In Project P-100, you’re trailed by a bunch of powered-up humans which you can control to do your bidding. Typically this involves running around and destroying robots and other undesirables using a number of techniques such as your standard bum rush attack (which is “free”) or any of three “power” attacks which depletes an energy meter. The reason the game is so often compared to Pikmin is that the way you control your allies is, well, precisely the same as Pikmin. You use the right stick to run them around in whatever formation you choose, and, somewhat uniquely, you can form a circle with them around other normal people to add them to your team.
The game doesn’t look bad by any means, though the demo wasn’t all that visually impressive to me. But the biggest problem was the power attacks and the means of invoking them. You’re meant to draw a small shape of some sort (a line, a right-angle arrow, or a circle) and then follow it up with a press of the A button to whip out whatever temporary power weapon (gun, sword, or giant fist) that corresponds to your gestures, but in my time with the game, it wasn’t a very consistent form of gameplay. I frequently ended up with the wrong weapon and resorted to drawing the shape on the Wii U touch screen (an alternate option), but that was distracting and seemingly pointless.
You can also collect fun little power-ups as you roam the levels and beat up on dudes, such as batteries which replenish and extend your power meter. As you roam the levels, occasionally some pretty cool eye candy sets up the next battle scene, such as a helicopter crashing to the ground in front of you.
Speaking of which, I should also mention that I had quite a lot of trouble differentiating my main fellow from the rest of my army much of the time as well. This is irritating and makes for difficult gameplay. I think perhaps that the rest of your followers should be rendered a particular shade of color or something of that nature to help mitigate this issue. For a point of comparison, Pikmin doesn’t have this problem as Olimar (and whatever other captain you’re playing with in Pikmin 3) looks entirely different from the rest of the squad.
I played quite a lot of the game and even reached the boss battle (I probably played around half of the boss as well). Safe to say, I didn’t come away all that impressed. I hope the game shapes up to be deeper and more interesting than what I saw at the show today. More than anything, I hope the kinks in gameplay are ironed out and things are easier to control, because I was a bit frustrated in the end.