If you’re weird like me, co-op isn’t always a big selling point. Why share all the kills and let someone else influence your progress through the story? If you prefer to lone-wolf it, too, then you’ll also be surprised by how incredibly appealing the co-op is in Lost Planet 2.

We recently tore through two pretty impressive missions as part of a four-player unit, and the experience definitely left us itching to dust off our grappling hooks and collect some more T-ENG. The sequence first took place along the roof of a speeding train in the midst of a pretty brutal sandstorm, which felt kinda cliché… until we noticed how tremendously fast the trains are moving. Yup, if you misjudge a jump at 300mph, you go splat with startling ferocity, but fortunately, the game seemed to be tuned smartly to make that happen reasonably rarely. As our three companions raced and grappled ahead along the train, an ornery streak led us to turn and poke around behind our starting point. That turned out to be a good choice: waiting at the rear of the train was a fierce-looking Vital Suit, one of Lost Planet 2’s many mechs.

We jumped in and stomped along the roof of the train, staying out of trouble by keeping our distance and sniping at foes with, um, miniguns as soon as we could see them. The VS was really a dominating presence, munching through mounted artillery and a sizable complement of enemy troops without taking a lick of damage, and eventually two of our teammates retreated for the relative safety of sitting perched on each arm of our VS. We felt like a walking Warthog, and it got really rad when our fourth squadmate found a chopper-like VS and provided air support. The enemy didn’t stand a chance after that.

Since this is a Lost Planet game, a boss battle was next, and it was a doozy. A monstrous Dune-like sandworm erupted from the desert ahead, but that’s okay — mounted to the train was an enormous gun our squad could use as a weapon. One of our foursome had to park in the turret, laboriously aiming and firing the gun, which moves very slowly and does damage only when it connects with the sandworm’s smallish red spikes.

The other three had a heap of duties to handle — primarily locating the huge shells the gun fires, carrying them to the front of the train, and loading them into the gun’s breech. But these players could also energize rounds so they did more damage, help the gunner aim more swiftly, pump coolant in the train’s engine room, or find a powerful gun or VS they could use to plug away at the worm.

We tried all of it, and between the variety, how fun each task was, and the level of coordination required between our mates, it was forget-to-blink fun. Unlike more run-of-the-mill co-op, Lost Planet 2’s grabs us because the game seems so expressly designed to keep four players entertained with their own tasks while working together as a unit. If you’re playing solo, Capcom says, the A.I. stays close and does what needs doing in response to what you decide to take on…which’ll be firing the freakin’ train-sized gun!