Lost Planet 2: Sand Worm TGS Preview (Xbox 360)

by Travis Moses
September 25, 2009 00:00 AM PST

Travis battles a long and hard fight against Lost Planet 2's giant sand worm.

Capcom is blowing me away at the Tokyo Game Show with a new, playable Lost Planet 2 level and boss fight in the game’s desert episode. I keep going back to the Capcom room in between appointments to play again and again, battling long and hard to take down the massive sand worm boss that concludes the demo. (The sand worm is probably three times bigger than the salamander boss you fight in the demo, twice as grueling to kill, and equally cool as the flying sand dragon from Shadow of the Colossus.) If only I had stowed away our video producer Chris Parisi to capture video footage, because you guys need to see this game in action. The screenshots just don't do it justice.

Lost Planet 2: Sand Worm TGS Preview (Xbox 360)

Part One

The demo starts out in a medium-sized town that’s overrun with quite accurate snipers equipped with laser scopes (actually, frustratingly accurate). Lucky for me, all of the buildings the snipers hide in are completely destructible, as they look to be built using fragile and cracked adobe clay. I’ve found that grenades and rocket launchers will be your best friend when you reach this area of Lost Planet 2’s third episode. Additionally, I’ve found a new item called the Battle Suit that is different from the mech Vital Suits and doesn’t affect your character’s speed or impede his movements--the Battle Suit serves as a shield and absorbs all damage until it’s destroyed.

In this sniper zone, the snipers have a Battle Gauge of their own, which allows them to respawn until depleted. (The Battle Gauge is your combined life force between co-op players where each death costs you 500 Battle Points.)

What happens next is my second favorite part of this new Lost Planet 2 demo. Two quadruped dinosaur-like aliens emerge on a plateau overlooking the village, (which I’ve pretty much demolished with Disc grenades and rocket launchers). Capcom tells me these Akrid creatures don’t have eyes and use high-frequency sound waves to ping the location of their prey, in this case myself and the three other gents playing with me. The trick is not to move, however, the beasties will stand on their hind legs from time to time and send out a piercing high-pitched sound that forces your character to cover his ears and fall off balance. This is where they get you to move and charge like bulls.

I notice the monsters have glowing T-Energy weak points on the underside of their bellies and I blast away. Eventually the two Akrid sub-bosses go down and now the town is really lying in its own rubble. That concludes the first part of the demo and then I move on to fight the sand warm.