Too Little, Too Late

So I just beat P.N. 03 (Product Number 03) and I have to say, I'm disappointed.

I bought the game because it was part of the Capcom 5, and I didn't think a highly-respected publisher like Capcom would let me down. But they did.

I won't get into all of the depressing details, if you want those you can check out P.N. 03 in the Reviews section (that's right, I inaugurated the section with this awful title). But I will give you a quick breakdown.

The audio in the game is awful. There are only 2 scenes with voice acting, and I wish there weren't. The game is supposed to be a dance/dodging based 3rd-person shooter, but the dance music also sucks.

There is no story or plot.

All of the levels are terrible. I have designed better levels in Game Design class using Source. Those were classroom levels. Classroom levels beat this shooter.

The combat is boring, the gameplay is repetetive, and most of the dodging techniques are not needed. The more powerful special attacks are fun for a few levels, but don't last long. Charging forward wildly and launching the Griffin attack kept me happy for about 20 minutes.

The bosses were lame, the regular enemies were lame, the AI was shoddy. You're supposed to rack up points to buy better suits and upgrade them. Usually I'm a sucker for RPG elements like this, but I bought as few upgrades as I could to beat the game. I never do that. This game turned me off that much.

The main character didn't turn me off. She's pretty hot actually, possibly the hottest video game character I've seen. They try to use that to your advantage, by making the final suit you unlock by beating the game on hardmode a highly-revealing outfit. I didn't fall for it, you shouldn't either.

There were a few more engaging levels and a few more difficult bosses near the end. There was also an interesting room or two. But these were the types of things you'd expect as the first level of a normal game, not as the final and best a game had to offer.

Supposedly the final boss is really hard, and takes lots of practise, patience, and timing. I just tapped A faster than usual and killed it in about a minute. Here's its sorry mug.

Next time Capcom, play the game before you publish it.

- Scott