Introduction
With Gamecube sales being pretty lackluster and the game library stagnating, Capcom felt like it was up to their crack team of developers and idea-men to come up with an amazing line-up of games. And that's where the idea for the 'Capcom Five' came to fruition. Working under reasonable tight time constraints, limited resources, and hoping to revitalize the Gamecube, Capcom decided to come out with five console exclusive titles for the Gamecube and to give it a more varied library of games...and it mostly worked out. Except only four of the titles actually came out, and only three of the titles were actually good, and maybe only two of the titles were varied and different...and only one of the titles stayed console exclusive. That title, and abomination, is what we'll be looking at today.
Released in March '03, P.N. 03 was not meant to be a launch title for the Capcom Five but all the other games were behind schedule and realistically it was the only title far enough alone to garner releasing. Not to say it was a finished title by any stretch of the imagination, but it was playable and could be finished. Now the game had some pretty strong clout behind it with the director being Shinji Mikami (known for Resident Evil and Phoenix Wright) and it had an interesting idea of creating a very straight forward action title with a strong female protagonist who created an inner rhythm to keep in tune of the music of intense combat, but instead what was released was something much different. With only a handfull of different environments, repetitive and simplistic enemies, a half hearted soundtrack, awkward fan-service, and a non-existent plot; P.N. 03 had it's fair share of problem and as such hopefully you'll have fun in joining me as we venture forth to find out more about this mostly maligned title from the Gamecube.
Our main protagonist, and half of the characters in the entire game, Vanessa Z. Schneider is a mysterious merc who wishes to avenge her parent's death at the hands of the evil robot forces and is attempting to stop their reign on terror on a distant alien world. At least I think that's mentioned somewhere in the manual; for the most part she is a dancing, laser shooting maniac who murders anything that gets in her way while snapping her fingers to an invisble beat and being snide in codec calls.
The only other character in the game, the even more mysterious Client is the one that hired Vanessa to go avenge her parents and take down the evil robot overlords. Also they trade witty and snide banter in between stages, or whenever Vanessa needs to be told to avoid lasers. But is there some more sinister themes lurking underneath the Client's non-existent visage? Only time will tell...
Videos
| Part 01 | YouTube |
| Part 02 | YouTube |
| Part 03 | YouTube |
| Part 04 | YouTube |
| Part 05 | YouTube |
| Part 06 | YouTube |
| Part 07 | YouTube |
| Part 08 | YouTube |
| Part 09 | YouTube |
| Part 10 | YouTube |
| Part 11 | YouTube |