So, by now the Christmas ham has been well and truly polished off, the Christmas tree has been pulled down and the lights are packed back into their box as well. You've got some cash from your relatives and it's burning a hole in your pocket... Hmm, what to do with it? Buy an iPod nano, nah... spend it on the girlfriend, maybe... or rock down to your local games shop and pick up Lost Planet? Definitely!

Last year the single player demo took a lot of us by surprise. Lost Planet really snuck under the radar and I have to confess that I only downloaded it because of its small size (305mb). Being a demo it only gave a taste of what was to come, but the deep snow that crunched under your boots, the weather and lighting, the bug blasting action and the grapple gun had me hooked and when the multiplayer demo was released (only 170mb) it was downloaded by over one million Xbox Live members who could obviously see the potential in the game. Lost Planet most definitely does not disappoint. It has a couple of camera issues (not uncommon to 3rd person shooters) a story that appears to have suffered possibly a couple of translation glitches (hey I'm trying to be kind) but it is an excellent game with plenty of unique features to offer 360 owners.

In true sci-fi form the inhabitants of earth are forced to flee and set up shop on a brand new planet, the only issues are the freezing temperatures and a vicious breed of local alien critters known as the Akrid. Also to contend with are other humans (now snow pirates) who were left behind when everything got too hard for the humans and they abandoned their first colonization attempt. But now, in good old human fashion, they're back and neither the Akrid nor the Snow Pirates are going to stand in humanity's way of colonising this brand new (albeit frozen) popsicle of a world.

Surely everyone can all get along? Not likely, otherwise the guns in the game would be pointless! Lucky then that Capcom have given us the chance to wipe out an indigenous species with machine guns, shot guns, rocket launchers, grenades and Mechs known as Vital Suits or VSs. If that's not enough simply rip the grenade launchers or chain guns off the side of your VS and lay the smackdown Terminator style. However, as seems to be the current trend in many shooters, you can only carry two guns at a time, which you switch between with the ‘Y' button. The weapons are quite good and while the overall number isn't that high, an excellent feature is that the weapons on the side of any Vital Suits you encounter can be removed, as mentioned earlier, or replaced. Don't like the VS shotgun? Ditch it and replace it with the chain gun that you see lying in the snow. You can mix and match and while some VSs have fixed weapons points, the majority of them can be modified in this way.

As enemies, both Snow Pirate and Akrid, are dispatched they leave behind puddles of liquid thermal energy (T-ENG), a substance that's used to not only keep your own health up but also to power energy weapons and Vital Suits. The amount of this substance that you have is measured with your ‘T-ENG' meter and, when drained, repeals your ability to use VSs and shoot energy weapons such as the Plasma Rifle; nor will your health regenerate. Luckily there are silos of T-ENG to be found throughout most places on each map and enemies also drop it in abundance, once killed of course. It's handled quite well and the way that it works is quite good: if your T-ENG meter is getting low, it drives you forward to the next confrontation so you can top up, but at the same time it doesn't discourage exploration as there're hidden tokens to be found that unlock some specific achievements.

So as mentioned, the majority of action takes place outside, on the surface of the freezing ice ball of a planet that humanity is trying to settle on. The story puts you in the shoes of ‘Wayne', who is suffering from memory loss after seeing his father getting killed by one of the giant Akrid bosses known as ‘Green Eye'. Why someone would project feelings of revenge onto a big brainless bug is beyond me, but Wayne is determined to avenge his father. As you progress through the maps you encounter beacons that, once activated, display the map for that area on your PDA, but as the maps are fairly linear I never found myself getting lost or really needing to consult the map that often anyway. What the beacons really do is prepare you for multiplayer as they're used for the game's multiplayer equivalent of capture the flag.

As well as the weapons at your disposal, Wayne has one cool accessory that someone needs to invent for real. The grappling gun can be shot at ledges with the ‘X' button to help you access roof tops and other higher up parts of the level and is truly excellent. I guess I'm rather boring as I went through the whole single player game using it only for this banal purpose. Only after watching some videos of the game online afterwards did I realise that you can also fire it at enemies and Vital Suits and by holding down the X button you fasten yourself to your target which then lets you unload your weapon into them while staying inside their weapons range, or in the case of the bigger Akrid, inside the reach of nasty big stabbing claws! It's also available in multiplayer which adds a really cool 3D platformer element to the multiplayer maps and when jumping over the sides of some ledges with big drops it fires automatically and lets you either hang there or lower yourself by moving the L Stick down. Suffice to say, I loved the grappling gun and my only complaint against it is that it would have been cool to use the R Stick to swing but that's a minor complaint as it adds so much depth to the game.

The graphics in Lost Planet look great, actually better than great. Capcom showed us near photo-realistic zombie bashing in Dead Rising and continue the sharp graphics, realistic texture work and fantastic animations in this game as well. The snow covered, run down buildings are highly detailed and there are definitely a few moments where ‘Gears of War levels of graphical sweetness' strut their stuff. I'm not saying that the whole game comes close to the levels of detail and geometry from EPIC's super shooter, but there's no shortage of moments in Lost Planet where everything just looks amazing. The early levels feature the destroyed, snow covered buildings as mentioned and as you progress through the game you visit beautifully lit underground caverns that are infested with flying Akrid, mountain passes, a volcano and eventually a subterranean ruined city. It's almost impossible to fault the graphics of the game, everything looks that good. About the only major issue is that you cannot aim directly upwards, everything else is almost without flaw. The animations are fluid, the smoke, fire and weather effects are amazing, actually the smoke effects even top what we saw in Call of Duty 2, it looks that good. Top it all off with some quality A.I and you have an all round top game.

At a few points in Lost Planet you come across Boss Battles. These range from super impressive giant worms that must be on holiday from the planet Dune, a giant moth who's turbulence as it passes can knock you off your feet, a giant Akrid that must be blasted apart piece by piece until you find its week spot and eventually, well.. I'll let you enjoy the story and discover the final boss for yourself. When you do finish the single player story, 16 player action awaits you online.

At the moment, as is the case when you review games before they're released, there aren't many other Aussies with Lost Planet so I've been restricted to playing against Japanese gamers and it's great to see that there's never been any shortage of ranked games available to join. There are 4 game types available: Team Elimination (basically squad based deathmatch), Elimination, Post Grab (a multi point capture the flag setup that uses fixed beacons instead of flag carrying) and Fugitive which pits one player trying to escape everyone else on the server. This is easily the least played mode, mostly because I don't think many people really understand it yet but it does have potential and offers something different to the norm. Points are awarded at the end of each match (and medals) which add to your overall score and ranking. I've played almost 50 games so far and have hit Level 28, killed almost 300 people, earned a few achievements, unlocked some extra character skins and have been having a blast. I can't wait for more Aussies to get it as it's almost lag free and the on-foot mech action is definitely loads of fun.