[Shapermc]

I think this game is pretty close to pure bliss. I had no problems with the game (minus the Green Eye boss fight, which was the only part of the game that really hung me up for more than one or two lives). I have also played quite a bit online.

For as much as I really enjoy playing Gears of War online with friends, playing w/o friends is exceptionally hellish for me. Lost Planet was a fucking blast to play online w/o friends because you have modes of play that don’t require teamwork at all.

I beat the main game in about 15 hours (5 of which was probably spent between cutscenes, pausing, and restarts). The main game is good, but I don’t think that the story is anywhere near as good or as important as the game tries to make it. The story is so horribly acted and ripped off from so many sources that it was hard to take it even slightly seriously. I was torn between skipping the scenes because I knew they were pointless, and seeing what I paid for.

The levels alternate between many different environments (shockingly) and usually switching between a most VS (robot/mech) level and a human run-and-gun level. I have to say that I liked the human emphasized levels the most. While many of the VS’ are great to use to get from one point to the next and blowing up a lot of shit in the meantime I didn’t like using them as my main combat tool. The large amount and variety of the VS’ were excellent though.

The controls work mostly fine without much tweaking. They do start out way too slow, and based on your preference you will probably want to turn the auto-aim off (especially if you’re going to play online a lot because there isn’t auto-aim online). The way the character moves within realistic parameters in a completely unrealistic way to allow you to control however you want and as fast as you like. It’s pretty great. The reaction of the weapons is also pretty good in relation to your character. Reload and charge times are fairly accurate for compensating the strength of the attack.

Thermal Energy is what runs everything: your health, your robots, and some weapons. You can get T-Eng from just about everything, and if you start running low I suggest getting creative and blowing some stuff up. I only once ran my T-Eng down to zero and it was during a lengthy boss fight while in a VS, I’m honestly not quite sure how so many people have claimed to have run out.

The difficulty is kind of off balance. If you have played the demo many times (I think I played through the whole demo 3 times for each level) you will feel that the game is too easy on Normal. Don’t let that worry you, the game picks up in difficulty. Ultimately I was left feeling like the balance of difficulty was mis-managed. The hardest part of the game for me was halfway through and the game was constantly bouncing between too easy and harder than it should be. When I finished the game it didn’t feel finished (too short), so I picked it back up to play through again in Extreme difficulty, but decided to say screw it and played it online for a good while.

At first online wasn’t so hot. I’m not very good at games when it comes to playing versus other people willing to dive into the controls, techniques, tactics involved with being a top teir player online. Anyways, I jumped onto the Ranked matches online and was pleasantly surprised with how it worked. The ranks within the online game work like an MMO: when you do well in a fight you gain more points which add to your level, doing poorly only lets you climb the ladder slower, you’re never harmed for doing poorly. The higher level you are the more skins you unlock for your characters that you can play online, and then eventually you unlock more characters to use online.

There are four types of mode to play online and all work well for different reasons. Fugitive is the most interesting: the host is the fugitive and all other players need to hunt him down, killing the fugitive wins the game. I played a few of these and they work quite well. It was great hearing all these people I don’t know panicking: “where is he?” “don’t know, but he just killed me near the tower!” “I think I saw him over by the arch.” I have yet to attempt to be the fugitive. There is another mode pretty similar to capture the flag which I only played once and … well, it’s capture the flag. Execution (and team Exectution) is deathmatch, and it’s spectacular under the right circumstances. Some of the levels are really gigantic, so large that even after over a dozen matches on the board I know I still haven’t seen it all. There are also different layouts for each of the maps which you can select (the topography is always the same though): you can have ones with an emphasis on weapons, posts, grenades, and finally mechs. I haven’t gotten use to the mechs yet because I kind of stink at hunting people with them.

The online maps are really fantastic. Aside from the one for the demo (which is honestly the weakest) many have multiple hidden routes, out of the way places to secure a post, and winding passages which layer the maps. The simple change of weapon from guns to mechs will also completely change the manner of tactics and give a new feel to the maps. Many of the maps also include environment change including but not limited to: low visibility snow storms, falling rocks, day/night schedule, rising fog/smoke, and even lava flow. Most of these things can’t be found inside the game itself and shows a level of attention to detail that I haven’t seen in an independent element in a while.

Anyways, the more time I spend with the game the more I enjoy and appreciate it. I was sick all weekend so I couldn’t much leave the couch and got a lot of time to play. A few tips for people wanting to play online: to roll hold the duck button (c-stick by default) and then press jump, and to get a gum grenade off of you just roll.
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[Shapermc]

[Shapermc]

Really, my tactic for the worm is simple: don't stop moving. If you just keep moving sideways from him (not towards or directly away from) he can't eat you. Then after he's done a lunge at you just use a rocket aimed at an eye pod. There really are tons of rocket launchers on the ground so just keep moving around and you'll find them. Another part of the tatic is to shoot at the eye pods with a machine gun while you're running sideways. I only killed 7 of the pods and then he fell over dead on me.

Hopefully some people will be up to play online tonight, I may have some time.
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[Shapermc]

I think it was Saturday night that I was playing Lost Planet online for a bit and one douche just kept calling people "gay." So I finally started questioning him “why is he gay?”
“Because he killed me when I couldn’t shoot back!”
“So how does that make him ‘gay’?”
“Because he’s a fucking fag for doing it!”
“What makes one person gay for killing another person online in a videogame?”
“What the hell is your problem! Only faggots do that shit!”
“I don’t see how having sex with someone of the same gender has anything to do with this.”
“What? No I just called him a fucking fag. “
“So what are you insinuating with that?”
“Shut the fuck up you fucking fag.”
At this point I attempted to continue the questioning and he began to cite shit like “he probably listens to Marilyn Manson” where I would ask how that makes him gay too, with never one honest response. I told the guy I was going to submit a warning on him as a bluff because I had no idea his gamertag, and he kind of shut up. Who know what happen to him, but needless to say I’m pretty turned off from playing games with random people for a while. The only reason I began to question him was because it was the 5th game of the night and so far that was the most common word I had heard exchanged all night.
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter