Lost Planet, Lost Planet 2, Lost Planet 3, Lost Planet Colonies, and Resident Evil: Code Veronica X are all being doinked with the Xbox One backward compatibility wand today, Microsoft has announced (just not in those words).
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition originally released on Xbox 360 in 2006, and its sci-fi-infused, third-person shooting action was – according to creator Keiji Inafune – directly inspired by Bungie’s Halo. There was much to like about Lost Planet – most memorably, the striking sub-zero ambience of E.D.N. III, its ice planet setting, and its menagerie of frequently enormous enemy creatures – but its mission structure and shooty bits weren’t quite so compelling. As a result, Eurogamer awarded it an old-school 7/10 back in the day.
Later instalments in the series shook things up considerably, with the second game ditching the solitary exploration of part one, in favour of a somewhat more gung-ho four-person multiplayer adventure across a variety of climes. Unfortunately, reckoned Eurogamer at the time, Lost Planet 2’s shift in focus lead to an experience that struggled to make its action particularly gratifying for solo players, and was simply too compromised to consistently satisfy in co-op play.
“If a skilled video editor were to cut together the best bits of Lost Planet 2, you would end up with the most persuasive montage of gameplay footage in recent times,” said Kristen Reed in his 6/10 Eurogamer review, “Bombastic in scale and seductive in its epic ambition, it looks every inch the instant shooter classic. Sadly the hands-on reality tells a different story. Filled with hair-tearing moments of abject frustration that defy logic, mixed with fist-pumping moments of total exhilaration, it’s a quite bizarre game of two halves.”
And Lost Planet 3, a prequel nonetheless, elicited this opening sentence in its 4/10 Eurogamer review: “Lost Planet 3 is a tremendously boring game masquerading as a slightly interesting one.” Which is probably all you need to know.
Lost Planet Colonies, incidentally, is an expanded version of the first game, featuring new multiplayer maps, characters, and weapons, as well as a new Human vs Akrid mode. This edition is backward-compatible as of today too.
As for today’s final Xbox One backward-compatibility offering, Resident Evil: Code Veronica X, it’s a bit of a campy delight, cranking up the series’ B-movie schlock to previously unseen levels. Case in point, one section sees you, in the role of Claire Redfield, exploring a baroque, suitably sinister mansion. That’s not quite enough for Code Veronica, however; behind that mansion is (mild spoiler) another sinister mansion, even older, creepier, and gloomier than the last.
Code Veronica X (technically, Resident Evil – Code: Veronica X, if you can stomach that exuberance of punctuation) is the slightly expanded version of the 2000 Dreamcast original, which first came to PS2 then to Xbox 360 and PS3 in high-definition glory much later in time.
“This is a puzzle-heavy game – more so than the first three Resident Evils – and Capcom’s raw ingenuity regularly sparkles here,” said Simon Parkin of Code Veronica in 2011, “The cinematic shocks are just as effective today as ever, and even where the 3D models look outdated, the poised enemy animations help infuse these blocky cadavers with threat that still chills.”
“Beneath its off-putting anachronisms there is a worthwhile, menacing game,” he concluded, “for those with the eyes to catch it.”
If you still have the original Xbox 360 discs of any of the above games, you can just shove them in your Xbox One and away you go. Alternatively, if you’d like to turn your attention to the Xbox Store, Lost Planet Colonies, Lost Planet 2, Lost Planet 3, and Resident Evil: Code Veronica can be purchased digitally for £14.99 apiece.
