Another game off the “to-play” stack, which is a good feeling.
P.N.03 was a game that got some pretty poor reviews, and I can see why at the same time I see good things about it. The main character certainly looks good, and the sterile / antiseptic play environments mixed with occasional futuristic cityscapes are very stylish, and that was enough to make me drop 10 bucks on the game when it went on clearance.
Music – also worth hearing. If you like the music in the new Battlestar Galactica series, the music in the later levels are very similar.
The actual playing part of it? Not so great. You look like a dancer, kind of move like a gymnast, but handle like a tank. There’s no shooting while moving, so you have to move, stop, aim, shoot, move, repeat. It just doesn’t feel right.
Also, it’s very easy to get bogged down in practice missions, that aren’t part of the storyline, in an attempt to buy new armor and upgrade it. The practice missions – very boring. I almost walked away from the game before I realized that the reason it was putting me to sleep is that I got sidetracked after the fourth story mission and I’d been doing nothing but repeat practice missions. Once I got back on track it got better, but I’m still glad it was a $10 game instead of a $50 one. I understand that, if you play through the game twice on the same save file (something like that, anyway) you get a really COOL suit of armor… I don’t think that’s reward enough for me.
I have the other members of the “Capcom 5” still on the to-play stack. It seems thematically appropriate to try another one next. Killer 7 maybe?
Edit: I have been mislead – to score the best suit in P.N.03, in the Japanese version of the game – beat it twice, done. Enjoy watching your character run around in a thong.
In the US and PAL versions, you have to do crazy stuff like beat the game in hard mode, finish all the side missions, blah blah blah. Why on earth?
