There have been some naysayers and some unbelievers, but here's the truth for you. Lost Planet 2 is coming to the PS3 and we know, because that's the console we just finished playing it on. Capcom will bringing its third-person shooter sequel to the Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously early in 2010 (we asked for a more exact date and were told it would arrive when Capcom always releases its big games, so January – March time). But once we got over the shock of this console hopping, what was the game like.
Well, for a start Lost Planet 2 is really only a sequel in name. Sure both this and Lost Planet: Extreme Condition are third-person shooters with big alien creatures and the odd bit of grappling hook action, but LP2 is so much more. For a start it looks gorgeous, with a vibrant rain forest being the venue of this hands on session. The foliage was so thick and the atmosphere so muggy that we actually started to sweat (that may have been due to other external factors actually, but we'll blame Capcom).
The combat is the really important area here though and while there's a lot to be keeping in mind sometimes its absolutely solid. The tricky thing is just staying alive, especially as we were playing on our own with an AI team who seemed to enjoy either dying or hiding in a quiet corner. If you do have some friends helping you out on Xbox Live or PSN then there are some new abilities you can use. One is to switch your grenades for energy packs, which you can throw out like health packs for your allies. It's a neat little trick. You can use the same energy to heal yourself by holding the Start button, but watch out for attacks mid heal.
Each character can also be fully customised as you may have heard. Every part of you avatar's armour can be changed and swapped with packs found out in the game world. They look a little like glowing Christmas presents. Your loadouts can also be changed alternating you light and heavy weapons as well as you grenades. We were told you could also alter your body type, in case you like your heroes tubby. Some people do. Why else would Mario have been so successful.
Besides that the action is high tempo, sophisticated and very satisfying even if we were only shooting at bugs and angry flowers. We never were much for gardening really. And that's about all we got to see. The PS3 version looks superb and on a par with what we've seen on Xbox 360. If you weren't aware you can actually download a demo to Lost Planet 2 on Xbox Live right now and see for yourself why this is a game to get excited about.