Viewtiful Joe

System: Gamecube
Release Date: 2003
Published By: Capcom
Reviewed by: Darien
Rating:

Sweet merciful heavens, what a hard game. Even on easy, the game puts up quite a fight, and there are three levels of difficulty above that. Ye gods.

Not that I mind a challenge. And, honestly, most people will be able to get through the game on the easy setting with a bit of effort and some practice, so it's not impossibly hard. And it's a hell of a lot of fun along the way; the play is just so smooth and elegant, and all the puzzles seem so organic that you don't even mind that your beat-em-up is being interrupted while you deal with a puzzle.

The gist of things is that you have to run to the right and beat up bad guys in classic Final Fight style. The catch is that you have Super Powers! Joe can make himself move massively fast, slow everything down, and zoom in on himself and make everything plain old bigger. It's simple enough to beat everybody up just by mashing on the attack buttons, but if you want a high score (and thus powerups which must be purchased with points), you need to do it with style. That takes a bit more finesse, and the whole affair creates a system much more complex and beautiful than one would expect from a side-scrolling beat-em-up.

The game looks fantastic. It easily makes my short list of cel-shaded games that aren't offensive to the eye. Everything looks like old comic books and old movies, and the Batman-esque splashes that appear when Joe beats on enemies are a nice touch. The sound is good, though not exactly on par with the visuals, and the voice acting is certainly appropriate. I mean, the actors ooze with corn, but it wouldn't seem quite right if they didn't.

The game has one major shortcoming, and it is called Fire Leo. At this point, the complexity involved ceases to be fun and begins to be a nuisance; this is a boss battle - unavoidable, as is everything in this game - with so many distinct and non-intuitive steps that you may never figure out what to do without looking it up on the interweb. And even once you do get it figured out, there's still the matter of execution. All in all, it's a fair bit of annoyance, and it cost the game its perfect score. But it's hardly enough to ruin the whole game.

Action games with authentic action are in short supply these days, it seems. Viewtiful Joe is one of the best. Highly recommended.

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