Videos: Lost Planet 3 Trailer Leaked
Posted on : 10-04-2012 | By : Cacophanus | In : Videos
Hardware: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
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It seems another Lost Planet game is on the way next year, as a CGI trailer for it has been leaked (shown below). If you’re wondering why the styling is a bit Gears of War-tastic and the mecha looks like something from BattleTech, that’s because it’s being developed by a Western studio this time. Specifically that of Spark Unlimited, who also developed Legendary and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. If we’re honest, we’re not sure about the styling (as it’s a bit also-ran and there are plenty of similar themed shooters out there). This is not to say that we don’t think a Western developer can do it justice, as Red Faction: Guerrilla was hugely enjoyable and nailed the mecha aspect beautifully. It’s just that Lost Planet has always been a really interesting and different type of game and this comes across as something we’ve all seen before. After all, we loved the last game and we’re just hoping that this holds true to that in some way.
Updated: In-game screens are here, though some of these look more than a little touched up. Sadly, the mecha seems to be controlled in the first person.
[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2UE6tJ1MBU]
I loved Lost Planet 2 (Gunsword!) but I’m sceptical on this if Spark is making it. I guess we shall see…
While I am equally disquieted due to the change of developer, I am forced to admit that a game with mecha design seemingly inspired by Robot Jox has to have at least some value.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kd642Ix5ks
One of my disappointments with the Wii is that we never got a mecha game that worked like the handheld joysticks in Robot Jox. I appreciate the nod to the design, but I wonder how much of what we’re seeing is just cinematics and how much is actually inspired by their plans for the gameplay. I hope what we don’t end up seeing is that the robots just end up being larger humans like many Western developed games.
Red Faction: Guerrilla was a brilliant game and treated their construction mecha right, but I believe their developers just received a massive amount of layoffs so we’re not likely to see a game of similar style again.
I’m starting to believe that all Western-designed mecha are required by law to have a Hawaiian hula girl toy as part of their cockpit. Who the hell started this trend? The new Mechwarrior trailer has one, and so did Megas XLR.
What this trailer reminds me of, really, is the opening scene of Zone of the Enders 2: Anubis, where you’re still in the mining LEV. That scene didn’t last long, but I thought it was a brilliant way to introduce some of the controls while also giving you a contrast between standard LEVs and the enhanced capabilities of the Orbital Frames.
I avoided mentioning Robot Jox because, apart from Ron Cobb’s beautiful mecha designs, the one-to-one control is utterly idiotic. It’s just dumb/lazy to assume that it would be a good user interface for a huge mecha, especially as almost all other forms of vehicular movement eschew that approach.
Oh, it’s likely not a perfect interface–although it would explain your standard Super Robot manuevers. How do you pick up things so acrobatically with just two joysticks? Or less–one of the newer Mazingers are supposed to control almost exactly like a motorcycle, which…I have no idea.
But, more to the point, one-to-one control is what G Gundam did, and experimental evidence indicates that nothing G Gundam did is wrong. I might like my mecha to the far Real Robot side, but I’m willing to forgive ridiculousness in proportion to awesome.
Punching ice monsters is pretty awesome. Hell, if I had a giant robot, I’d have that installed, even if trying to use it could get me killed. Men have to live according to what their soul tells them. That’s real Mecha Damashii.
Supers are not really what I was talking about here, as ultimately they can be “piloted” via whatever means are cool basically. From a real robot standpoint, basic ergonomics and cognition are things that are functionally catered for. One-to-one control of a machine is something that doesn’t work in the real world, as vehicles like a fighter jet for instance would need constant inputs at the same rate of speed as they could manoeuvre. Having a user interface that distills that input into discrete macros is far more effective (and what is currently used anyway).
You know your franchise is in trouble when you out source it, and it usually stays in trouble afterwards, seems that’s what Capcom is doing with most of its games these days.
Cant say too much about the game as we havent actually seen it, but as soon as I saw the guy fighting in the mecha I knew it would have some kind of FPS view to it, maybe it just happens when youre in a massive mecha, it might be all mecha’s are huge in this,tbh it sounds like their is only one mecha in the whole game, when I think of American mecha its always big n bulky no slick designs at all, so I wouldnt be surprised if this was the case in this game.
I guess LP is like the Starship Troopers movies, as in it got two sequels that it had no right in getting and each one was worse going straight to DVD, which means DLC for LP3 then ha 😛
This studios rep is not very good either, so my expectation levels are low, looks to me like overall Capcom are struggling creative wise with their games, and with LP in particular a series that is on its 3rd game and has gone backwards and very little forwards, when you think of something like say the ACE series something that got better each game and they built on what they learned you can see a big difference, same for most game series that get to the 3rd game.
Its a warning sign already when people still have question marks over LP3, when we should be getting a well solid game in theory, but we probably wont, its a real shame how the franchise has been handled, but that’s Capcom for you across the board.
Oh and you both get thumbs up for mentioning Robot Jox, ‘ACHILLES!!! I Already KEEL U RITE HERE” 😀
Spark is probably going to fuck it up badly, and never realize that the series actually had a lot of arcade style. They’re probably going to aim for Gears of War bullet sponge-style mechanics, which is easier than having a system of motion captured animation penalties and parry-style invulnerability frames that are executed with proper timing — none of these pesky mechanics that would force players to think their actions through, since they would have to commit to them. They won’t have any stunlock either because not enough casual players could learn how to break out of it. They also won’t bother to let us adjust the orientation of the camera (because only over-the-shoulder seems to be considered legit in the Western world for some shitty reason) or give us aiming options like the bounding box; they’ll force us to use fixed reticule aiming like every other TPS out there and only provide cursory shit like sensitivity options.
Gears of War, Red Faction, and/or Dead Space will be their inspiration. Story and atmosphere will be of higher concern to them than solid mechanics. Yeah, I’m not cynical and pissed at all.
Oh Japanese developers, when will you learn that handing your games to Gaijin won’t make them appeal to Gaijin.