The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

P.N.03

That's "Product Number 03" actually, pronounced Pee En Three.

This game was released on Gamecube by Capcom, roughly a year after the Resident Evil remake, and especially when looking at that title, and considering that P.N.03 was made by the same dude, Shinji Mikami, you can't help but wonder, WHY!?
I mean, geez, did Capcom have a spare 10 bucks lying around and decided to make a game out of it?
Everything about this game screams "we want cheap cash!".

Let me introduce first: in P.N.03 you play as Vanessa Z. Schneider, a young mercenary woman who receives an assignment from a mysterious client, who of course wishes to remain anonymous, otherwise it wouldn't be mysterious now would it?, and sends her off to some remote facility to get rid of some big machines that are menacing the neighbourhood by playing loud music at night and putting out the trash one day early.

I won't spoil the rest of the story because it's rather stupid and I don't want to befoul my beautiful blog with it. It's like all those years of making crappy Resident Evil stories have taught Mr. Mikami absolutely NOTHING, because we're back to painfully stupid dialogues, with non-existent humor. They tried to give Vanessa an attitude, but only succeeded in making her annoying. It's obvious from the get-go that this is Mr. Mikami's attempt at making a new Devil May Cry, only with a hot streamlined woman instead of a Jackass with a Red Coat.
As it is, they only managed to get the hot streamlined woman right. Dante still had an amusing whit, BECAUSE it was slightly cheesy and I think he's aware of it himself.
And there's no mistaking he got the better game.

But I'll admit this much, sad Polygon worshipper that I am, Vanessa IS totally HOT.
I mean, WOW. I don't generally like short hairdoes on my women, but if you've got a body like this, DAMN YO. They went all out on Vanessa's polygon model and made sure she not only looked sleek, but also moves realistically, with Capcom's trademark high-quality motion capturing and everything. Even when standing still, Vanessa will be tapping her feet or snapping her fingers along with the rhythm of the adrenaline pumping music (Great soundtrack by the way, wish I could find some Mp3's) and when she runs her ass wiggles about in what can only be called pure poetry.
I mean, everyone knows I'm a Titman, but this is the finest Ass I've seen in awhile, which is sad since it's not even real. Still, you come over here and take a gander at Dutch women and you'll see why only Polygonised Asses can make me excited.

Also, a big point has been made of Vanessa's Battle Armor. There are about 10 suits in total, and they all look great! Great use of colors, very nice designs, and appropriately shiny and smooth.
The same kind of design has been applied to the environments. Everything is sleek, futuristic and above all, WHITE. Only on the rare occasions that you go outside do you get darker and dustier visuals, but they're not very interesting.
Well, actually, the indoor settings aren't very interesting either, but they look nice from a stylistic point of view.

The major problem here is that they are re-used Ad Nauseum. This is where the cheapness of this game really shows, cos you'll be running through the same kind of rooms over and over again.
You get 11 Normal Missions, and in between every mission you can do 5 trial missions, as many times as you like. You won't like to do them a lot of times though, cos they're IMMENSELY boring. The Trial Missions are basically missions where you have to clear 15 randomly selected rooms (all taken from the Normal Missions and repeated and repeated and repeated) to score points, which can be used to buy items and new suits, which can again be upgraded with added strength and extra skills.
You HAVE to do this if you want to get the newest suits, which are essential to your survival. This is extremely annoying, since the Trial missions are so goddamn repetitive and boring. Most of the time you'll be walking in a straight line, cos the game's very linear. Occasionally though, you'll get to a room with two exits (other than the one you came through of course) and the road splits up. This becomes annoying quickly, because you have to clear all the rooms, and by definition both doors lead to dead ends, you just don't know which the shorter route is. But you might end up having to backtrack 10 rooms just to get one room you left uncleared.
VERY annoying, since you need to clear them ALL to advance to the next trial mission, which earns you more points, which you need so desparately.
Actually, I found that if you play skilfully you only need to bother with the first 3 Trial missions every time, which are still easy, but should still earn you some decent pointage, but it's very boring anyway. Oh, and towards the end almost EVERY room is a fork in the road which makes exploring extremely tiresome.

The Normal Missions are enjoyable though, since they stick to linearism. They also tend to be extremely SHORT. It is more than likely that you'll spend more time with the boring trial missions than with the main adventure, which is just wrong.
Not until the 9th mission does the main adventure become longer and HARDER, but it's too little, too late and too annoying by that time.
Admittedly though, shooting and blasting all those robots can be a lot of fun. Extremely fast trigger fingers are sometimes required, as well as lightning reflexes to dodge out of the way of enemy attack. The L and R back buttons make Vanessa dodge in the corresponding directions and they are a LIFE SAVER, let me tell you that.
Most of the time Vanessa moves like a Drunk Tank and she's about as mobile as a Skyscraper full of Senior citizens, but the dodging ability helps a LOT.
Because of this, facing a lot of enemies can be confusing since the camera isn't always in the best position either, but, man, does it ever get frantic and insane action at times. And it's at these times that P.N.03 proves its worth by being a fun action-packed shoot-em-up.
It's just that these moments are too few and far between, and the fact that there's only 4 different kinds of enemy (more if you count different colors of course. What is this, a Square RPG!?) doesn't help either.

So what you get is a very repetitive, but fortunately short, experience, which does have some great action at times, flashy moves, and a main character who's very nice to look at. The shortness in this case helps, since it makes the game less bothersome to play through. If this had been only the Normal mission, it would have been CRIMINALLY short, but also less annoying, cos the main storyline is actually still fun to play through. It's all the stupidly boring Trial Missions that are so needed for points, that make the game into the chore that it is.

I give it a 7, rather begrudgingly, but it can be fun at times.
On the positive side, this game bombed hugely, so I don't think we'll have to fear a sequel, not even from Capcom. Yay!

posted by Ingen! @ 11:35 AM