Lost Planet 2 offers something that will keep you occupied and satisfied the entirety of the game: Customizing your character. First off, your character is yours to create and customize, and you can bring that character everywhere you go, whether that be online in the versus modes, into the co-op campaign, or even the training modes. The game is loaded with various factions, all with their own cultures. You'll be getting parts to these characters as you play, and it's all interchangeable. You'll be able to swap out heads/helmets, torso/armor, backpacks/t-eng canisters, and their legs/boots. Not only that, but each of those pieces has various colors and patterns to choose from.
Once you've gotten your character the way you want it to look, you can move onto the customization that changes the way you actually play the game. Weapons are now broken down into categories, and you can choose your weapon of choice for each. This does something truly unique in Lost Planet, as not only will this change the weapon you start a match or game with, but also what weapons are on the map! For example, let's say there's a short range weapon on the map. You have a shotgun as your setting, and that's what you see, but your friend has a flamethrower set, so that's what he sees. When you pick it up and shoot, he sees your shotgun, but if you put that weapon down, he picks it up as his flamethrower!
The weapons customization will open up new ways to strategize how you play, with ten total categories and dozens of weapons and grenades to choose from. You'll have Standard(Machine Guns and the like), Short Range(Shotguns, Flamethrowers, Revolvers), Long Range(Sniper types), Heavy Weapons(Rocket Launchers, Cannons, etc), and Support(Shields, Injection Guns). Grenades have always been important in Lost Planet, and in LP2 we've expanded upon those, with five categories of their own: Normal(frag types), Gum(stickies), Disc(frisbees of doom!), Release(dummies), Plasma(energy based).
Ok, now you've gotten a taste of the weapons, but what about things that change the way your character interacts with everything else? That's where our new "Abilities" come into play. Your character has two slots for abilities. They're simple enough, and it's pretty self explanatory. These abilities give your character, well, new abilities to do cool things in the game. Your character has two slots for these, so you can activate any two at a time you want. These abilities are extremely ranged, with some more on the offensive side of things like starting out with max grenades, or others that increase the amount of damage you can take against energy weapons. Some of them are even so good that one ability takes up both slots, like consuming less T-ENG in a Vital Suit.
Ok, your character looks awesome, it has badass guns, and your abilities make you better than your friends. Now what? Time to talk about the Emotes. Most games allow you to simply do one thing when you've killed an enemy... Tea-bag. Well, Lost Planet 2 does things differently with emotes. Emotes basically let you taunt enemy players or make your character animate anytime you want. Want to motion for your team mates to lay low with a simple hand signal? Done. Want to slap your butt in an enemy's face after pwning him? Can do. Jump up and down like a giddy school girl with fireworks everywhere? Yep. Booty dance while your team activates a Data Post? Hell yes.
There's dozens upon dozens of emote to choose from. You can program eight into your character at anytime, so you'll always have something appropriate for the situation. There's so many emotes, in fact, that we had to break them into seven categories: Communication, Respect, Joy, Taunt, Superhero, Dance, and Misc.
Finally, there's something as a bit of a status symbol for your character, the "Noms de Guerre." Or, literally, "Names of War." These names are secondary titles that hover under your PSN ID or XBL Gamertag. You unlock them by your own style of play. Depending on how you play the game, you'll unlock new titles. For instance, if you're constantly using Vital Suits, the names you unlock will be relating to VS.
This is all but a taste of the customization in Lost Planet 2. And to make this even easier on you, with a push of the right bumper, you'll open up you character customization menu. Did the map with loads of VS get voted on instead of the one you picked? Pop open your character menu and set your rocket launcher to make sure you can have the advantage. Loads of customization, all easily changed and accessed with a press of a button. Lost Planet 2 makes sure you're your own unique character, with the ability to adapt to any circumstance on the fly, that way you play the game they way you want to.
Look for Lost Planet 2 in mid-May! Check out our community to get synced up with the latest on Lost Planet 2 right now.
(This is from my blog. Read the story here.)
.....AWESOME!!!
