Let Them Keep The Planet

I'm still making my way through Lost Planet on 360 in an attempt to get through it before the next one hits the shelves. I'm finding it a really fun third person shooter, whilst not on par with Gears of War and its younger sibling, its still an accomplished game when you consider how early on in the 360's life it was released. One of the minor gripes I have with the game is the occasional slow down that occurs when there is far too much going on in the screen at once, at the subsequent cheap cluster attacking that the in game enemies insist on doing, causing your health bar to empty at a frightening speed. Although I raise this as an issue, it rarely occurs, especially if you play the game the way it was meant to. One of the more serious issues I want to raise before I finish the game is its difficulty curve.

Most of the game is spent with you, the player, being super man and mowing down wave after wave of baddies, whether they be human or the indigenous inhabitants of planet E.D.N. III. Whilst this is tremendous fun, the game begins to give you a mild case of controller throwing rage when the bosses of the game come around. The difficulty of the game spikes like a child's cholesterol on a visit to McDonalds. I feel that any game should offer a continuously increasing difficulty curve and that said curve should have the odd spike here and there to keep you on your toes, without making the whole of the game a nightmare. But do the difficulty spikes in Lost Planet have to be so harsh? I pretty much never die during the bulk of the game, but when the health bar devastating bosses come along, I do get frustrated.

I think that a part of the problem is that once you get through the adrenaline inducing end of level fights, the game relaxes and returns to its original pace, which whilst not sedate by any stretch of the imagination, is a bit tame when compared to the aforementioned boss battles. It's in these moments after those fights that you ask yourself 'why must the boss fights be so dammed hard?' If the difficulty curve throughout the rest of the game is steady, sticking true to the formula that makes a good game, why on earth are these vain popping segments present?

I plan to persevere in this game, because the story is actually starting to become interesting in a caricature, occasionally cringe worthy kind of way. I just hope that it doesn't do to me what Devil May Cry 4 did and through one of those impossible final bosses that will mean that the game goes unfinished and traded in. Fingers crossed.