For the most part Wayne will find himself on foot as he journeys towards the elusive Green Eye. While on foot Wayne can carry two weapons as a time, the likes of which include his standard machine gun as well as a shotgun, rocket launcher, and other weapons. Wayne can also carry and throw one of the various types of grenades to kill groups of enemies or those behind cover, and to increase his mobility or automatically save himself from a long fall, Wayne has a tow line that he can fire and attach to ledges above him, pulling himself up and on top of hard to reach ledges and cliffs. Large Akrid pose a much bigger threat to Wayne when he isn't in a vital suit to combat them but they can still be taken out with sustained fire at their weak points.
Lost Planet does have a very striking look, with the bleak frozen tundra covered in the similarly bleak abandoned buildings and objects as well as the relatively colorful Akrid. When Akrid are killed they can freeze solid, which the player can then shatter to get at their precious T-Eng as well as be treated to a nice visual effect. Motion blur and lighting/shadowing make the action and environments pop to life, and explosions emit this wonderful flash of color and distortion the closer you are to them. However, many players have been seemingly left out in the cold with incredibly shoddy performance, as even on a Radeon x1800xtx the game had to be run at 1024x768 with all options on either low or medium to get anything close to a framerate that wasn't universally sluggish.
Lost Planet is worth a look and its gameplay captures both the best aspects of an arcade game as well as the gritty action of a modern shooter. The port job itself is incomplete at best with the Xbox 360-centric prompts and sluggish performance, and if they are fixed in a future patch, which Capcom says is coming soon, the title is easily recommendable. For now gamers should tread carefully and hope for a patch to address the title's issues, as the relatively low level of polish just doesn't quite match what one expects from a $40 PC title.
