In 2004, Capcom funded a new independent game company known as Clover Studio. Responsible for offbeat, critically acclaimed titles such as Viewtiful Joe and Okami, the company closed after shipping the perennial GAMBIT favorite God Hand in 2007. The key creative personnel went on to start Platinum Games, which clearly picked up the torch for remarkably stylish games, such as MadWorld and Bayonetta.

With this pedigree of mold-breaking innovation, what could have possessed them to develop... a space marine third-person shooter? At first glance, Vanquish doesn't really seem like a terribly novel concept. (Spoiler: A soldier in power armor shoots lots of robots.)

This Friday, we'll look at Vanquish against another Capcom game, one that predates Clover Studio but was developed under the direction of Clover's Shinji Mikami. P.N.03 was considered by many critics to be the worst (released) game of the Capcom Five, a series of Gamecube exclusives. Audience expectations for a blistering third-person shooter like SOCOM or Oni were confounded by P.N.03's tank-like controls, lack of guns, and emphasis on timed dodging and room-clearing scores. However, the game bears more than a passing resemblance to Platinum Games' latest outing, and by playing the games back-to-back, we talk about the ideas that survived or morphed in the 7 years between both titles.

4 to 5pm at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. There may be jokes about MIT graduate students.