I almost finished Lost Planet this weekend, but ended up sending it back to Gamefly after dying to the final boss a few times.

Lost Planet was a decent game as a rental, though it wasn’t buy-worthy. It did have some very large insectoid bosses, and the in general was about 8 hours of throwaway fun up until the final Boss battle.

Throughout the whole game, you’re building a skillset. You’re learning how to fight on foot as a person. You’re learning how to fight largely on foot (and briefly while hovering) as Mech. You’re learning how to skip past the excessively long and inane cut scenes.

Finally, you make it to the last battle. You’ve beaten the owner of the best Mech evar and now you get to use that Mech. Now imagine that you’re 16 years old, and your parents say they’ve bought you a car, but instead of a car, it’s a farm tractor.

Instead of simply giving greater scope to the skills you’ve already developed, you see, they give you a mech that is completely different from anything else in the game. Suddenly, you can’t even really walk on the ground. You’re purely aerial, fighting in a purely aerial arena set at the top of a large tower (a bounded sky area). And instead of the projectile weapons you’ve used all game, you’re suddenly effectively limited to an electro-sword that functions like it’s in cold molasses.

In any case, I gave up in disgust after a few tries at the aberrant final boss and sent it back to Gamefly. On the plus side, my garden in Viva Pinata is getting better and better.