In an interview with Eurogamer, Keiji Inafune, the well-known creator of the Megaman and Onimusha videogame series, has revealed details of his latest Xbox 360 title, Lost Planet. He couldn't hide his admiration for Microsoft's next-gen console and even said: We've probably only hit about 60 per cent of the Xbox 360's potential. He also went to brush off comments that early titles haven't lived up to the pre-launch hype, and went to defend the console, The more years you study a platform, the better you get. Some of the games you'll see in three of four years will be truly amazing.

Lost Planet is a science-fiction action game based on an entirely frozen planet. Having a similar camera angle to Resident Evil 4, it swaps between on foot and mech based gameplay, and showcases some very impressive weather effects. It's said that the setting is based in part on John Carpenter's The Thing. It is due for release in the US in early 2007.

Inafune and his development team wants to make sure that they were using the hardware to its fullest potential. It won't just be about stunning graphics. They have to mean something. As Lost Planet is about a frozen planet, managing thermal energy plays a key factor in the game. The energy gauge is affected by the weather, which the team spent long hours realizing on-screen. Inafune explains:

If you're out in the cold and the wind, the speed at which you utilise your energy will quicken. If you're out of the cold, you don't need as much of this heat energy to power your vital suit. So there are a lot of different strategic elements. You're going to have to plan which areas to go through based on how much fuel you have, and of course killing enemies will yield more fuel so you'll have to ask yourself if it's worth fighting them to get more, or just to let them go.

The team released a two-part demo on Xbox Live Marketplace during E3 and the first impression was that it's quite easy to remain alive despite the massive dose of ammo being thrown around. Inafune explains that it's a standard practice not to make the demo too difficult that people are dying in 30 seconds or so. It wasn't deliberately made it easy but apparently Westerners find the game too easy, whereas Japanese find it quite hard. And that's where the balancing act come to play. Who knows, we can probably expect some adjustments in the game to suit the West's penchant for difficult games.

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