P.N.0.3 Game Cube Review

Introduction
Set in a distant future where planetary colonisation has happened and is still being done, P.N.03 puts you in the role of freelance mercenary Vanessa Z. Schneider.
Because of the planetary colonisation the army has decided to put defensive weapons in charge of guarding the new planetary settlements, these robots are controlled by a Computerised Armament Management System (CAMS for short).
Soon things go bad when one of the settlements is turned into a killing field due to a CAMS malfunction.
It's up to Vanessa to destroy the CAMS and bring peace back to the planet.
P.N.03 was one of the Capcom 5, these were games that were suppose to be exclusive to the GameCube but were later ported to other consoles (Viewtiful Joe being one of them), P.N.03 was the only one that stayed exclusive to the GameCube.
The game also has a demo video of Viewtiful Joe on it.

Gameplay
P.N.03 is a very straight forward game and a very old fashioned one too, the reason I say this is because it follows the rules that most old games had, such as if it moves kill it.
The game is very easy to pick up and play and you will learn the controls easily, you press the A button to do a palm blast, this is the standard attack for the game and doesn't do much damage. B is the jump button you will jump in different ways depending on which direction you are going, for example if you are going forward you will do a cool Matrix style flip jump, same if you are retreating backwards. The jumping move is good for dodging enemy fire as well as getting you to higher platforms.
By pressing the shoulder buttons you will do a side step dodge, press it twice in the same direction and you will do a filp.
The Z button lets you do a 180 degree turn, the turning is like that of Resident Evil in a way but only quicker.
When there are enemies near by you will lock-on to them automatically to switch what target you are firing at press the X button, sometimes when there are multiple enemies around it can be a frustrating to lock-on to the one you want to fire at.
Sometimes you will run into holes and walls that are waist high the great thing about them is that you can use them for cover by holding the Y button, Y lets you duck, when you duck you can roll forwards and backwards, you can also do a side step duck by pressing both Y and either of the shoulder buttons.
Palm shot too weak for your liking ? Well this is where the energy drive gauge comes into play, by doing a certain input of buttons on the D-pad and then pressing A you can perform special moves that can help you destroy the enemies a lot easier and you don't have to worry about getting hit when you do these moves either because you are imperious to damage when you perform them, the moves are all different and they work in two ways, you have the energy drives that let you do powerful attacks that kill multiple enemies and you have the energy drives that power you up for a certain amount of time.
Try not to abuse the energy drives though as they come at a price, at the top left of the screen you gave two bars one is the Barrier gauge, this gauge is green and it acts as your life energy. The other gauge is the Energy Drive Gauge this goes down every time you use an energy drive move.
To refill you Barrier and Energy Drive bars you can pick up these atoms that come in two colours, green for barrier energy and orange for energy drive.
They also come in two sizes the small ones refill the gauge slightly while the bigger ones fill the gauges completely. There are also pink ones that give you extra continues in case you die.
P.N.03 isn't an easy game it takes skill to play and it takes skill to constantly dodge and kill enemies and there are all different types of them too.
When you kill enemies you get points and start a combo chain, the combos have a time limit that extends every time you destroy an enemy, the bigger combo you get the more points you earn. The points you earn in the stages can be used to buy new suits,upgrades and extra continues.
The game has about a 12 missions in total (it also has trial missions but they donÃ't have any importance besides being an easy way to get extra points) and they all involve you getting to the end of the stage by going through several corridors and rooms destroying robots and then getting to the stage boss.
After you complete a mission you get ranked on how well you did there are four ranks:
Amateur, Regular, Professional and Destroyer.
The game is fun but I have one really big problem with it, the games length, it takes 2-3 hours to complete, which is a problem if you are not one of those people who enjoys replaying a game. I suppose you could compare it to games like Resident Evil and Metroid which tell you how well you did when you complete the game so that you will go back and try to better yourself.


Graphics & Sound
The graphics aren't great but they're not bad either, but the game isn't eye pleasing in the sense that most of the rooms look the same.
As for the sound all can say is wow, the music in this game is awesome, so awesome that CAPCOM decided to put it in future titles such as Resident evil 4.

Summary
It's a decent game that seems to pay tribute to retro games with its simplicity. It' too short overall.

+Great sound track
+Stayed exclusive to the GameCube
+Easier to get into than most games.

-Horribly Short
-Palm shot will make your thumb hurt

7/10