When we last left Lost Planet, E.D.N. III thawed out into a jungle environment. Unfortunately, despite its attempts at building up a co-op action experience, it fell short in quite a few places. Capcom announced that not only is it going back to E.D.N. III’s icy terrain with the recently-announced Lost Planet 3; it’s also looking to put the series in new hands. In another case of East meets West, developer Spark will be taking the helm of LP3. Here’s the basics:

Lost Planet 3 will bring the series to the icy core that drove the first game. Capcom is looking to recapture those elements that made the first game such an appealing hit, and the look of the game certainly evokes the frost-bitten action of the 2007 title.

Jim Peyton is the game’s protagonist. He may be dressed a bit like a space marine, but Jim is a miner who’s on E.D.N. III to earn a big chunk of hazard pay to send home to his wife Grace and to care for their newborn son. It’s both his driving motivation for putting up with the bitter cold and a good push for you to step into his shoes.

During the presentation, we watched as Jim and others in the corporate mining hangar bickered back and forth about dangerous missions and discussed the numerous dangers that come from digging for profitable thermal energy. Within the hangar, Jim can accept missions and buy items before setting out into the snow.

The mission structure ties into things you saw in prior games. Those thermal posts that Wayne Holden used to tap into for T-ENG in the first title? Jim plants those. Jim will likely uncover other relics that’ll make sense if you’ve sunk several hours into exploring E.D.N. III. In the hangar, Jim encounters Gale, a mechanic who’s constantly tweaking and refining parts to build better machines. He’ll send you out to collect “items” to add onto machines, since we learned early in the presentation that the vehicles aren’t supposed to be weaponized.

It’s a Utility Rig, not a Virtual Suit. Your vehicle is a gigantic mining machine that can be upgraded with different “parts.” The utility rig is the biggest seen in the series to date, and it’s fully first-person as you drive it. You’ll also drill and mine for items in first-person while you explore the hostile turf. The HUD has a strongly sci-fi look as well; boasting warning signs for when Jim is locked into the cockpit and when he’s safe to hop out and explore.

The action is third-person and plays less like the style of previous games and more Western (read: over-the-shoulder targeting a la Gears of Wars and Dead Space). When Jim encounters creatures that pin him down (like Akrid dogs), a quick time event pops up, and you’ll have limited time to mash buttons, then aim the stick where you want to stab, and execute.

Lost Planet 3 seems to play up the human elements of Jim’s story. We don’t know how obtrusive it’ll ultimately come off, but as Jim drives the utility rig around E.D.N. III, you’ll occasionally see video messages of Jim’s family, to remind you why you’re there. The vignette we saw plays up his wife Gloria’s solitude and how much she misses her husband.

Loading screens take a novel approach. Rather than just sticking you with a screen of tips and flashing the word loading in the lower right corner, LP3 has video vignettes designed to give you more background on Jim. We’re not sure how often they’ll repeat, but it’s a different take on something most people take for granted.

There’s a slight survival horror element. During the demo, Jim set out to plant a thermal post. While doing so, he stumbled across an abandoned colony. That revelation completely contradicts the “virgin planet” story he’d been told while signing up for hazard pay. The colonial ruins are dark, quiet, and very tense. Is Lost Planet taking on the likes of Dead Space? This area definitely left us wondering…

The Akrid are back and very vicious. Fortunately, while the Akrid we saw during the demo would have destroyed Jim on foot, the rig allows Jim to lift the creatures and crush them or drill them into a nasty T-ENG-splattering mess. During a mid-level boss fight, we saw how Jim rolls and shoots to take out the worst enemies. Jim must battle a big, nasty tarantula/crab Akrid that’s covered in ice (which, incidentally, protects it from taking major damage).

Akrid boss fights are a different style. When Jim is in the rig, he can use the vehicle’s towing/gripping claw to lift up big Akrid and immediately expose their weakest points. That came in handy as Jim took on an even bigger tarantula Akrid. After exposing its weak point, the creature angrily rushed forward to attack the vehicle, though, fortunately, Jim hopped out and started blasting away at its underbelly. After it wrestled free, Jim jumped back into the rig, attacked it more, and repeated the cycle until, eventually, he was able to weaken the creature and drill its soft abdomen to slay it.

After that, a cutscene kicked in, in which Jim turns the rig to head back, when suddenly, two more creatures like the one he’d just fought popped up, then the camera scrolls backward to reveal another four lying dormant in the snow. As Jim flipped a few switches in anticipation, he said “next time, I’m asking for triple,” then the demo ended with the game title and release information. Look for it in early 2013.