Viewtiful Joe Review

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Viewtiful Joe

Review by Greg “gf_ripper” FrankNovember 2003

Joe—the man, the legend, the hero? Joe—just your average young man who loves the fictional Captain Blue and his girlfriend Silvia—almost equally! One day, while on a most unusual date for a Captain Blue movie, Joe witnesses not only the apparent death of his hero, but also the kidnapping of his girlfriend. Unbelievably, the onscreen villain reaches out and nabs Silvia! And, just as incredibly, Joe is able to follow her into movieland in order rescue the damsel.  Captain Blue even returns from the afterlife to help Joe learn how to be a hero.

“You Must Take My Place as the New Action Hero!” —Captain Blue

Now the game really begins. Joe gains his very own V watch—the power of which transforms ordinary Joe into Viewtiful Joe! Being a superhero gives Joe powers beyond his belief. He becomes stronger, faster and better able to control his actions through his VFX abilities.  With these skills, Joe is able to slow down the action (in a Matrix-like effect), speed up time (making multiple versions of himself appear), or strike a pose that will freeze his enemies in place. With his newfound powers, Joe is prepared to find his girlfriend Silvia and the reasons for her dreadful kidnapping.

This is where the player comes in. Viewtiful Joe resembles old beat-’em-up classics like Double Dragon or Final Fight.  The main objective is to punch and kick your way through seven episodes in order to find and save your girlfriend. However, this game stands out from the rest of them because of Joe’s ability to use VFX powers. When these powers are used appropriately, they give the player a huge advantage over his enemies. The only catch is, Joe has to go through a few hurdles in order to receive these abilities—the first of which is VFX Slow. This allows Joe to slow down the action, which can cause multiple effects in the game environment. First, it prevents propellers from spinning, leading flying objects and enemies to fall to the ground, then bullets and bombs are made to slow down as they head toward Joe. This is the most critical VFX skill of all three, and it can make the difference in battle as well as solving puzzles. Joe’s second ability is VFX Match Speed.  This allows him to move super fast and speed up time. Here he can hit enemies from multiple angles by making himself appear multiple times, speed up propellers, thereby making flying objects go higher in the air, and use other effects. The third, and last, ability that Joe receives is VFX Zoom-In. This forces all enemies on screen freeze in their place, allowing Joe to do spin kicks that hurt bad guys on both sides of him.

“Cut! Cut! Cut! … Ready? … Action!” —Director

Of course, there’s always the “fine print.” All three of these abilities drain Joe’s VFX gauge, and if it runs out, he loses all of his abilities until it recharges. Once the meter has been drained, Joe will return to his regular self, able to do much less damage, as well as not being able to jump as high and generally being more vulnerable. Each effect can be interchanged back and forth very fluidly. They can also be used in combination. However, this does lead your VFX gauge to drain much more quickly.  The controls in Viewtiful Joe are amazingly responsive and fluid. They give the player precise control over Joe even when using his VFX abilities. The player, while selecting buttons for particular abilities, should have no problem in fighting. Options are available for three different control schemes, allowing game personalization.

“It’s a Viewtiful Day in the Neighborhood”

The graphics for the game are very original and like nothing I’ve seen before. They are cel-shaded and look hand-drawn. It seems very much like playing a comic book, as opposed to a movie cartoon. The depictions are very colorful and sharp. However, when Joe returns to his human form, the screen becomes grainy looking, like an old film; but when he transforms into Viewtiful Joe, the image is again sharp and clear. The game also has progressive scan support, which gives a much sharper and clearer picture if you have the right TV and cables to use that option. The bosses and all the action never slow down (unless you use VFX Slow), no matter how many bad guys are on the screen.

The sound effects are also really fine; with the music fitting nicely with the action, the voices able to be heard clearly, and all in-game effects realistic. The voice acting is very well done and fits with the overall cartoony and over-the-top feel of the game. The impression is of action heroes and villains from various superhero cartoons. The game even comes across well on mono speakers, and you can tell were the enemies are coming from. Unfortunately, the sound is only ordinary stereo without any true surround sound support, but it is still very clear and sharp.

The game is quite long, depending on your personal ability level.  With three secret characters to unlock, four levels of difficulty, and upgrades for your characters, you’ll be playing for a long time.  The difficulty of the game is high, even on the easiest level, and the bosses are extremely hard. However, Viewtiful Joe is, by far, one of the most addictive games on the market today.

The only real negative side of the game relates to save points, accompanied by the difficulty. If you lose all of your lives, you have to start at the very beginning of the level. This can become very frustrating, especially with the high difficulty and long levels.  There is nothing more annoying than getting to the boss of the level with zero additional lives and then having to start over again when you fail to beat him. Also, you can only save after you’ve beaten an episode, which is frustrating as well, since there are three levels per episode and they are all very long. However, if you do lose all of your lives, you get the option to save your game if you choose not to continue.

“Just Go for It!” —Silvia

Overall, Viewtiful Joe comes highly recommended. If you can overlook the annoying aspect of having to start over and only being able to save at the beginning of a new episode or when you quit the game, you will experience an amazingly hard but also wonderfully fun game. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of fighting games or who just wants to have an unusual and very good time for a few hours. Just be forewarned, though: given the addictiveness of Viewtiful Joe, do not play it if you have any plans for the evening, because you’ll cancel them and will most likely still be playing until you pass out from exhaustion in the middle of the night! It’s that good. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Release Date: October 7, 2003

Available for: Game Cube

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Where to Find It

GoGamer 37.90

Prices/links current as of 11/02/03Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

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