What prompted this topic to get posted? The game's out since quite a while!
I bought it when it was new, and it's decent if not spectacular. A few faults keep this from becoming a really good game, and a few more keep it from being a classic. It's still good though, when one learns to work around the faults.
First off, this is definitely a bit of a rush-job. There are many rooms the player visits again and again and again. Especially in the training missions which are only there to extend the game to some extent and serve as a money-making option so the suit can get upgraded. This is where the game shows pretty clearly to be a pretty cheap rush-jobbie. Rooms are simply strung together without any real pattern to them. None have any particular function, and the story - told through text dialogs on a static screen - is simpler than that of some SNES games!
The training missions are rather unexciting themselves and unlike the regular missions, laid out in a non-linear fashion so there can be (lots) of backtracking through empty, already cleared areas which adds tedium to the process. There is no map in the game, so you have to remember which intersections you turned left, and go right next time before leaving through one of the several exit-points. Unless all rooms are cleared you won't get the 'professional' rating and thus extra-large end-of-level bonus.
The rooms themselves vary from very simple to actually quite complex in appearance, the design style is almost always consequent and rather neat actually. Most everything looks to be made out of some shiny, white plastic or something.
There's a specular map on many surfaces, and the geometry detail is quite high, but the game isn't near as optimized as Metroid Prime and only runs at 30fps with slowdowns at some points. Textures are often rather bland due to the shiny white brightness of most rooms, and there's lots of ugly color gradient artifacts too (probably 16-bit framebuffer).
On the plus side are - as mentioned - the nice geometry and well-thought-out and consistent designwork, more than decent special effects and some neato particles as well amongst other things. ...And, the gal you control too, heh. She's a work of art, and have some rather nifty moves - which unfortunately are a squandered opportunity!
One of the things holding this game back is the control scheme and the way you constantly have to fight it in the beginning before you learn to work around the limitations to get your on-screen persona to do what you want.
The sticks on the GC gamepad are analog, but the controls in this game are hopelessly digital for some completely incomprehensible reason. There are two modes of locomotion while upright: standing still or running. You can run in only a few directions; straight ahead or diagonally. This is no Mario64 with finely graded angles, oh no! All jumps are the same length and the same height. No short hops and no long vaults. Capcom animated this gal to have all these dance-like moves, but you can't actually USE them properly due to the wooden control scheme. When you side-step out of cover, you have to wait for your girl to finish her pose before she will actually start firing on an enemy, so good timing inbetween enemy attacks is essential. Also, you can't start inputting your special moves while she is moving or posing, she has to be standing still for the attack to trigger (and sometimes it still doesn't work).
There is no Z/R-button-like lock-on a la Zelda or Metroid, you have a targetting feature sure, but there is no actual circle-strafing as such in this game which complicates things further with the very digital-like controls. The final complaint is that while you can buy new "clothes" for your babe (hm, suits, really), none of them actually looks any different from the one you start the game with. All that differs are the colors of it, and some of the color schemes are pretty sucky. This also tells of a rushed title.
Graphics is a plus. Sound is a plus; while the explosions and weapon sounds are pretty standard (and there aren't any ambient sound effects eiher), the techno background music is actually rather good and watching a hot babe wag her tight butt in time to the beat of the music isn't all that bad, hehe! The fights themselves can get intense with the combo system; you want to wipe out as many of them as you can within before the combo timer runs out without getting hit yourself for a no damage clear room (though predictable too, since you meet enemies in pre-determined waves so you learn the patterns pretty quickly).
I've mentioned the negative stuff already, the repeating rooms, the quirky control scheme etc, so I would say, that on my own personal 0-to-20 scale with 10 being a truly average title which is neither bad nor spectacular in any sort of way, I'd rate this game about 12 (which on a standard percentage scale would mean like 80%!
). If one preserveres and learns how to use the controls it can be a really fun game, especially after upgrading to a better suit and powering that up to the max.
*G*
