Yesterday I had no good words to spare for Capcom and Spark Unlimited's westernized take on the Lost Planet franchise. The third game in the series looked trite, boring, predictable and the exact kind of embodiment of everything gamers complain about in the AAA space. Well guess what? It is.
Review scores have piled in for the generic looking shooter with a Metacritic score that's currently sitting at 57 out of 100. That's about 3 points off from the 60 out of 100 (or 6 out of 10) I predicted for the game yesterday. I'm sure a few Mountain Dew cases and bags of Doritos arriving at outlets that have yet to review the game (which has yet to release in Japan and Europe as of the writing of this article) and those 3 points will round it out to nice 60 for the typical AAA win.
Many of the reviews pinpoint the exact problems anyone with half-a-brain would have noticed after watching a few full-mission playthroughs that have been made publicly available since the game's announcement: typical Hollywood storyline you see coming a mile away. Repetitive, rehashed gun-play from the cache of Unreal Engine trash shooters. Forgettable enemies. Derivative missions. Linear progression and nothing worth replaying despite the $60 price tag.
Writing about the AAA business can prick your skin quick and make it seem like there's nothing good about gaming, but we thankfully have the indie crowd to rescue us from the resonating gleam of recycled storylines and stereotypical characters falling out of the trope machine.
I think, however, Lorenzo Veloria's review from GamesRadar really sums up the experience so far, writing...
Lost Planet 3 starts off down the path of mediocrity almost immediately. Jim Peyton is a relatable character, but his story is held back by repetitive combat, tedious quests, and a narrative that doesn't deliver. Once you've played the first few hours of the campaign, you'll feel like you've already seen it all as you drag through the remainder of the plot. LP3 goes through the motions of the typical action game, never delivering any surprises or gameplay elements that would make a memorable experience.
Typically, this was one of those games where could see the results coming a mile away. It was just so predictably set to the tune of focus group tested and corporate executive approved shenanigans that it would have taken a miracle for this game to be anything more than a 6/10 cash-in.
The only positive review for the game is from GameTrailers where it gets a 77 out of 100. Apparently the reviewer didn't lay a hand on Gears of War: Judgment and was relegated to a lot of real-time strategy games and MOBA titles and felt like being taken out of the toxic environment of the PC Master Race titles, and decided to give a lenient score to Lost Planet 3 because it was such a far-cry from the troll mentality of the other games they had played.
While the biggest complaint about Lost Planet 2 was the incoherent storyline, I just wish so much they managed to keep all of the fun gameplay mechanics and cooperative elements that made the second game so fun, not to mention all the unlocks and customization. The second game was a $60 game through a through and was highly replayable, a word that has no business being in the same sentence as a positive descriptor for Lost Planet 3.
At least most of the Doritocracy got the scores right for the game... this time. If scores don't sway your opinion about games, though, you can buy the game right now for Steam, the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3.
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