Waking Dead

It was always going to get compared to Gears Of War, and its true that the basic premise remains broadly similar. Basically, humans have attempted to colonise a seemingly empty planet, only to discover that it isn’t really empty at all. The aliens that have remained buried under the ground have now burst forth to wipe these cheeky human invaders from their world. So far, so similar. Even the viewpoint is the same; its a third-person shooter, but the pacing and gameplay is very different.

For starters, there’s no cover system. Sure, there’s plenty of cover in the game, but there’s no actual mechanism to utilise it other than just standing behind whatever’s available. The pacing is also quite different, being much slower but also more free-flowing than Gears Of War. Whereas Epic’s game is a series of high-tempo gun-battles punctuated by staccato movement in and out of cover, Lost Planet flows much more freely but at a slower pace.

The big “feature” I suppose, or at least the central plot device, is the notion of T-ENG, or Thermal Energy. This is the reason mankind didn’t just up and leave once the giant bugs showed up; they want to harvest this energy, much like they did with oil in the Midd- snip! Getting a bit too political here. Suffice to say they have no intention of negotiating a trade for this energy with the bugs, unless said trade involves mass genocide.

The character you play – the tremendously-named Wayne [Note: I think if you're going to call your lead character Wayne you might as well go the whole hog and use Keith instead] – has an in-built “Harmoniser” suit that consumes T-ENG in order to heal him. This basically has the same effect as Master Chief’s Spartan armour; stay out of trouble and the T-ENG will refill your energy bar. What the Chief never had to worry about was a constantly-falling energy supply, hence the dire need to harvest this precious juice.

One of my main concerns from the demo was that this added time-pressure would detract from the desire to explore the game world, but in practice you usually have so much T-ENG available that it doesn’t really factor. The only time it starts to become a worry is if you’re getting pelted on all sides, and all your lovely energy is being expended to keep you alive. But then, if you’re running low on energy through being shot at that’s likely to be the least of your worries.

So, I’m only two missions in so far, but it really is quite enjoyable. The story is lovably hokey, replete with Capcom’s usual clumsy dialogue and bargain-basement voice actors. That’s perhaps being a bit unfair – its not as bad as Resident Evil 4 for example – but its still miles away from something like Dragon Quest VIII. Having said that, the dialogue doesn’t grate quite as much as Gears Of War’s macho posturing, but then neither does the delivery of those lines match it. Slightly tighter script, slightly worse delivery.

One other thing I will point out is that the explosions are truly lovely. Go on, have a look.

How pretty is that? And trust me, you’ll be blowing up a lot of stuff in this game, so its just as well that everything looks better when on fire. There’s two other features that stand it apart from Gears Of War as well: one of them is the grappling hook, which allows you to swing up to ledges, or abseil down to the ground; the other is the use of VSs – mechs for those of you not concerned by copyright – which take up about 40% of the gameplay. These are great, temporarily increasing your firepower and the pace of the game, and feeding your desire for vengeance on the bugs that have been kicking your ass for five minutes. Even cooler is the ability to detach one of the massive weapons from a VS and carry it around with you! Ah, nothing like hot gatling death.

I’ll be on this till the end I suspect, if only to harvest what Achievement Points I can from it. But I reckon it will more than likely be a desire to finish what promises to be a very solid game indeed.