it's hard to get into but if you invest some time into it, you'll bring to life a simple, satisfying rhythmic shooter.
Introduction
P.N.03 is third-person shooter game developed by Capcom and released back in 2003.
It was designed by Shinji Mikami, the creator of 'Resident Evil' and 'Devil May Cry'.
P.N03 was announced along with several other exclusive titles for gamecube, including 'Killer7', 'Dead Phoenix' (which was cancelled), and 'Viewtiful Joe'; 'the Capcom 4'.
This range of games was intended to promote originality in game design.
This is a long review but I assure you it is comprehensive and there is very little padding. Also I don't usually write reviews, so it's not 'professional' or anything. I think it's less biased and much fairer than Gamespot's anaemic review of the game though.
Review
To start things off, P.N.03 doesn't really have a plot. There's no intentional narrative here. The back of the box will tell you that you play Vanessa Schneider, 'a freelance mercenary and robot killer with a grudge to settle'; apparently 'a colonial settlement on a distant planet goes out-of-control after a Computer Arms Management System goes haywire' and you're sent to 'sort things out'.
Aside from the futuristic setting and presence of robots, there are only a few cut-scenes; the one at the beginning simply introduces Vanessa, and from there on out cut scenes are used either to show you if you've completed an objective successfully, or as a reward for destroying some of the larger robot systems. Most of the cut scenes sadly aren't in real-time.
Your objectives in the game are described to you by your client; a mystery voice that you can't determine. This comes in the form of brief dialogue exchanges. The dialogue doesn't intend to flesh out any characters (though you do get an acrid taste of Vanessa's personality) or progress the 'story', but instead makes the game feel mission-based and communicates that there are specific objectives. It pads things out a bit, when there is ever only one objective: 'seek and destroy'.
The whole game is about running, dodging and shooting. The environment is a mixture of outside areas and inside areas. The areas outside simulate sandstorms and a weathered feel to the environment.
The soundtrack is a mix of drum & base and light techno with some distortion to it. The outside areas are supported by a denser more hollow sound that melds better with the special effects, lighting and textures. However, the sounds inside do not convey the isolation of the tight corridors and suffocating, sterile feel. So I assume the sounds serve the quick jogging movements and support the explosions to generate excitement. In this respect it works, but you can tell they were on a budget as it's not something I would listen to outside of the game.
The first area is outside in the desert, and the first thing that strikes you when you begin to move is the controls. You might wonder why she doesn't move how you would expect. The game maps specific animations to the controls, and divides movement between the buttons. The control stick doesn't allow Vanessa to be moved left and right; instead you pivot on the spot, this controls your main perspective, allowing you to plot a direction for Vanessa. Forward on the control stick triggers a jogging animation. The shoulder buttons allow you to strafe left and right, and back on the control stick flips Vanessa back in a jump. You don't get to see her from the front. 'B' is jump and 'A' is shoot, and 'Z' activates a quick, 180 degree turn.
There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this strange set-up on actions. I say strange because P.N.03 presents players with a conventional-looking game, but underneath the surface things are very different. It takes some getting used to and there is definitely some trial and error involved.
If you play through on easy it is not so bad and you can scrape through, but scraping through only gets you so far in the harder difficulties.
You will quickly realise that you have to play by the game's rules and learn the controls intimately before you can begin to appreciate the game or have any fun. This game isn't made for scraping through. You have to memorize your opponents patterns of movement and firing by dodging, spinning, jumping and cart wheeling at just the right times. This takes some time and you'll need to play through the game at least a couple of times to get the patterns down.
You are punished a lot for being hit; Vanessa is often pushed back or she falls over if she gets hit, and this feels really bad. You feel like you've been whipped or caned or something. There is a routine you need to learn and a disciplined attitude you need to take. You need to pay attention to the patterns of the robots and keep dodging.
You also need to use the 'c-stick' to change perspective and angle. This is of great tactical use. For example, if you are in a tight space and there is a robot just ahead and it fires a homing missile, you can gain a lot by just flicking the c-stick to see the trajectory of the missile from the left or right, and it makes dodging a whole lot easier.
Again, the cameras take some getting used to, but they work fine generally.
The routine and enemy-player pattern relationship I described above would be kind of pointless if you weren't somehow restricted. P.N.03 makes a physical division between shooting and moving.
You have to take advantage of windows of opportunity; for example, when the robots stop shooting to move back to their original positions, you should take advantage and shoot them. You are forced to learn the patterns and dodge and shoot and dodge and shoot, much like in space invaders where shooting and blocking is divided up. You come out from behind the bunker and shoot, then hide from enemy fire, then come out and shoot, then hide. This is how you play in P.N.03.
The play in P.N.03 is satisfying once you've learned it, and what makes it more fun is that the dodging animations are actually pirouettes and each time you dodge by pressing the trigger buttons, Vanessa's stance changes, so this makes moving fun and adds to the rhythmic feel. The animations are flawless in the game. They have weight and all feel very tight (they were all key-framed by hand; no motion capture).
It is a shame that the fanciest moves Vanessa has are part of the special moves. Special moves use up energy from a separate energy bar and are activated by keying in beat-em'-up style button combos. This is my major gripe in the game. The gamecube's d-pad is horrible and tiny and feels hard; it feels tacked on to the pad. So executing combos with this tiny pad is fiddly and annoying and never 100% accurate.
It works best if you execute combos exactly after a change in movement. So if you dodge, begin to key in the combo before the transition ends and that's how your success rate will be highest. Still, it is disappointing that you don't have more intimate access to Vanessa's movements.
It would be better if there was a third-party peripheral that had many different buttons so you could string together different movements with more depth and variation. However, the choreography wouldn't work then. That's right, special moves are choreographed to end when an enemy explodes; this makes it looks as if Vanessa is destroying the robots from the inside with her gyrations and articulations.
I thought the choreography was a very clever touch and something that has so much potential.
Another clever touch is when shooting with high automatic stats (the ability to hold 'A' to constantly shoot), parts of Vanessa's body will twitch and move while the player is shooting. This is very clever. How many games have you played where parts of a character move in parallel to your input in another section of the body?
The fancy moves that Vanessa is capable of learning are drip-fed to the player and connected to different suits (the suits all look very similar though). So to gain access to the suits you have to earn them by racking up points.
You rack up points by being perfect. Everything relies on your performance; destroy as many robots as possible, link combos, don't get hit, do it as quickly as possible.
There are no points for style strangely. This game is about efficiency and being quick and tidy.
While I like the idea of playing to become more expressive and gaining sexier, more awesome moves, the way in which it is implemented is very 'hardcore' and it's often down to grinding to get the most points, which is hard work and repetitive, but on the flip side you're getting better at the controls which is seemingly what the game is about.
I wish there were more animations and wish they weren't spread out so much.
My main overall criticism with the game is how conventional the rest of the environment is. Perhaps if capcom had a bigger budget they could explore how Vanessa might move in strange and unconventional ways with the inner space stations, but also in relation to the robots. The environment looks like it could come apart and move around.
Other criticisms are the cut-scenes, dialogue interruptions and doors. The game has the potential to be seamless and all about uninterrupted movement, yet it destroys this possibility by creating doors that necessitate a button press to bypass.
It would have been a whole lot better if capcom took a leaf out of Metroid Prime's book by storing the load times inside the doors, so when Vanessa approaches a door, she walks over a trigger and the doors could slide open.
The whole point of doors in 'Metroid' is to make it feel like an adventure game, but P.N.03 isn't an adventure game; it's more a corridor shooter; it has fast pacing and the environment should serve play & control while creating a particular feeling or state. There isn't really anything to 'explore' as such.
And you really don't feel much; it's a game quite absent of feeling. When things go right you feel fun and excitement and when there's a boss it's exciting, other times it's dull and frustrating. I didn't really feel anything else; but maybe the aesthetic suits this non-emotion. The tight and isolating corridors, combined with the trashy music and the inability to see any faces in the game instilled a numbness and absence of feeling in me.
What is good about numbness, aesthetically, is the ability for Vanessa to progressively gain more feeling and expression through the new moves, so this works on a bit of an abstract level. In practice, you have to play an awful lot to unlock the best suits.
Since there is no bonus for style, you can either play in an efficient manner; a speed-run like dash for the exit, or you can defy the game by being as stylish as possible and taping videos of your runs and putting them on YouTube or something.
The suits have an element borrowed from RPGs; stat-upgradeable suits. As well as the borrowed 'beat-em'up' conventions such as combos and command moves, the suits can have health, energy, defence, automatic, and offence upgrades.
Automatic is great and the more you upgrade it, the more flexible Vanessa's moves become, allowing you to hold down the 'A' button for automatic fire. Sadly, it becomes very powerful later on in the game, and while useful, it means the energy drives (the special moves) don't become as important. So the balance of the game tips here.
Some suits are more defensive and some more offensive, so depending on which ones you choose, you can take more hits or do more damage. I don't see much point in the defensive suits though, as taking a hit is so punitive that you're not going to want to invest in getting hit. However, later on in the harder difficulties you are bound to get hit as a result of the robots having a lot more health; this means you spend more time standing there and dodging, so it increases the chance you'll get hit.
The bigger robots also have some crazy ray attacks. The sound effects are nice and the visual effects look really pretty; they're often layered with bright and dark colours and feel soft and feathery. If you've played no more heroes it's the same style of effects.
The textures are so-so and a bit fuzzy, but the environment style is intriguingly built.
The game also has some very impressive bosses and robot designs. The robots are based on flowers and animals, but look like something from the front cover of Gradius and the way the move and are constructed is solid and interesting.
Vanessa herself is exquisitely built and rigged (prepared for animation). The game also has real shadows and some bloom (bright, enveloping light effects).
I would prefer it if the texture resolution was better on the environments though.
Conclusion
So all in all, if the game is supposed to be about neatness and efficiency, I don't like how the robots are destroyed and fall apart. They explode and twisted black metal flies everywhere, which is fine in a messy shooter, but p.n.03 feels so neat and cold.
The explosion animations take away from there being a perceived aesthetic 'vision' and unity, something games should really be thinking about by now. It is very satisfying to see a boss explode though, but this could be done in real-time.
Also, I don't like it being styled as an adventure-action game, when it's just a simple shooter. The dance-rhythm mechanics are great and define the game, but it doesn't need the cut-scenes or conventional level-boss structure.
Finally, the name, 'P.N.03' is annoying to say and to type. It's an awful game name.
The game would benefit from set-pieces and events that help tell the story through action, dance and movement. It would also benefit from larger robots that could perhaps transform out of the scenery or some interactive cut-scenes if it has to have cut-scenes.
Also, there is no tension between Vanessa and her enemies, while I think she has a lot in common with them. They are both robots in my eyes. There's nothing human in this game aside from you.
Some interesting ideas and technical achievements offer so much possibility, but in the end the game feels more like a training mission for a real game; a sort of obstacle course for the proper adventure. Still, there isn't anything like it. It's just a shame that the game is panned by critics and hated on by most of the gamers who've played it. Gamers and developers should look at what failed though, and try to understand why so they can pick the ideas up again and give it another ago in a different game.