Viewtiful Joe

"Unlikely Superhero becomes an unlikely hit!"

Joe is just an average loser. He takes his girlfriend to the movies to see an old movie titled "Captain Blue" and instead of giving in to her seducting voice to basically make out, he shoves her away and countinues watching the movie. Suddenly, the movie isn't what it was! Captain Blue is defeated and somehow, the dark fiendish foe who beat Captain Blue breaks through the Movie screen and takes Joe's girlfriend as a trophy! What is Joe doing while his girlfriend is being taken by the hulking monster? He naturally watches on of course! But before Joe can complain, Captain Blue's giant Mecha; Six Machine grabs him and jumps into Movie Land. Now, with the help of Captain Blue's Ghost and his trusty Six Machine, Joe sets off to save Movie Land from the evil group only known as The Jadow. That's right, instead of looking for or trying to save his girlfriend, he instictively does what any loser would do; fight crime. The Narrator of course, tries to make it sound as if Joe is doing the right thing, but heck...even Joe doesn't know what's really going on in Movie Land!

Viewtiful Joe is basically an "Old School" side scrolling beat 'em up using a Super Hero-like character as the lead. Joe is able to use certain abilities that would only be appropriate during films. The game is pretty interesting. Using a Gauge at the top of the screen, Joe is able to use three different special moves: Slow Motion, Mach Speed, and Zoom in. Each move is used for many different things throughout the game. Puzzles can be solved using all of them and some at the same time. These moves can also make enemies a breeze: A tank's shell can be punched back at itself when Viewtiful Joe uses Slow Motion. Using Mach Speed, you can easily set things on fire using a flurry of kicks and punches. Zoom In can be used to pull off devastating punches or can be used with Slow motion to be able to see a Slot Machine's pictures more easily, letting you pull off with some health or a nice key to open a locked door. You can also counter enemy moves by doing a crouch or a small jump, leaving them defensless, making it easiler for you to pummel them until they explode.

Using points you recieve for beating bosses or for collecting coins, you can buy an assortment of Moves, items, secondary weapons(like bombs and boomerangs), and extra life much like Devil May Cry makes this game a bit more enjoyable. Some abilities can make you dash through levels without breaking a sweat. One for instance halves the time it takes for your VFX gauge(The gauge that allows you to use the powers: Slow Motion, Mach Speed, and Zoom in) to recover twice as fast as before!

I found Veiwtiful Joe's levels to be quite repetitive. For instance; the Fifth level is filled with Joe against tanks and jets, after a while it got pretty annoying especially since sometimes you'd have to fight two tanks at once. The game's difficulty is quite high, more than I expected at least. This isn't like the easy Devil May Cry series, it's like the Shinobi series. So, expect to be frustrated a few times in the game. Especially for the second to last level where you basically have to fight 4 bosses in a row without having the option to save. Luckily, Playstation 2 players have the chance of playing a mode easier that the easy mode so maybe you won't be as frustrated.The Controls for the PS2 version is perfect; nothing is cramped and everything is basically very smooth. Not to mention the D-pad is a lot easier to use that the extremely small Gamecube one.

The sound is sometimes not understandable, especially when Joe is bantering with a couple of bosses(The Bat Dude and Gran Bruce are the hardest character's to understand). It would have been pretty cool if Capcom added some subtitles so I could actually hear all of the dialouge, other than a few times, the sound is great.

Viewtiful Joe's graphics are top notch. Levels are filled with color and are very sharp. For a sidescroller, I was quite impressed. The only thing a bit disappointing about the graphics is that the backgrounds tend to look the same after a while, and some levels take in the same areas. If anything, since the game is set loosely on movies, Capcom should have formed the levels around the titles of the levels. Of course they did do this a few times("2 Million Leagues under the Sea" is a perfect example or a level name that worked marvelously around the level itself. While, on the other hand "The Magnificent 5" level, did not). But these are minor complaints that should be taken too seriously.

Ending Credits
All in all, you can quite possibbly pick up this game for about 20 bucks in certain Game stores. Hell, when the game first came out, it was only 30 bucks. For a game such as this, it's worth it! And, having an Extra Character and a new Difficulty setting unlike the Gamecube version, what do you have to lose?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/07/04