N-Philes

Viewtiful Joe

Posted by Suraj.

You're sitting in the cinema, watching Captain Blue kick some butt, then all of a sudden your girlfriend gets sucked in, and with Captain Blue defeated, you're her only hope! Jumping into the screen to rescue your lady and to take over in Captain Blue's place, it's your job to rescue the world from total destruction! Are you up to the horribly hard challenge that this game sets for you?

Viewtiful Joe is nothing that I expected it to be. It's a unique, jaw-dropping, amazing, 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up on steroids! You walk into a room... its quiet... too quiet. Suddenly, the door slams, the candles light, and eight standard robots come rolling onto the screen. 'Standard-type robots... BAH!' You then warm up, throwing a couple of punches there, and a few here, that was easy enough... but wait, eight more arrive accompanied by four jet-packed equipped robots armed with heat-seeking missiles... what to do? Panic! You pull off some combos and you end up killing one robot only for a crazy, jumping, twirling cowboy robot firing his twin revolvers, 'What the hell?' It's time to kick some metal butt - Viewtiful Joe style.

You have three powers at your disposal, Viewtiful Joe is able to slow down the game's physics (slow motion) which blurs the screen and the colours bleed into each other allowing you to see everything in minute detail, from the droplets of water to the massive explosions; this also allows Joe to slap bullets back or dodge them.

So what if Viewtiful Joe can slow down time, it's been done before, look at the Matrix and Max Payne, what's so new about this? Granted, there is nothing new about being able to slow down time in a game but what makes this so special is the way Capcom has mastered it to be perfectly executed, the way everything would slow down, the echoing sounds when a bomb is set off in slow motion, the way the colours flow, the flashes - seeing is believing!

Joe's second power is just as impressive, Mach Speed. It's the total opposite of Slow, it speeds the game's physics up, which allows Joe to move with supersonic speed, his attacks are so fast that he'll burst into flames (which won't harm him) and the fire created becomes essential for some puzzles that must be solved further into the game. Although Mach Speed allows Joe to punch, kick and overall move faster, the strength of his attacks doesn't increase as it does in Slow, so you can either hit more with less strength or hit less with more strength. It's completely up to you to decide your strategy.

Lastly, Viewtiful Joe's third and last power is Zoom-In, which, by pressing the B-button, the camera will 'Zoom-In' on Joe (thus the name) while he pulls a flashy pose, and the enemies? Well, they are all stunned. Joe's über coolness allows you to throw in as many punches without having the robots fight back (note that this doesn't work on very strong enemies and bosses). It's a great power and will come in handy for certain puzzles!

The graphics in this game are amazing, with the sharp echoes in slow-motion and the pows and whacks that come with every attack are done well and pretty cool. The hilarious voice-overs with the Australian shark are fun to watch and to listen to. The cel-shaded graphics captures Clover Studio's imagination and the comic book atmosphere that they wished for. Just like The Wind Waker, you can get a huge amount of enjoyment from the game by simply watching it, it's that 'viewtifully' executed.

Although there are 'only' seven levels, don't be fooled into thinking that it is a short game, it is anything but that. Those seven levels are huge, jam-packed with sub-bosses, bosses, and inventive puzzles for you to overcome. They are also fairly sparse on continue points. It'll take the average person quite some time to complete on standard mode and it will take the average gamer twice as long to unlock everything on Extreme mode. Surprisingly the game is quite difficult at times. So much so in fact Capcom were set to re-release Viewtiful Joe but this time with a newly added difficulty mode. Although this is a fun game to play the difficulty might bring the most cool-tempered gamer to their knees in tears.

This game gets an N-Philes score of B+.

This is the most inventive platform slap-'em-up in years. It is a fun, original, exciting, and beautiful gaming experience. What a viewty.

Posted in: Reviews

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