Lost Planet: Trag Zero

For all the talk of immersive 3D mobile games, there's still plenty of mileage for titles that work within the natural limitations of most handsets that people actually own right now. Particularly when it comes to action-adventures, and even more particularly when it comes to those based on console games.

See, the best action-adventures on PlayStation 2 or Xbox 360 aren't just about the 3D environments. They're about the pace, the onslaught of lots of enemies, and the excitement. Which is arguably something that for now is still best attempted on mobile by going 2D. Forget trying to capture the look of the original console game and go for the feel instead.

Meet Lost Planet: Trag Zero. It's a case in point. On Xbox 360, it's a stunning-looking third-person shooter. On mobile, it's... a top-down 2D game that's most reminiscent of THQ Wireless' Destroy All Humans or Lego Star Wars. So while forsaking the luscious looks of its big brother, Capcom has instead tried to keep the splatter-quota high to provide an entertaining mobile companion piece.

The basics? You're on the eponymous Lost Planet – presumably your inter-planetary satnav took a wrong turning – and have to battle through nine stages worth of alien beasties, including some facehugger-style 'Akrids', which scamper round the screen attracted by your body heat.

Temperature has a big role to play in Lost Planet, actually. Besides the regulation health bar, which declines and recharges according to how well (or poorly) you kill off the aliens, there's also a temperature gauge to take into account.

It steadily falls as you wander around the planet's surface, and can only be recharged by collecting the heat energy given off by the dead aliens. There's strong shades here of Destroy All Humans, which also has you collecting stuff from slain enemies. In Lost Planet, the temperature has an important effect on the gameplay though, forcing you to dash in to collect the energy even when in the midst of an alien melee.

We'll be honest: Lost Planet isn't a looker by any stretch of the imagination. The main character is tiny and not particularly well-animated. The level scenery is functional, but hardly breathtaking. And when you chuck a grenade or fire a rocket, you don't see it in flight – you just see the explosion. For the first 20 minutes that we played the game, we were convinced it was rubbish.

Then we got into it. Lost Planet is more of a shoot-'em-up than an action-adventure, it turns out. The levels are sprawling, and you spend much of your time buzzing around the screen laying waste to enemies, rather than solving puzzles or exploring secret shortcuts. And taken on that level, it's more addictive than you first expect.

There's a touch of Mafia Wars Yakuza in the way your character auto-fires at the touch of a button, enabling you to concentrate on dodging out of enemies' way while spraying them with bullets. Regular weapons crates let you upgrade your firepower, and the inclusion of some dirty fat boss aliens (the first one, a big spider, gave us a fright when it popped up) breaks up the basic gameplay nicely.

Lost Planet still isn't a great game. It could do with bigger characters like Mafia Wars Yakuza, at the expense of on-screen level scenery, and there's little incentive to replay once you've hacked your way through the last level. But it's one of those mobile games that seems initially unimpressive, but gradually seizes your attention.