Beat Lost Planet 2 on hard with max friendly fire and all three AI squadmates. Awesome game, although it felt shorter than the ~11 hours Steam says I put into it. "Hard" was surprisingly easy, aside from the insta-killing no-scoping asshole snipers you find everywhere on over half the levels and VSs. The hardest part of the game, in general (aside from the boss fights), is your AI squadmates.
They can actually path around the map intelligently, especially impressive because of the anchor system. I honestly don't know where they got half their weapons (I've seen my allies using energy assault weapons that I could never find myself) but they sometimes have a hard time actually fighting. They like to stare at enemy soldiers right in front of them for multiple seconds at a time. This would be frustrating except the enemy soldiers do the exact same thing. Fortunately, your AI squadmates kicking the bucket doesn't drain your battle gauge.
It made me sad when I realized they didn't understand how to board VSs, though. They'll get in yours if it's a multi-seater but will never take one of their own volition, which may actually be a blessing in disguise against the bosses and mass-VS combat. There's literally a single point in the game where your allies pilot the VSs and that's because they were spawned into them after a cutscene.
In a boss fight, the AI is... Decent enough. Not terribly helpful but not useless, either. They'll grab the boss' attention and hold it for a while as you run for a weapon or a VS, but will probably die after doing a bit of damage. In one particular case
(spoiler), my allies just kind of bunched up in one part of the arena and barely shot at the boss when it came near, choosing instead to scatter when it attacked and resuming their terrified huddling when it left them alone again. They knew how to
(spoiler), though. Such a nice touch! Out of boss fights, though, AI squadmates will clean house in most cases. I've actually had them destroy whole VS assault teams and larger Akrid types on their own after I was killed.
Out of the AI field, Lost Planet 2 is a nice game. The graphics are nice, with the Akrid having a lot of varying and interesting design choices. Many levels are designed with a lot of hidden weapons and VSs that are just off the beaten path but you'll easily miss if you focus on the fighting too much. There are plenty of fighting areas straight out of a multiplayer deathmatch game, with a generally circular combat zone that has plenty of weapons lying around and tunnels or rooms to use and avoid a certain area of the map for whatever reason. Seemingly everybody has anchors and VSs can jump or use their jetpacks to move upwards, giving these maps a lot of room to move and making you have to stay on your toes. The cutscenes are amazing, some of the best I've seen. VS combat is a solid part of the game and you'll go against VSs many, many times, supporting the anime-ness of this game.
The only thing I would complain about, really, is the number of loading screens. Missions are broken up into a lot of smaller areas with generally short but still mildly annoying loading screens, probably because they let the reality flood back into your mind for that bit of time. Also, the snipers who can't hit a distant target to save their lives but will one-shot you when you turn a corner, but that's probably not an issue on anything other than hard. I'd heartily recommend the game, even if you just went with the singleplayer campaign.
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Topic: How did you last *own*? (Read 1353380 times)