At the Capcom booth, the Lost Planet 2’s campaign co-op was on display. Thanks to the end of the first game featuring the planet being terraformed, the icy environments are gone and replaced instead by forests and deserts. Every player is equipped with a harmonizer, a device that stores thermal energy collected thoughout the game. In the first title, this kept you alive in the frozen landscapes by converting the energy into heat, but now there is no need for the ‘hot water bottle’ function. It can now be used to generate health.

The co-op mode allows up to four people to join forces to play through the game. The whole team shares a battle meter, which depletes when a character dies and increases when you reach certain objectives. When the meter reaches zero its game over. This mechanic ensures that you have to look after each other if you want a chance to successfully finish the game.

Various weapons are on offer, many of them returning from the first game, as well as some new equipment. The arena style area allows for some interesting use of the grappling mechanism (which makes a return from the first game) to help you quickly gain the high grounds. The need to keep each other alive also leads you to fight in pairs, as other players’ survival becomes imperative to your own success, not just in man power but also ‘battle points’ making you more sensitive to their mortality.

The two levels on show take place in a desert. The first area is a small town where you have to whip out all the occupying forces. After they are eradicated, the two huge lizard-like Akrids (the game’s enemies), charge in to the area. They are fast-moving and tough, taking a lot of damage, but with four players are easilydrawn in a variety of directions and left prone to attack. It allows for some strategic play.

Following this, the action moves to a train where you have to take down a huge slug-like Akrid. The centerpiece of this battle is a rail gun that sits several stories tall and incredibly powerful, but it needs to be manually loaded from shells littered around the train car. Reloading the gun may not be the most interesting task, but it does make for some tense action as you scale your way to the ammo chamber. This teamwork of course relies on your squad of players communicating and working together in the task which, even with all the incentives to cooperate, remains the big problem in the online space.

Lost Planet 2 definately seems to have taken many of the lessons learned from the first game and applied them wisely. The demo is available on PSN now, so if you have a PS3 I would recommend giving it a try.