Lost Planet 3 is both less exasperating and less diverse than its predecessors.
The Good
- Great story that focuses on ordinary people in an unfriendly circumstance
- Akrid Survival mode is tense and exciting.
The Bad
- Repetitive encounters in repetitive environments
- Execution stumbles dampen the action
- Loses what made the series unique, both online and off.
One aspect of this third-person shooter that will keep you thinking, however, is its story, a surprise given the series lack of a personal touch and grand plot ambitions. The early hours move slowly, introducing you to hero Jim Peyton, who has journeyed across the blackness of space to the planet E.D.N. III to assist the Neo-Venus Construction company in its mining efforts. Jim is an excellent everyman, frequently exchanging personal video messages with his devoted wife, who is raising their newborn son while Jim works toward a brighter financial future. The couple labor to maintain a tone of normalcy, but never fully contain their misgivings and personal longing. The dialogue is natural and delivered gracefully; Jims love is not characterized by overwhelming passion, but by quiet adoration and sincere concern.
While performing odd jobs and fighting off the wildlife that threatens the mining operation, Jim spots a figure eyeing him in the distance. Jims paranoia turns to confusion as he uncovers truths about NEVEC and the indiscretions of the companys past. Here, the tale begins to follow recognizable paths, invoking elements of stories like Pocahontas and James Camerons Avatar by contrasting the greed of the invader with the purity of the land. But its how Lost Planet 3 subverts cliches that makes it so compelling. In fiction, lines like "I didnt know you had a wife" often lead to predictable story outcomes--but not here. Lost Planet 3 avoids overt moralizing and soap-opera melodrama, instead placing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and allowing them to find their way.
That isnt to say there arent sour notes. A miner with a deplorable French accent tops that list, though an annoyingly chatty engineer can also grate on your nerves. Both ultimately earn a vital place in the story, though not before injuring your sense of good taste with their cliched characterizations. The games tone wanders, sometimes shooting for "space cowboy" a la StarCraft or Firefly, and other times getting jokey, going so far as to point out its own mechanical shortcomings. A little lighthearted humor is appreciated, but when its a bit of dialogue pointing out how often you have to turn on an elevators power, you cant help but wish developer Spark Unlimited had avoided repetitive mission design rather than cracked wise about it.
That repetition is a problem. Many of Lost Planet 3s missions have you heading out into E.D.N. IIIs icy wilderness to perform odd jobs for NEVEC or other allies, flipping switches, riding elevators, and shooting some aliens in a comfortable but overfamiliar pattern. Like in the previous games, your primary foes are the akrid, aliens primarily known for their insectlike appearance and the glowing orange growths that indicate weak points. Previously, fighting the largest of these creatures could be both a stunning and frustrating affair, with their outlandish attacks sending you flying through the air and into drifts of snow, where you had to struggle to your feet and resume battle. Combat arenas were often large and gave you the opportunity to pilot combat mechs, and giant akrid forced you to use your wits when you werent busy cursing the frustrations of irritating knockbacks.
In Lost Planet 3, the distress and the diversity have both been toned down. You face some large akrid, but you do so without worry of being bowled over by numerous enemies and paralyzed by endless animation loops. Yet with greater playability also comes greater predictability. Regardless of the monster you face, the tactic remains the same: you tumble out of the way, the creature gets stuck for a moment, and you shoot at the glowing bits. And when you arent fighting the bigger akrid, youre fighting off the smaller ones, which you can typically dispose of with a few shotgun blasts. And you do all of this in samey gray-white corridors and in small arenas frigid with wind and snow.
The action is bog-standard shooting, and the encounters are tame when compared to previous Lost Planet games. New this round is a cover system, though you rarely need to use it in the single-player campaign, and its bizarre to see non-humanoid life-forms sticking against cover and rising up to fling projectiles at you. Yet theres still joy in watching orange thermal energy burst from an akrids vulnerable wounds when you shoot it, not to mention the sense of relief that comes from smashing its iced corpse to smithereens. In the first case, you see the lifeblood leaking from your foe; in the second, you prove your superiority by vanquishing all remnants of it. The combination makes for a rewarding power trip.
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