Product Number 3 (or PN03 as it’s better known) is one of the Capcom 5 titles that Nintendo signed up on an exclusive contract for the Gamecube. One of the was canceled, then picked up by Take Two Interactive and now resurrected in development for all formats. Killer 7 is yet to arrive as is Resident Evil 4, and the remaining two are this title and Viewtiful Joe making the five combo (now four technically).
I really wanted to like this game, its simple graphics, with sleek clean cut lines and monochrome shades are striking and sophisticated in so far as it is an “out there” type of graphical style. It reminds me of when I first played Rez and how it’s simplicity in graphical design struck me when I first viewed it. It’s nice to see designers taking original and mature approaches to graphics design in games.
The heroine is no Lara Croft, that is to say, she seems a very independent and nimble person, attitude and style exude from every pixel displayed on the screen from Vanessa. A man’s vision of the female body. Why can’t we have fat women in games? Or female midgets? You know what would be great? A fat black/Asian midget with a peg leg in a shoot em up.
Therein lies the premise of the title. It’s a shooter, a straight forward shooter in a 3rd person perspective. Forget the plot, it’s pretty irrelevant. The cutscenes are very very cool, this cannot be denied you think “great I have a character that’s good looking and nimble, I get to shake that booty!” well, not quite.
Vanessa’s controls are digital. This is slightly odd taking into account that I haven’t played a game with digital controls for a long time, and is usually the stable for straight forward twitch shooters that scroll vertically.
You sometimes get the feeling that the developers ran out of ideas with the game. It soon becomes a repetitive ramble
The problem with the controls is they’re not unresponsive, just uninterruptible for the most part. Take for example strafing right, there are too many frames of animation making your character slower than the enemy by a long way, and sometimes meaning that even if you do strafe you still get hit by stray fire. To be honest, I guess this problem only affected me at the beginning as you get further you understand the patterns of the enemy and can pretty much outfox them in moving around. Its disappointing to have digital controls, but for the type of game it is I guess it makes sense.
You sometimes get the feeling that the developers ran out of ideas with the game. It soon becomes a repetitive ramble of going into the same looking room killing off more numbers but the same looking robots, and then moving onto the next room. And repeating the procedure. The game is pretty much stop and start and continues in this vain.
On occasion you find you can play outdoor levels, which look nice, and add a touch of variety with more freedom to move around instead of being confined to a narrow corridor. But the gameplay is repeated.
On one level it is a good shooter and is ambitious in its choice to make a game so linear so short, yet so striking, On another level it is only a shooter, it is linear and damn short. It seems PN03’s positive features are also its flaws.
Vanessa does come with some special features – each suit is upgradeable making firing rates faster, more ability to take damage and so on. Special moves are purchasable and spectacular, as you watch Vanessa pirouette her flexible body in and out, glowing with a fusion reaction emanating from her suit to conclude with a huge bolt of energy destroying the room of enemies. When Vanessa does move, it’s balletic rather then robotic, and yet the controls fail to reflect this.
Why can’t we have fat women in games? Or female midgets? You know what would be great? A fat black/Asian midget with a peg leg in a shoot em up
For all its failings, there is some replayability. The Trial Levels were an interesting idea, providing a break and non-penalty levels for gaining points to upgrade you character, at the same time allowing you to practice your skills through 15 rooms.
I found it amusing to see that as your character’s suit becomes more powerful as you upgrade, they also provide more viewing of the flesh. It seems a shallow and feeble attempt at a man trying to recreate his fantasy – it’s aesthetically pleasing, but it’s a bit “air brushed” as it were. I would like to play a character that;s flawed at some point, though we are probable many years away from that.
For all its failings, PN03 could have been a really great game, as it stands its above average. Its great in short bursts but long hours will cause boredom. Treasure’s amazing Sin & Punishment on the N64 is a superior game in every way, and I guess I saw PN03 as that equivalent, but it fails short by miles. I’m glad I only paid £14 for it!
Verdict: A Capcom 5 title, let down by snappy controls and repetition. Rent or buy cheap!