I recently got a hands-on look at Capcom’s upcoming Lost Planet 2 from the 2009 San Diego Comic Con. Capcom’s booth was back from last year’s event, a few rows of game kiosks setup around an elevated boxing ring-style platform replete with even more titles. Not nearly as intimate as their E3 booth from this year but definitely more ‘happening’. So I settled on up to their Lost Planet 2 kiosks and spoke with Capcom’s Shawn Baxter, picking his brain on some of the more interesting aspects of Lost Planet 2.

In Lost Planet 2 you will find no cover system like you do in titles like Gears of War or Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Instead, they have seemingly geared the game to the more action-oriented by implementing a ‘roll system’. Literally, this consists of your character jump-rolling in a direction of your choosing to avoid danger. The interesting thing about this new system is in the way your character’s vulnerability changes throughout the different phases of the motion. In the first arc of the roll you character is literally invulnerable! During the last phase of the roll your character will be dealt double damage by anything that hits you… (cont.)

And if you thought the bosses from Lost Planet were large, you have not seen anything yet. Some of the bosses from Lost Planet 2 are twenty times the size of what you found in the original. In fact, some bosses are so large you can actually fight them from inside their bodies…Eww… The demo we saw had the four players (yes, the game supports 4-player coop in the regular campaign) taking on a very large and slimy beast. Using team-based tactics, two players would shoot at the beasts protruding spike running down its back while the other two would climb inside and shoot the spike from within. This spike being its vulnerable point, of course.

Inside the creature, players were attacked by all manner of digestive juices and other creepy crawlies which aid in the beast’s digestion. It was gross and disturbing at the same time as being extremely cool.

Outside, the environments have come a very long way since the first game. Lost Planet 2 is the first game being developed using Capcom’s new engine framework and the refinements show. Blades of grass reacted to the gigantic beast’s every step. The small shockwaves generated by its gait and even being brushed past by the much smaller in comparison players.

Lost Planet 2’s main campaign is made up of six episodes, each with multiple sub-missions. In each of these episodes you will actually play as a different faction in the game world. However, in Tarantino-esque fashion, these episodes and their respective factions will crossover at times throughout the story.

While Capcom is focusing mainly on the singleplayer with coop modes at the moment, I did manage to find out the game will support some standard 16-player multiplayer modes as well although Baxter would not elaborate any further.

Baxter did say that character customization was being overhauled for Lost Planet 2 and that players could actually choose the weapons they want to be loaded out with at the start of their missions. Also, the vehicle system is being enhanced to better suit the coop mode with larger platforms featuring not only a driver’s position but also turret hardpoints for your buddies to man.

Lost Planet 2 is shaping up to be an excellent title from what I saw at Comic Con and I can’t wait to play it when it launches this fall on the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms.