I completely forgot that Capcom’s Lost Planet 3 and I certainly forgot that they gave this third installment to a western studio, Spark Unlimited.

Here’s a trailer of the upcoming game and yes it does remind me of Avatar.

What is up with video game space ships? They’re so unreliable.

I’m not here to raise awareness of Lost Planet 3 though. I want to reminisce about the first Lost Planet’s demo. I already mentioned it was my first single player and multiplayer demo of this console generation. But I neglected to outline the fact that it was my first multiplayer shooter with a controller and the first multiplayer experience on a console.

Lost Planet didn’t set the world on fire but it did include ideas in its multiplayer that aren’t present in shooters today. It’s one of the few games that encouraged vertical gameplay through its implementation of the grappling hook. There are giant ass mechanical “Vital Suits” on the battlefield for players to pilot. Players can mount weapons on them but also remove those Vital Suit giant Gatling guns for player use as well. It’s nuts.

Lost Planet 2 may have brought back those ideas but they didn’t do a good job modernizing those ideas and the interface. I hope the upcoming generation of consoles brings this kind of wackiness back. Multiplayer shooters have become too safe and there’s  no better way to shake things up then during the early stages of a console generation.

Who knows? Maybe Lost Planet 3′s multiplayer is exactly what I was hoping. Maybe Spark Unlimited will pull off a great modern third person shooter with Vital Suits and grappling hooks. I have my doubts but I’m willing to be wrong. It would be fitting to see everything come full circle where I somehow end the console generation by purchasing and completing my first Lost Planet game.