a great story and it has some annoying quirks but it's still so much fun despite all that it knows what it sets out to be which is an enjoyable sci-fi monster blasting joyride and if you like the sound of that then i highly encourage you to take a look back at lost planet 2 yourself in the next video we'll take a look back at lost planet 3 the last game in the lost planet franchise it's quite the departure from this game and it should be an interesting video so please subscribe to see that and i look forward to seeing you again there you

Channel: Tomkon

Views: 37,517

Keywords: lost planet 2, lost planet 2 review, lost planet 2 retrospective, lost planet retrospective, lost planet 2 critique, lost planet critique, history of lost planet, looking back at lost planet 2, capcom, lost planet, lost planet 2 gameplay, pc gameplay, lost planet series critique, lost planet series retrospective, Looking Back At: Lost Planet 2 (Review), lost planet pc review, retrospective, lost planet remake, tomkon, tomkon reviews

Id: omJdwcq_U3A

Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020