I enjoyed the original Lost Planet, but I wouldn't call myself a fan. The third-person shooting was plain-vanilla at best and maddeningly frustrating at worst. The story and characters were forgettable -- really, do you remember any of it? But man, those bugs.

The giant bugs and beasties, known as Akrid, were the reason to play Lost Planet. I'm no scientist, so I can only postulate that somewhere, deep within the gamer's brain, there's a pleasure center dedicated solely to the destruction of glowing, orange weak points.

After playing through the first three "episodes" of Lost Planet 2 -- each split into several chapters -- the game seems to strike most of the same chords as the original. The formula hasn't changed much; the combat is exactly the same; and there's no real story to speak of -- the characters don't even have names!

The only notable changes in the sequel are the additions of 4-player co-op and a few, much larger Akrid. Unfortunately, I can't say whether co-op makes for an engaging gameplay experience or not, as I was unable to test it out. What I can tell you is that co-op is bound to be better than playing alone, because that isn't very fun at all. As for the bigger baddies? I'm not sure bigger is necessarily better.