Another Capcom game (yeah, I just got through watching Pulse’s coverage of Capcom Gaming Day..does it show?). This one is a cel-shaded 2D platformer that looks freakin’ amazing. And, as an added bonus, it has bullet-time!!
Day: March 31, 2003
P.N.03 (Cube)
New title headed our way for the Gamecube (initially) from Capcom. Here’s the official marketing gak:
P.N.03 is an action game starring a female soldier named Vanessa Z.Schneider, a laser-gun wielding, mech killer with a grudge to settle. A colonial settlement turns into a killing field after a CAMS (Computer Arms Management System) goes haywire on a planet. Vanessa hires herself out as a freelance mercenary who kills robots upon her client�s request � no questions asked. But, she has a dark past: CAMS killed her family and her plan is to get even. Players must dodge and weave through the heavy barrage of firepower on the planet while trying to blast the technologicalterrors into scrap metal.
Blah blah blah. But what’s sorta interesting is the style of our protagonist. She kindof dances her way through the game, doing all kinds of slick moves as she offs robots left and right. Kind of a feminine version of Dante in a way.
Gamespot’s Hands-on preview
IGN’s page (mostly insider links)
Cable Turtle
How cool is this? I love simple ideas that make life more manageable, even in simple areas like that tangle of cables under your desk: The Cable Turtle.
Lord of the Fire Lands
Last night I finished Dave Duncan’s Lord of the Fire Lands. This is one of his “King’s Blades” books, the first being The Guilded Chain which I told you about last July.
Like the first book, Fire Lands is an enjoyable read, though I didn’t like it quite as much. Part of that stemmed from the odd delivery…early parts of the book take place as flashbacks but when we catch up to the present it feels like the pacing changes in an odd way.
Also, though its “A Tale of the King’s Blades” it isn’t really about a King’s Blade. It’s about a Bael, the Baelish being “the enemy” in the first book. Bael’s are modeled on sort of a Viking theme, living on an archipelago complete with active volcano. They aren’t big enough to invade Chivia (where the King’s Blades live) but they harry the coast and strangle trade. Anyway, this book lets you see the war from the other side, so to speak (not that the war is the predominant theme in either book).
Lord, I’m rambling. Anyway, what was really interesting here is that the events of the two books aren’t in sync. Things happen in one that don’t in the other, and vice versa. My first thought was “What shoddy continuity.” but then I flipped back to the front and read a warning that we’ll see discrepancies between the two, and only reading the third will clear them up.
OK, I swallowed that, hook, line and sinker, and you can bet that my next book is going to be Sky of Swords!