P.N. 03

"Well, at least Vanessa looks good."

When I first saw the previews for this game, I said, ''Hey! This looks like goodness!'' Well, I was partially right.. One part of the game is goodness - and that's the menu screen with Vanessa, and that's barely scraping by.

*Gameplay*
It's a shooter, plain and simple. A third person shooter. But there is a difference. You shoot things, yes, and that's common, right? Guess what, though? You shoot things - out of your palms!
You run into a room, see a few enemy robots, and you have to decide if you'd like to go on an all out offensive, or do the cowardly thing and hide behind one of the many strategically (RE: All over the place) structures to park yourself behind.
The thing from which you draw your power from is a special suit - which can be powered up or changed, using the points you're awarded for destroying enemies or going through a room without being damaged. It's a pretty easy way to get stronger, right? Well, yes, if everything wasn't made for the Bill Gates type salaries of the world (Vanessa doesn't make half a million every time she breathes.)
Each suit SUPPOSEDLY has it's own stats, even though I don't see any difference in them, other than the amount of skin that Vanessa flashes. Some are made for offense, some for defense. Each has a different energy drive, or, a really big powered up version of your gun. It saps your energy every time you use it, and, guess what? If you run out of energy, you can use some of the capsules found around you to get it back up! Nice, no? Not really.
The enemies tend to gang up and hammer the living bejeebus out of you with their lasers of death. Guess what you have to help? The ability to crouch and do a cartwheel to dodge. It's not so easy to pull that off. Every time I try to dodge, it seems to do it too slowly, or either the enemies' attacks were sped up just to hit me. When there is more than one enemy and you haven't figured it out yet, you'll usually roll into some of the other attacks by accident. It helps, but not THAT much.

*Score: 7/10*

It could be that I'm not the most skilled at this game, but it just seems like everything was made just to spite you. (There are WAY too many one hit kill attacks, especially in the higher difficulties.)

*Control*

Is it easy to wail away on your enemies, while knowing what you're still doing? Or is this a button mashing fest of lasers flying out of your hands in mass pandemonium? Time to see!
You've got your life-saving dodge at your fingertips at all times, and your jump, crouch, and fire buttons are arranged in just a great way. It's easy to flow together dodging, shooting, and jumping together - if the stupid dodge performs the way it should. Blast you, move faster, Vanessa! Argh!
My only quiq about this is really the energy drives. It's essential to your survival in the higher difficulties, what with the large explosions and invulnerability. With every suit you use, the energy drive combination changes, and each suit has two of them. You use the D-pad to input a series of directions followed by the fire button. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but after you get used to one suit, it turns out to be pretty much okay.

*Score: 8/10*

A major strong point - those buttons just work fine 'old together.

*Graphics*

Oh, man. Oh, MAN, do my eyes burn! The people are the only things that look good about this - and Vanessa is the only person you'll ever see. And when she stops moving, she looks even worse than when she was moving. Not too good. Everything about this game is in a shade of gray. White, gray, black.. Almost everything. You'll see a shade of blue on every enemy or boss (Which follow the whole white scheme, too. They all seem too similar! @_@).
The environments are bland. Boring. Repetitive. Every room looks the same as the last one - and the one before, and the one before... Add a few walls and a pillar or so, and you have about the biggest difference from each one. I realize that whoever's building you're infiltrating may not be an expert at interior decorating, but at least add some other colors of the spectrum.
The saving grace, however, is the outside levels. There aren't that many, and they aren't the most beautiful things my eyes have ever laid themselves on, but at least they don't make me want to blind myself.

*Score: 6/10*

I really did try to gouge out my eyes with my old stuffed bear's foot. Desperation!

*Story*

Hooo.. Arrrgh... This is going to hurt. The start of the story is not mentioned. At all. Unless you read the instruction manual, and I think most don't. Even then, you only have two or three sentences as a synopsis.
Someone (I don't know who. No one does. You were hired by someone - but you don't know even know who's security robots your going to be destroying!) has stolen CAMS. What is CAMS? Some sort of robot thing, I think. It's supposedly what I fought at the end of the game - I don't know.
The cutscenes are just bits of scrolling text. Not too advanced. You get two CGI cutscenes. That's all. ALL! Whaa?

*Score: 1/10*

I believe pro writers lose at least 10% of their writing abilities after playing this and expecting some sort of story.

*Sound*

There really isn't a lot I can say for this, as I was pretty indifferent to it. The gun (laser) fire sounds just as I'd imagine it would, and the explosion of a giant boss robot is just peachy keen. The two cutscenes where there are actually voices, I hate with a passion. I was trying to place what, or if, Vanessa had an accent. Her voice seemed to keep changing. Once she seemed to be a New Yorker, then British, then plain Jane neutral American. She's a hell of an actor if she changes her voice on whim like that. The music isn't the worst in the world, but it isn't the best either. I didn't want to hum it, or beat my TV's stereo with a stick, either.

*Score: 7/10*

Doesn't make much of an impact, even if it's just for utter greatness, or downright atrociousness.

*Replay*

Uh. By the time I got through with it on Normal mode, I physically beat myself into submission of playing the first eight rooms of the hard difficulty. Was it hard? You'd better believe it. The standard enemy for the normal mode took me down in a single hit! It's not hard. No, it's, ''I'm going to go find a small squirrel and rip it's limbs and organs out slowly, to soothe this fiery rage I experience after touching the controller,'' kind of hard.

*Score: 5/10*

You really won't want to play through it a second time unless you're just a hardcore shooter fanatic.

*Final*

PN 03 isn't the worst game in the world, nor is it in no way the greatest. I had a decent time playing it the first hour, then I became bored and played through Viewtiful Joe another time. I'm not the biggest shooter fan, but I do like me a good one from time to time. This isn't one of those good ones. Wait for it to be in the bargain bin, if just to stare at the game's cover.

Gameplay: 7/10
Control: 8/10
Graphics: 6/10
Story: 1/10
Sound: 7/10
Replay: 5/10
Final: 5 (Average) 6 (What it deserves)

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/25/03