Left Out in the Cold Again

Capcom once again returns us to the icy home planet of the vicious Akrids in Lost Planet 3, set to release in early 2013. In this prequel to Lost Planet 1 and 2, you'll play as Jim, an average joe who takes on this extremely dangerous job with NEVEC in the hopes of completing it quickly and earning a pile of hazard pay, so he can return home to his family on Earth. If only it were that easy.

NEVEC is working to prepare the planet for colonization, but their reserves of Thermal Energy at the Coronis base are running dangerously low, so here's where Jim comes in. Get in, get the fuel supply, and get out. What could go wrong?

The Akrids won't go down easily, at least while you are not in your rig, anyway. When you are fighting the Akrids and you are about to die, you are placed into a QTE forcing you to fight for your life. If you are able to kill your foe, your reward is not only your life, but you also regain your lost health. In one gameplay example, you'll need to shoot off the chunks of ice forming on your utility rig, while being swarmed by a pack of Akrids. Once your rig is clear of ice, you can hop in and make short work of them by crushing them or using your rig to drill them to death. As you progress through the game, you'll get additional upgrades for your utility rig, so you'll have new and exciting ways to destroy enemies. While on foot, you'll have a Third Person Shooter perspective, while in the utility rig, the view changes to First Person Shooter.

Sometimes when Jim is running around on foot, he may have to accesss hard to reach places, and for this he has a handy grappling hook, which he can also use to rappel into areas. At times, his rig will send out a signal, providing him with useful information about the environment around him, but the further he gets from the rig, the more faint the signal becomes, essentially leaving him to work on his own. Jim will come across boxes containing weapons and such, but also audio logs, which he can use to learn background info on the planet. Maybe Jim can figure out what happened to the person who last held this job...

You'll be able to carry up to three weapons at all times, one being your pistol, which never runs out of ammo. Just as in the previous Lost Planet games, the orange spots on enemies indicate weak points, so you'll be aiming for those. Messages to and from Jim's home are used to mask loading times and will give you some background instead of making you simply look at a loading screen. Here, you'll learn things like the purpose of the posts Jim is placing throughout the planet, yes the same posts you encounter in Lost Planet 1 and 2.

Lost Planet 3 is set to hit stores in Q1 2013. For now, check out the E3 2012 Trailer.