SiD the Turtle » Lost Planet

Catchup

Kieran — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:26:27 +0000

So what have I been doing while I was moving host?

I completed Lost Planet on the standard difficulty. Let me say one thing first: you can never have too many giant robots, especially ones with power blades, rocket packs and the ability to fly. But yet I don’t feel the urge to play the game through again for the other achievements. Oh and I don’t get why everyone is complaining about the story. Yeah its not great, but it makes sense and the ending was pretty cool.

After that I’ve been playing the Crackdown demo. Its great fun jumping over small buildings, throwing cars at people and then jumping away. I have a feeling it might get quickly repetitive, but then I remember that the demo features accelerated development, meaning you can level quite a way up in half an hour. I do wonder if they’ve shown too much in the demo. I’ll probably buy it anyway but not for the reason everyone else seems to be buying it- the Halo 3 beta. I could never really understand the fascination with Halo, probably because it was shaping up to be a killer PC game back when it was abducted by Microsoft for the fledgling XBox, er 1, and I wasn’t really a part of that console wave.

Oh and apparently the PS3 is actually going to release in March. Its official I will eat my hat as I have always claimed that it won’t come out in the EU until September. However things change and it seems that its not as hot a property as everyone thought, so there will be more to go around. It will sell out of course however I can’t see the key demographic- the families, wanting to by a £425 beast of a machine in March. It would seem that everyone I know is playing on their Wiis, or camping outside the shops waiting for more stock to turn up. Of course if there is still a Wii shortage in March the PS3 might be a (expensive) rebound purchase. Not for me though. Once the Wii has some more diverse titles and is actually in stock I’ll pick one up, but I refuse to give Sony any more of my money.

Lost Planet

Kieran — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 22:49:44 +0000

I'm currently spending my free time on Lost Planet. I'm quite chuffed with it, though I was worried at first about it as it's been getting 'average' reviews. They all seem to be missing a certain point though: it's a Japanese game. Here are some helpful pointers to those not familiar with Japanese games:

The protagonist will often only have one parent and if this parent is the father and he will often be killed in the opening scenes setting up the 'avenging my father's death' plot.
There are always giant robots, and often as the story continues stronger and more powerful mechas will show up, often denoted by their wing like appendages and power swords/chain-saws/scythes/whips etc.
There will be a friendly female member of the team, whose only role is to feature in chest level shots.
The plot is not designed to make sense at all. It will of course revolve around some kind of scheme planned by some kind of agency (who get the best mechas apart from the hero mecha) to destroy/take over the world.

The game is far from without its faults, but I wish people would judge this game for what it is, not what it is not.

4000 Gamerpoints

Kieran — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:03:51 +0000

Just hit 4000 gamerpoints thanks to Lost Planet. I hit it exactly on the 4000 mark by managing to take out a worm, a mile-long boss. Netted me 50gp. Shame that as soon as it went down another one came up- queue me running like a girl.