Well I guess where it gets funky is when people claim realistic = somehow better than fun. If people say running slowly in Lost Planet is bad, I hardly think that's because they reckon it's not realistic - I assume they mean they find it sluggish and annoying.

That said, I'm not here to slag off the game. On the contrary, I thought the demo was fantastic even though the levels were hardly of a quality I'd like to spend a whole game wading through, especially that cave thingy with the flying thingies. Regardless, I thought the controls were very, very interesting, and I loved the 90 degree turns and the Panzer Dragoon style aim. I thought it had excellent sense of weight and cumbersome movement that gave it intensity and credibility, and I couldn't even imagine it NOT turning into an awesome game seeing as the demo came out a little less than a year ago. (right?)

The only thing I can say for sure is that it's a damn shame, a far greater shame than Mass Effect or.. I dunno.. Too Human turning out disappointing, if this indeed does. I think this is a brilliant example of something brand new coming out of Japan when they marry console performance and western influences with their own mecha-fetish and generally - to me at least - more likeable presentation. I think the success of Lost Planet could mean a great deal more in the long run than simply another pretend exclusive Resident Evil or some such. In terms of what we see from Capcom primarily, but also for japanese devs in general.

Goodness Sath! You can't post that kind of pr0n here, there are children. It does look sexy though.

Sounds pretty good to me. In my opinion a lot of great games are slightly held back by a number of things, but it doesn't make them bad..small design elements (gameplay), bugs, poor performance..can do a lot to a great game. Sometimes the effect is quite large, BF2 could have been the best FPS ever, if it weren't for some simple mistakes on DICE's part and some serious bugs in general..but it wasn't. Still a damn fine game though.

Good review, so far it sounds like a winner.