Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

"Vampires, Dogs with Sand Guardians,an Egyptian Phoenix, and a man who offered his head as a sacrifice. What could be better?"

A coffin is washed up near the tip of Africa. The Vampire, Dio in the coffin awakens and due to his supernatural power, people around the world are afflicted by his power. Our main character, Jotaro is one of these afflicted. He becomes a Stand User. Basically, a Stand User is one who is gifted with a Stand, a supernatural spirit that helps the user in fighting. Jotaro and his band of Stand Users begin their search for Dio. Killing him will save the world for disaster.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a bunch of insane looking characters. You got a guy who has a Fencer-like Stand,a girl who shoots bullets from her breasts, a Chihuahua that summons a Giant Dog stand that's made of sand, and a guy whose Stand is an Egyptian Phoenix. Character wise, this game has it all and there are quite a lot to choose from.

JoJo's Venture is split up into two different sections that you can play with: Story Mode and Arcade mode. Story mode is a lot longer and doesn't rely just on fighting opponents to the end. In this mode, you're mostly given obscure mini-games to finish. Sometimes, the Act you are completing makes you choose a certain direction in the middle of the story. For example, there is a Mission where you face an underwater Stand, when it comes toward you, you're given arrows pointing up, down,left,and right. If you choose the right direction, you'll get farther into the Act. If you don't choose the right direction, you'll lose a continue. There are many other types of mini games, some times you'll have to shoot monkeys while some times you'll need to go inside someones body to face evil viruses, fighting them as you would in a side scroller game.

I myself, on the other hand found Arcade mode a lot more enjoyable. You pick a character, learn about them through a small cutscene, and basically fight 7 people until you reach the ending.

Fighting, the main point in this game, is perfect. Under the players health gauge, there is a small Stand gauge. When this gauge is full, you can use your stand. They'll basically come out and fight with you. But, if you take too many hits, the Stand will die and you have to wait until the Stand Gauge fills up again.Of course, some characters in this game don't have Stands that help them out in battle, so they won't have a Stand Gauge to worry about. There is also a larger bar at the bottom of the screen; this bar can go up to 3 levels (Like most other Capcom fighting games) and basically is your Hyper Combo bar. When the bar reaches at least one, you can use a powerful technique that can give you the upper hand in battle. There are some pretty cool things to do with hyper combos, if you use a Hyper Combo to finish an opponent, A close up black and white picture of the opponents face will fill up the background and you'll see them breath their last breath.

There is also a lot of replay in this game due to the points you receive in Story mode, the more points you get, the higher the chance for you to unlock the

Like most Capcom Fighting games on the Playstation, the graphics are a bit grainy. This isn't necessarily bad though since most games were like this during the Playstation's period of time.

Closing
This game is highly addictive and I suggest it to any Fighting Gamer or to any fans of JoJo's Venture, a manga thats JoJo's Bizarre adventure is based on. Seriously, any game with a chick that fires bullets from her breasts is at least worth checking out

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/05