You never get a second chance to make a first impression, goes the adage. Just observe any high-street chugger, for example: desperate to divert your small change from the hands of the McDonald’s Corporation to ‘save the ferrets’ or somesuch, increasingly irrelevant tactics come into play. “Hiya, how are you today?” say they, causing the heart to jump for one fleeting moment at the possibility of (often somewhat attractive) human attention. A quick glance of the logo adorning some probably sweatshop-manufactured cap or polo shirt though, and the true nature of the conversation is revealed. “Well, I’m just on the way back from the outpatients,” starts a response as the dark mist returns, “it’s my mother – she tries to hold up as best as she can, you know, but the doctor just told her it’s terminal.” Cue faraway look and solitary tear, then walk on. That’s what you get for interrupting our thoughts of shiny new things with painful reality, man. We digress – the somewhat buried point behind all of this is anyone seeking your precious cash knows that gentle and entertaining coercion is needed for that crucial emotional hook. If Lost Planet worked the high street, it’d simply club Joe Public on the head and make off, cash in tow.

The issue is it’s all so unashamedly retro. On the one hand, you’re simply dumped into each disconnected level with nothing but a rather unspecific briefing to go on. Yes, it’s meant to be a run-and-gun affair, but when you spend 30 minutes taking down a 100-yard bearded worm only to discover a whole panorama full of the blighters over the next mound – all for the sake of one piece of communications headset dialogue pre-empting your error – things have gone a little too far. Heck, your first few seconds of action as (the more heroic than he sounds) Wayne are filled with confusion as you fail to take flight from battle, inevitably ending up a stain in the concrete several times over and only then seeing the NPC you should have been following. Bah. On the other hand however, some of the most epic boss battles of recent years have been imprisoned within this single, shiny DVD. The larger of your insectoid Akrid opponents certainly take some weird and wonderful shapes, forming the overwhelming bulk of each level’s challenge. From the initial encounter with a metal Sonic-inspired beast, whose violent head-over-heels movement propels it around and through the womb of its nest to later stand-offs, such as that between your mechanised self and quite possibly the world’s largest, most attitude-filled wasp, the standard remains high. What’s more, although there are obviously strong visual clues as to which parts of your foes are potentially the most squishy and vulnerable, nice use is made of scenery objects and terra-forming to ensure there’s a lot more variety to the experience than just centring sweet spots and pulling the trigger. So, while the conclusions are satisfyingly gung ho, as your departed foe inevitably cracks into a million tiny icy pieces, there’s a satisfying degree of variety to how you reach that stage every single time.

Backing up for a second, Lost Planet’s story reaches new and spectacular levels of melodrama. Set on the frozen tundra of planet E.D.N III, the attempts of humankind to settle on such inhospitable land are chronicled. Needing precious thermal energy to survive, the various community factions soon discover it can be harvested from the corpses of aggressive Akrid creatures who inhabit the planet’s depths. Against this backdrop we encounter our hero, who watches his father killed by one of the larger specimens before suffering from terrible, trauma-triggered amnesia. Trust us – you half expect Calculon to take centre stage as the whole thing turns into an episode of All My Circuits. Regardless, young Wayne then sets off on a typical nothing-to-lose crusade of revenge, mystery and self-discovery, accompanied by the usual collection of firebrand accomplices. It’s interesting though, to see how much of an effect re-confining narrative sections to the traditional ‘cut-scenes only’ template has. Many of the 360’s most memorable dovetailing effects – the vehicular dropoff, mid-level establishing scenes, little or no loading time between levels – are all conspicuous by their absence. Whilst not a fatal flaw, it’s a bit like waking up one morning to discover you haven’t got a belly button.

That’s not the only thing that doesn’t quite fit, either. Though we doubt Joni Mitchell has laid hands on the majestic Gears Of War, she’s got quite a knack for describing shooter control systems. Quite simply, you don’t know a good one until it’s gone – replacing Epic’s wonderful marriage of acrobatic ability and the necessity for speedy movement comes an input system clearly borrowed from some more sedately paced title. Though again not fatal in itself, several standout moments occurring as a direct result bring about intense sensations of jippery. Time after time you’re left double-tapping the jump button, searching for some surgically removed dive move, as a rocket you saw eons ago careers in unavoidably. The shoulder-button system employed to allow swift 90-degree viewpoint changes fails to compensate for Wayne’s lack of pace when attempting to encircle enemies, too. Even Lost Planet’s most exciting trump card – the ability to man and tool up ‘Vital Suit’ mechs to forge a path through some of the tougher sections – is tarnished by a general sluggishness and the awkward nature of tooling your kit up. Accidentally assigning a weapon to the wrong mounting point (thereby dropping a tasty piece of kit frustratingly onto the ground) is a real possibility without an unhealthy amount of concentration, as is simply jettisoning your craft – the two functions share a button. Hardly the kind of thing you want to worry about with several scythe-like limbs swinging aggressively in your direction. Without wishing to ignore the differences between the two titles, Gears showed us that it’s possible of a targeting crosshair, grate a little. Your overwhelming firepower ensures matters don’t become unbalanced, but a little survival or teamwork instinct wouldn’t have gone amiss. At the least, you’d feel outwitted rather than overwhelmed each time that familiar red flatline crosses the screen.

Another achingly retro feature of Lost Planet is its difficulty. Each fresh level generally follows the same structure, offering 20 minutes or so of grunt grilling as you scale mountains, trawl through cities and so forth, followed by a boss battle at the summit that can last well over half an hour first time around. Each finished enemy leaves a pool of purest thermal energy where it fell, which must be collected by Wayne, adding to his ever-decreasing pile. Before total depletion, our woolly hero’s health will speed back to normal when hit, making it difficult for him to be killed outright, though once it’s gone mechs power down entirely and life forces will slowly ebb away. Checkpoints are also spaced just a little too sadistically, meaning an oldschool trek is on, should death occur. Furthermore, while boss creatures drop the same thermal energy as any other when hit, showdown arenas can be designed so retrieval of said energy puts you in a situation where doing so isn’t worth the risk (almost forcing you to complete such a miracle not only successfully, but against the clock). There are bound to be one or two diehards out there who like having their asses filleted and served to them with a glass of fine Chianti, but we’d prefer matters to be a little more fair.

While this review may appear to be all doom and gloom, in actuality things aren’t quite so bleak. A lot of effort has clearly been put into making the design of large-scale enemies and Vital Suits varied enough to make you want to give each a thorough spin. With episodes such as the needless worm confrontation, Lost Planet performs some sort of absurd design wheelie, pouring in admirable amounts of superfluous detail just to make the experience a more complete whole. It’s just that almost every positive point finds itself balanced by an equally persuasive negative, until you start running out of hands to place such instances on. It may be as simple as a case of poor timing – after all, even if your blood lust is so mind-blowingly specific as to deal damage to strictly insectoid foes, the 360 already quenches that thirst better elsewhere. If you’re hankering for a little gunplay, then you’ve better options to choose from in the likes of F.E.A.R., Call Of Duty 3 or even Prey. All of which leaves Capcom’s effort somewhat lost – ironically enough, in a perfectly adequate void – hard to pan, but impossible to totally recommend.

Dave Shaw