Lost Planet 2 hitting PCs in October with DX 11 support

Can you see the extra pores?

Despite its "underwhelming performance" on consoles, Capcom is continuing with its plans to bring Lost Planet 2 to PC, and fortunately, with many treats.

Savvy gamers know Capcom has had a dedicated PC team these past few years which build games for the PC on the excellent MT Framework engine, port them to consoles, then focus on the PC version once those guys are taken care of. Games like Street Fighter IV and Devil May Cry 4 are some examples of their fine work -- just check out our gallery featuring these titles and also the original Lost Planet (the latter was not built on the same pipeline) for evidence.

Lost Planet 2 will be continuing in that vein of quality and pushing the boundaries farther, too, offering support for DirectX 11, and also NVIDIA 3D Vision and 3D Vision Surround tech. DX 11 support brings "lifelike volume and depth" to smoke, more realistic water which reacts to players and bullets, and more detailed bosses. The screenshots below feature said enhancements as compared to DX 9 mode, in addition to some solitary DX 11 selections.

The game hits October 15, but if you just can't wait, you're in luck -- a benchmark has been released. Unlike most benchmarks, this one seems to give completely accurate results as the first test is based off of raw gameplay, while the second is there to "push the PC to its limits and to evaluate maximum performance." Give it a try via nZone or GamersHell, but check out the system requirements below first.

Update: on a low/mid-range rig (Athlon X2, Win7, 2GB RAM, 4830 512MB), we were able to push an average 65fps in DX 9 mode, switching AA off, V-Sync off, rendering to low, and shadows to low (textures remained at high, motion blur was left on).

This put a minimal hit to graphics (quite lovely, by the way) while providing optimal performance. Rendering (which provides that extra shine) was the biggest hit to performance, taking us down nearly 20fps from low to medium, and 25 from medium to high. The game was still very playable with an average 42fps. Alternately, with the aforementioned settings, shadows or AA could be taken up one notch to still about hit the average 60fps barrier.

Below is a video from Techgage testing each mode. The differences are by no means massive, but certainly welcome. DirectX 11 does seem to eat FPS a fair bit, however, though this shouldn't be a problem for those with top end gear. Keep in mind to ignore the on-screen info -- the video was recorded with FRAPS which takes FPS down quite a bit.

Capcom was truthful in saying the first test is accurate -- results were perfectly in line with FRAPS measurements. The second lives up to its word, too -- it more than halved our FPS compared to the first test.

* indicates same requirements as previous equivalent value