Lost Planet is Capcom's second exclusive game for the Xbox360. While it isn't quite the marvel that Dead Rising is, the game is certainly well-built and full of interesting and unique creatures and gameplay. Lost in the shuffle between Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas, this game suffers from bad timing more than anything else.

The game's story centers on a young man named Wayne, living on a colony world covered in ice. Struggling to survive, the colony was attacked quite a long time ago by creatures called Akrid. However, colonists find out during the course of their war to reclaim the world that the Akrid are the carriers of a mysterious thermal energy that can be harnessed by the colony in order to power survival gear. However, try as the humans might, the thermal energy housed inside each Akrid cannot be replicated in a laboratory. The only way to harness the power they hold is direct combat. With the power VS (I believe it stands for Vehicular Suit, but don't quote me on that), colonists are able to fight back and stake a claim on the harshly cold planet. However, Akrid hives and incredibly formidable enemies are around nearly every corner. You must use everything around you to defeat the giant creatures and even rival bands of human beings like yourself struggling to eek out an existence using the thermal energy from Akrid. For a unique story that has enemies that are necessary for survival, Lost Planet earns an 8.5.

The controls are very simple. The left and right analog sticks move you and change where you aim, just like always in a third person shooter. The right trigger is your fire button, the left trigger is your grenade button, and you change weapons with the Y button. The A button makes you jump, the B button gets you in and out of VS's, as well as melee attacks and picks up weapons. The X button will fire a grappling hook and the directional pad changes which viewpoint you want to look in, as well as toggles your flashlight on and off. The bumpers are the major difference in this game, making you reorient by exactly ninety degrees each time they are hit. VS controls are similar, though some models replace the Y buttons normal functions with the ability to glide and the A button can allow them to hover. The gameplay is very predictable, and a little bit repetitive after a while. Still fun, but the challenges are pretty much the same after a while. Still an average game at 7, but I wanted a much better experience from the game.

Graphics on this game are very clear, but not ultra-realistic like most other 360 games. The world seems very highly animated instead of surreal, but still manages a good amount of detail. However, it was rather odd to have ruins of former human cities so spread out and nearly useless. If you come across a parking garage, you would expect something more than a few caves and one or two other small buildings, I would think. While the game wasn't grainy or blocky, it just lacked that special something to bring an experienced player into the action and get them to play it all the way through. A little unimaginative in some cases, this game will only get a 7.

The sound for this game is pretty good. The Akrid certainly have a very sinister sound to them, and the sounds of a deserted, frozen wasteland of a world are enough to make me understand how the people stuck there must feel. Alone, without hope of rescue. People call in on your headset to tell you what's coming and give you little hints about how to accomplish what you need. The coolest sounds are the Akrid themselves and the sounds of the limited variety of weapons. Not very impressive at all, but still good enough. An average 6 on sound is the best I can give this game.

Despite some repetitive gameplay and limited sound, the game really was fun to play. I'm not sure I would pay sixty dollars for it, but it is definitely worth a rental or at least talking a friend into purchasing it for themselves, then borrowing it. Not that I would ever suggest talking your friends into buying rather average 7 rated games at nearly sixty dollars, but you could always have them read just the first few paragraphs of this review....