Sunday, November 9, 2008

Straight Story

Shinji Mikami is a bit of an enigma among his game developer peers. Sure he is most famously known as the forefather of Capcom's Resident Evil series but in between each high-profile RE game that he worked on, comes a rough diamond like Godhand and PN03 which i happened to be playing right now on my Wii. For a developer of his calibre, it's certainly surprising to see the level of polish in these games in fact, mikami himself often lamented about how he should have spent more time polishing up and promoting these titles.

I remember when i was looking for Godhand with my friend in Singapore and he kept asking me if it was a good game. Worse when i eventually found a copy of it in one of the stores, even the shop assistant who was attending to me, leaned over to ask if this game was any good. Understandably, i ended up not buying the game from that store. Godhand a fighting game that may or may not have been made from the re-used asset and engine of mikami other hit, resident evil 4 caught gamers attention for the wrong reasons when it scored a lowly 3.0 from IGN. I happened to like it because of it's intuitive dodging system and memorable soundtrack composed by the legendary maestros at Grasshopper manufacture.

PN03 was the first of Capcom Five out of the gates and unsurprisingly the only one that was not eventually ported to the ps2 due to its poor critical reception and lukewarm sales. It has the same diamond in the rough feeling as Godhand where presentation are kept to a bare minimum and it's all about the gameplay. The game doesn't take you by the hand and simply thrust you straight into the heat of the action. I was a little caught off-guard by this but have a feeling i'm going to like this as much as Godhand...

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