When the dust had finally settled at the Los Angeles Convention Center, it was the underdog knownas the 360 that emerged unscathed by the end of the first day at E3. With Sony,s PS3 demos largely lacking the punch they sorely needed to make a good first impression, Microsoft was free to claim the lead and showed no signs of slowing down for anyone – especially now that they had Capcom on their side.
Up until recently, most of the titles produced for the 360 had not been taking full advantage of the system,s capabilities. This unfortunately led to a lot of low expectations within the gaming community and those who were left to defend the company,s less-than-stellar launch were immediately branded as fan boys – not anymore thankfully.
Lost Planet, the first collaboration between Capcom and Microsoft, is still a year away from its release date, but the available demo that was set-up during the conference immediately silenced all concerns in regards to whether the pair could pull off a unique experience of their own.
In terms of visual quality, one can only describe the feeling as you take your first steps on the icy world in which the game takes place as truly cinematic. The snow flies up in a realistic fashion as you run through it and the Bruckheimer-esque explosions are everything a product of the ADD generation like yours truly could ever hope for. The controls are sharp and intuitive in their design and don,t require much more than a few moments in order to get acquainted. Unlike most shooters, where it takes some practice to get the aiming down, Lost Planet offers pitch perfect sensitivity and smooth crosshair movement. A game with anything less in the controls department wouldn,t have done nearly as well, and in a world that is obsessed with everything next-gen, it,s nice to see this much attention paid to game-play as well as graphics.
