Getting Vanessa Z Schneider Through a Door

Vanessa Z Schneider appears out of thin air. She's an unwelcome guest on "colonized planet Ode".

She's immediately greeted by a pair of guns-on-hovercraft robots, and they are not friendly. She remains unfazed, however, and continues to nod along to a spot of drum & bass.

The robots open fire, but Vanessa stays rooted to the spot, confidently allowing the shots to harmlessly whistle past her. She continues her head-nodding. More lasers, but this time she takes evasive actions, and effortlessly executes a back flip. She lands and resumes head nodding. She spins left, then pulls off a side-strafe scissor kick that would put a less balletic hero in the emergency room. Still nodding, lost in the music.

Finally, she goes on the offensive, firing a deadly barrage of lasers from her palms. Big explosions, and then robot guts scattered over sand dunes. Vanessa strikes a pose, and the opening movie ends.

Everything effortless and graceful.

Then I take over, and it all goes to shit.

You can't move and shoot at the same time, and it's near impossible to manipulate the camera while you're moving. The yellow nub on the GameCube controller will nudge the camera very slightly, but it offers great resistance and is better off ignored. To pull off special attacks you must awkwardly shift from the analogue stick to the d-pad, and I find that the inputs work about 40% of the time. If P.N.03's combat is a dance, you're participating in welly boots.

Also, your head has been fused to your spine.

If you leave the title screen idle, you'll be treated to an attract mode featuring Vanessa wiggling her arse and other body parts, as the camera loops around her, like some cursed early-2000s R&B music video. She dances and she prances; she teases with rhythmic gyrations. And it's nothing but a tease, as you'll never recreate those smooth moves in-game.

I can barely get her through a door, let alone make her arse cheeks dance. Anything that requires precise movement is a massive ask, given the tank controls. Leaving a room via the door requires a surprising amount of time and effort. You must line yourself up with the door via careful, incremental movements, before committing to forward momentum and hoping for the best. More often than not, I reach the door slightly off centre and bump into the frame, failing to trigger the next room. So I have to retreat and try again. 

I'd hate to see her attempt to get on an escalator.

P.N.03 (Product Number 3) is a third-person shooter from the olden days (2003). It was one fifth of Capcom 5, a collection of titles developed by Capcom Production Studio 4, all of which were initially intended to be GameCube exclusives. Only P.N.03 remained true to that original premise: Resident Evil 4, Viewtiful Joe and Killer7 all eventually went multi-platform, and Dead Phoenix never saw the light of day. P.N.03 was directed by Shinji Mikami, which explains the tank controls and many of its peculiarities. It has been suggested that Vanquish is its spiritual successor, the ultimate realisation of what P.N.03 was striving for, and I can certainly see that.

P.N.03 walked so that Vanquish could run. Or, more accurately, it walked awkwardly so that Vanquish could slide on its knees.

I currently have my spice orange GameCube hooked up, and have been clearing one mission per evening. I was initially horrified by P.N.03, but it has since grown on me. It's unforgiving, repetitive and a bastard to control, but once I'd gotten my head around its limitations, why they exist and how they should inform your approach, I started to enjoy it. 

To succeed, you must rely on precise angles and timing, and approach each confrontation defensively and rhythmically. Find cover, peak out with a strafe, fire off some lasers, retreat back to the safety of an alcove - crouch, jump, flip, side-step, and then do some d-pad gymnastics to trigger a special move. You must think ahead, planning your actions around a purposely limited move set, and approach it like an old arcade game, or a shoot-em-up transposed to 3D. Only then does it start to make sense.

Yes it's awkward as all-fuck to control, and the fluidity of movement teased in the opening cinematic is unachievable, but P.N.03 has a ton of personality, and it rewards patience and dedication. I'm currently about half way, and as long as I can coax Vanessa through the remaining doors, I reckon I'll see it through to the very end.