Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble

"It tried, it really tried..."

Viewtiful Joe is perhaps one of the coolest recent franchises around, owing to the fact that the games are like Super Mario Bros. and Super Smash Bros. squished together in peaceful harmony. What you do in the games is use your movie-inspired super powers to save the day and reveal plot twists the size of your older cousin on Thanksgiving day.

However, in Red Hot Rumble, the series moves into the anime continuity, which as you might guess, is a very bad idea. Scrapping Super Mario Bros. from the equation, it goes into a mission based Super Smash Bros. clone of epic proportions. If only it didn't trip on the wires strewn about the movie set.

Story: 1/10

Perhaps the most horrible story ever designed by the giants at Capcom. The legendary hero/director Captain Blue is retiring, and needs to find the next big hero out of Joe, Blue Jr., Silvia, Jet, Alastor, Sprocket, and oddly-enough, himself. What's the point of retiring if you consider yourself? Anyway, Sproket, convieniently enough, pops in and reveals an awesome idea of having everyone beat the snot out of each other, without using stuntmen, to determine who is the new lead.

Sounds great, right? Wrong. After everyone is decked up in their "Henshin" modes (Viewtiful Joe, Captain Blue Jr, Sexy Silvia, Blade Master Alastor, Emperor Jet Black, and Captain Blue), they decide to do the fighting on the set and just save time by rolling the film without really deciding on the lead role. So basically you just beat the snot out of each other for no apparent reason.

The only real problem is that the sets themselves have terrible stories, and frequently break the fourth wall. At one point, you film a freaking anime. However, the pop-culture references are enough to stave that horrible breach in security off.

Of course, in typical VJ style, there is the mother of all plot twists added on to the end. VJ is cool like that. Unfortunately, it is the worst plot twist of all. I won't spoil it, but it basically sucks majorly.

Control: 8/10

The control is pretty tight for this game, as you would expect. Hit, Jump, Special, and VFX. It's all here. Very simple and easy to understand.

In the mini-games, though, it all falls through the roof. The controls are unresponsive and fall into a Mario Party Spiral of Doom. Not good.

Concept: 4/10

This is where it falls to hell. The idea is to complete a mission with a better score than your buddy. That's the whole point. You can fight, but it is rarely encouraged. Which basically sucks.

Each player has a small health bar and score. By grabbing junk and hitting stuff, you get coins, which add to your score. By getting hit, you lose coins, and therefore score. Think Coin Mode in Super Smash Bros. Melee. If you die, you lose a motherlode of coins, usually enough to put you in last place.

Now, here's what you are supposed to do. In each scene, you are given a series of missions to complete, either killing enemies, collecting jewels, or capture the flag. That's it. Only three real varieties of missions. For the boss enemies, the person who lands the killing hit gains a "Viewtiful Bonus" of 500 points on the results screen.

By attempting to accomplish said missions, you gain result points. When time runs out, the points are tallied, and the person with the highest amount gains 1000 coins. A lot. As you might expect, the best player will easily be able to complete the most missions and therefore get the best score and win very easily. Very unbalanced, very unfun.

Now, what about the other players? You could attack them. You can. It's just you are encouraged to ignore them and complete the current mission you have. And there's no point to attempting to kill them. By the time you do, time will run out, and the next scene begins, and at the start of every scene, everyone is given full health. Not exactly my cup of tea.

By now, the value of the game has been sapped considerably. But it gets worse: the VFX powers. Normally the VFX powers are the greatest thing known to God. In this game, they become either Godmode or they just suck. Let's begin.

Slow is a Godmode kind of thing. It slows everything down but yourself so you can cause mass destruction with your increased attack and apparent invincibility. But that's not the real reason you want it. The reason you want it is so you can grab the other free-floating VFX power (since there's usually only TWO at a time) and then start whaling on everybody. After that, you use the other VFX power. In one scene, it's Double Slow Saturday or something. The first person to grab a Slow will be able to grab the other Slow, use it, grab the other Slow, use it... Godmode. Very useful if it's you, very annoying if it's not you.

Mach Speed is another Godmode power. You suddenly catch fire and lose the ability to slow down, and somehow, float all over the screen, like some caffine-crazed Super Sonic. Of course, whatever you touch will be instantly annihilated until the power wears off... after which you use the other power you probably grabbed during your rampage, which is more often than not a Slow.

Sound Effect is perhaps the most useless of VFX powers. It's weak unless you charge it up, which leaves you wide open. And if you use it in the air, it's really slow and easy to dodge, so that's useless. Plus you have no set uses. It's timed. So it's useless.

Zoom is also very useless. Yes, you become really powerful and you don't flinch, but you also become the biggest target since the wise-guy who wore all white to Laser Quest. You will probably be swarmed and die.

Could it possibly get any worse? Yes. The minigames. Every so often a weird orb will appear. Toss it and you'll be sucked into a minigame. A very unfun minigame. The losers are tossed out as if they were hit and lose a ton of coins.

Oh we could go on; and we shall, for the sake of hoping no one else is fazed by this horror. The items are pretty much useless, seeing as they never appear when you need them and only appear when you don't want them. So that's ruled out as bad.

Also, the lack of a Freestyle mode really brings down the game's quality. It all has to be mission-based. IT SUCKS.

Oh, and the characters. They are so unbalanced it's not funny. The differences in characters are useless.

Take V. Joe, for example. Very basic character, nothing really outstanding... except that one special attack that takes up half the screen like a demonic Sound Effect power. Best of all, it never runs out! So you can over-use it to hell!

Captain Blue. Another basic character. But he can FLY! WOW! That comes in handy when you're about to fall off... but the lack of a move that sends the Megaman wannabe upwards will doom you, so you pretty much have to wait until a Mach Speed somehow falls off the stage in your general direction.

Oh, and for the love of God, Alastor. He's the weakest of the weak. He's slow (unless you jump, which makes several attacks useless), and his attacks are slow and have a very poor range. So he's useless too.

See where I'm going?

And the "Un-Henshin" modes are the single weakest characters around. Why would you use them? They can't fight. They can't do SQUAT!

Sound: 6/10

All the usual grunts and groans. Much of the music isn't very good, but a few tracks are hum-alongs.

Difficulty: 1/10

OH FOR THE LOVE OF PETE WHAT HAPPENED HERE! The difficulty is ramped up very slowly, but then, WHAM! You are hit with a difficulty unseen since the heyday of Second Quest mode in Zelda. The computer suddenly becomes a demon and focuses on killing you no matter what the cost.

The bosses are very hard. They take forever to beat and by the time you land your hit, you are flung very very far away and then have to force through a gauntlet of traps to reach the dude. Plus the other computers getting in your way makes it a very epic quest of 5 feet. It's easy to travel a mile in Super Mario Bros. But 5 feet in this game? Impossible. Unheard of. IT'S SUICIDE, BOY/GIRL.

Did I mention the special modes where you fight the "Un-Henshins?" No? Good. Suddenly the "Un-Henshins" manage to pull up and incredible power that makes their Henshins look like fleas. Plus the set is changed to accuire a higher difficulty. Suddenly 5 feet is switched to 5 inches. You'll be lucky not to get killed.

Oh, and the story mode. The worst possible idea was tacking on an "extra mission" which must be fulfilled throughout the whole set. Such as not dying, or the like. Suddenly, you find that you lost because you DIED. You beat the computers, but because you DIED TWICE, you don't get to continue. You must restart. That is insane.

Overall: 4/10
Buy/Borrow/Barf: Borrow

This game is very fun with friends. Very, because you can just ignore the missions and get on with the whole point of the game: fighting. But otherwise, this is a title you should rent first.

Viewtiful Joe is a good game series. It's the anime and this game based off it, that suck.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/04/07