Jet Grind Radio

"I hate THQ. I truly do."

Jet Grind Radio for GBA caught my eye when I was at GameStop, and since I'm a big fan of JSR & F, I decide to get the GBA port. I start thinking 'Coolcoolcoolcoolcool', when all of a sudden, the THQ logo appears on my SP. I shivered violently. Then I saw the Vicarious Visions logo. My shiver measured a 4.5 on the Richter scale. These 2 companies have never been known for making good games. THQ makes Wrestling games left and right and Nickelodeon games too, and VV did the Driver 2 GBA port. I have that too (Which I got for free with my Game Boy Advance SP). I never liked it.

So I say to myself 'Calm down, JSR is a great game, there is no way someone can screw it up.' Then I start the game. The music is unrecognizeable, and the cutscene is the worst ever. Wait, I take that back, Driver 2 had worse. Anyway, Gum appears to teach me how to move. 'Okay, this is right so far.'

There is a reason why Resident Evil turned me off. The control scheme. 3rd person view, 1st person control. The only RE game that featured a 3rd person control was RE2 for N64, which was great. Now, imagine the 3rd person view with 1st person controls and an isometric view, except that when you press forward, you keep moving, and back is brake. Not only that, when you go to turn left or right a tiny bit when still, you start to walk. Let's keep adding to the problem by making B jump, and A the action instead of L. With no way of changing the controls. That's Jet Grind Radio for GBA's controls.

Let's move on to why these controls are bad. Tagging is done with the A button, which I use to jump with more often (Note: I don't jump when I hit A, so I stand there going 'JUMP'), which was a big mistake. B is jump. When, in the history of platform videogames, has A not been jump? They could have made L, the only button that doesn't do anything, do the tagging like the original! Anyway, the cops are easy to avoid, but a few things bug me:

1. Can't tag Captain Onishima. That's right.
2. Can't tag the VEHICLES.

2 great things to tag, and they remove those elements. One other thing is the scoring. Even if you do get graffiti souls, they do nothing to your score. Finally, the graffiti itself. The graffiti looks decent, but they didn't put the best in, and you can only have one custom. Then the way you do graffiti is a problem. You have to do it slowly. If it's a top to bottom, you have to make sure you get it timed JUST RIGHT.

Graphics are sketchy. Very. I mean, they tried to pull off cel-shading, which doesn't look good. Like I mentioned before, the graffiti isn't all too great. Also, when you're behind an object, a shadow outline appears, which is REALLY confusing.

Now, for music: Sounds like MIDIs with voices added. Voices rarely added. And only 7 songs. And the sound effects are crap too.

Story? What story? Oh, you meant the little bit in the beginning? Yeah. That's it.

Scores:
Gameplay: 0/10
Sound: 2/10
Story: 1/10
Graphics: 1/10
Replay: 0/10
Rent or Buy (or eBay): Seeing as how I couldn't return it, I would suggest eBay.

Well, that basically sums up a THQ/VV game. Maybe in the next one we'll find out what brand of laxatives THQ uses.

P.S.: Smilebit had nothing to do with it.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/04