Viewtiful Joe

These days, the video game market is stagnant with unoriginality, even most of the best games simply being sequels of each other. New franchises are about as common as street crime in Singapore - and in many cases, treated similarly. Enter Capcom, with several still-running game series to its name, and a radical new idea: Viewtiful Joe.

It's not just a game, but not really a movie - it's both, wrapped and twisted around each other, and something else entirely. Viewtiful Joe is an experience like no other, combining flawless play with a cinematic feel altogether different from the norm. VJ oozes style from every pore, emanates it from its very being. It's a grand unification of almost every facet of video games as a whole.

In typical Capcom fashion, the story of Viewtiful Joe is introduced early on, then put on the back-burner until near the end of the game. It begins in a movie theatre; Joe and his girlfriend Silvia are watching the finalé of Captain Blue, defender of justice, enemy of evil. Silvia distracts Joe from a pivotal moment where Blue is defeated, and before they know what's happened, both Silvia and Joe are pulled into the movie. Joe's mission is to rescue Silvia and stop the evil Jadow forces from taking over the world (with a few big twists before it's over).

At heart, Joe is an old-fashioned brawler, ala River City Ransom. This means that Joe will be seeing no small amount of action, and kicking no small amount of ass at nearly any given time. In addition to a slew of enemies to face, from the lowliest flunkie to an agile ninja to a fairly intimidating tank, each of the game's seven 'episodes' (each in itself possessing a well-crafted movie-like theme and clever design) is concluded with a boss fight against a creature with unique characteristics and behavior. It's not all about knocking enemies around, though; there are also a bunch of puzzles scattered about, largely relying on Joe's main claim to fame - special effects. With Joe's V-watch, and some training from Captain Blue, he can pull off three different 'VFX' powers: Slow, which slows down time and makes your hits more capable and powerful; Mach Speed, which speeds Joe up but keeps enemies at about their normal pace; and Zoom, which zooms the camera in on Joe, allowing him to pull off more viewtiful moves and scaring some enemies out of attacking him. These are used in puzzles in many ways; for instance, a commonly-used level element is a small platform on top of spinning fan blades - using Slow slows the blades down and causes the platform to drop, while using Mach Speed speeds the blades up and causes the platform to rise. Sometimes, Joe will have to ignite things by using Mach Speed until his suit becomes coated in fire.

These powers are also of great use in battle - Slow, for example, can allow you to see a gunslinger's bullet and punch it back at him to stun and damage the cowboy. Joe will have to learn the intricacies of every one of his moves in order to succeed in his quest to stop the Jadow (luckily, a series of tutorials early in the game fills Joe in on just how this can be done). Many involve stunning an enemy first, such as above with the gunslinger, or with simpler enemies, dodging their blow; during their brief daze, Joe can Slow down and trash them with kicks and punches, and get a chain reaction going with other enemies on the screen, racking up viewtiful combos and earning V points for use in the item shop.

Inbetween scenes, Joe will have the opportunity of doing some shopping. Points earned from dispatching enemies and doing other viewtiful tricks can be used to purchase new moves, health, greater health capacity, extra lives, and other useful trinkets. While they aren't strictly necessary, they are certainly very, very useful, as the game has a fairly steep difficulty curve. Though, if you want to take it easy on yourself, you can play Kids (easy) mode; Adult (hard) mode is more rewarding in the end, giving you access to more difficulties and even more characters to play as.

Graphically, VJ is quite viewtiful. Characters are rendered in 3D, but many background and foreground elements are in 2D, and the game plays as a 2D sidescroller. The style used in drawing the characters, especially Joe, and the effects used in showing off Joe's VFX powers are quite impressive. The game's soundtrack is composed brilliantly, a variety of action tunes perfectly fitting the pace, and sound effects are also an integral and well-executed part (often, audio clues are used to assist Joe in saving his skin and defeating his enemies). Joe, Silvia, Captain Blue, and every other important character in the game also has expertly-acted voice overs, which make the game that much more immersive.

After beating Adults mode, V-Rated difficulty is unlocked, and Ultra V-Rated following that. Every difficulty, though the base structure of the game is the same, modifies things to make it just a bit different, just a bit trickier. Each completed difficulty (aside from Kids) also unlocks a new character to play as, and every character plays differently, be it in response to damage, running speed, or even other drastic gameplay differences (and each one also has slight storyline adjustments to make it more interesting). So, there's plenty of reason to play through Joe more than once.

The gameplay at first appears simple, but in many ways this is its genius. By taking a basic set of mechanics, and mixing them around into a deep and stylish brawler-combat system, Viewtiful Joe is truly a remarkable package of a game. Perhaps the only failing of the system is in its shortness. Though the difficulty can be at first imposing, anyone can learn to play it, and by the end you'll be amazed how much skill you've picked up along the way. It's a great adventure, and really worth playing.

Progress: Adults mode complete