During the introduction sequence, Joe dashes onto the screen unleashing a plethora of moves whilst giving the Capcom logo a stylish beating before running off again - leaving you with the feeling that Viewtiful Joe might be something very interesting…indeed.
Fast-forward and we find Joe and his girl Silvia in the cinema, watching a Captain Blue movie, Joes favourite action hero. The onscreen action soon gets out of hand when Captain Blues arch-enemy breaks through the celluloid barrier, grabs Sylvia and whisks her away into the movie world. Captain Blue comes to her rescue, but gets knocked right out of the movie by his rival. He gets up again, grabs Joe and steps back into the silver screen, where Joes mission now begins in earnest. Joe finds himself captured on film, and in order to rescue his girlfriend, he needs to combat the hordes of enemies called the Jadow who keep him from attaining his goal (and systematically unravelling plot twists thrown out by villains he will encounter - which further lead to the real reason why they took his girlfriend to begin with).
Rather than using normal visuals, Capcom has opted for sketchy cel-shaded graphics. Basically, Viewtiful Joe is a side-scrolling beat em up in its most basic form, but that wouldnt be the proper way to describe it. Of all the cel-shaded titles Gamestyle has played recently (including Jet Set Radio and Zelda: The Wind Waker), Viewtiful Joe looks and feels more like a cartoon than almost all the others. Its set in a 2.5 dimensional world, which means that while the gameplay and scenery are in 2D, the characters and playing world are in 3D. In effect, this game uses a few neat tricks to add depth to the playing environment. For example, when you direct Joe towards a street corner, the camera automatically rotates around that corner while maintaining the side-on view (and the same can be seen when a staircase spirals down).
When Joe fights, he fights with Style. How? Gamestyle hears you ask. Well, during the fights you earn Viewtifuls (coins basically) which can be traded for new moves, health, weapons and lives between stages. Get more moves and you can make up more of your own combinations or fighting style, and the number of these is only limited by your imagination and quick reflexes. The sky's the limit when dialling in combos, and the more viewtiful your fighting style, the more Viewtifuls you will gain. But theres more to it than just fighting techniques alone: on a few occasions Joe meets his idol, Captain Blue, who descends from the heavens to challenge Joe. Every time Blue is defeated he will grant Joe a new ability. The first ability turns Joe into a superhero, complete with a long pink scarf. Other abilities let him slow down and speed up time, and the ability to zoom in the camera (which then allows for further special moves to be performed). These abilities will drain the VXF meter, which represents the amount of time left, and if Joe runs out of VFX he turns back into normal Joe, which you dont want to happen during boss fights.
When this happens the screen becomes grainy and wobbly, like an old movie. Joe loses his superpowers but he can still fight, and returns back to his superhero state after the VFX meter has replenished itself - either automatically or by collecting VFX jars. The VFX meter can be increased too; by collecting 50 VFX coins, youll get more time to do the slow-mo, mach speed and zoom modes. The meter can be increased five times, giving you plenty of opportunity to perform Joes moves. And viewtifully impressive moves they are too. Attacks can be dodged by either ducking or hopping, which in effect disorientate the foes, causing them to get dizzy. Then, by using one of the special abilities, Joe can unleash his fury upon them. (An example of such a combined technique: zoom in, slow-mo and kick at the same time, resulting in a mid-air cartwheel kick. Slow down when under attack and Joe dodges it. This way Joe can see bullets or rockets coming and punch them back to whomever fired them.)
The music in Viewtiful Joe compliments the game extremely well and many of the tunes are of the catchy variety, but can get a bit repetitive after a while. Chances are that you wont even notice it because youll be too busy fighting. Every now and again the cheesy narrator interrupts the action to summarise the plot and throw in a few suggestions regarding what will happen next. Together with the truly excellent American voice-acting and viewtiful sound FX (like hits, slow motion and mach speed), Capcom really have outdone themselves again in the audio department. The game has a few odd puzzles too, and in order to solve these, Joe needs to use his abilities cleverly. One puzzle requires you to slow down time to swell a water drip until it is big enough to activate a switch with its weight - and in order to reach that hovering platform up above, Joe must use slow-mo to stop the fans from spinning, thereby causing it to drop. Later puzzles can be a bit difficult to solve and can be a little frustrating, but most of them are quite logical and will come to you in the end.
Viewtiful Joe has two difficulty levels: Kids and Adults (respectively, easy and hard). Whilst Kids mode seems easy enough at first, it will get frustratingly harder later on. With save points spaced at the end of each of the six stages, Viewtiful Joe kind of forces you to play a whole stage in one go, which can take up to an hour. The Adults mode is extremely unforgiving - let alone the extra difficulty levels later on. Gamestyle is of the opinion that the Adults difficulty is definitely up there with the likes of Ikaruga or Halo on Legendary. The normal baddies arent that hard to beat, unless there are lots of them. Its the end-of-level bosses that cause the most grief. It is possible to buy health, lives and continues before a boss fight, but its not possible to save on that point, meaning that if its Game Over, you need do it all over again from your last save - so prepare to get frustrated quite regularly (and you might care to invest in a couple of spare controllers too).
Viewtiful Joe is an immensely fun game to play, in spite of its harsh difficulty level and lack of save points. Itll remind you of the old-school beat em up games in the arcades and plays a bit like them too, albeit with more modern features. The controls are simple to learn but harder to master because of the different button combinations needed to create combos. There's no multiplayer option alas, but that's not really a drawback because the game wasnt designed with this in mind. Capcom has done a great job in creating Viewtiful Joe. The whole package offers a weird, unique, fun, original, stylish and difficult game which, unfortunately, can be all too hard to find these days. Gamestyle can recommend Viewtiful Joe wholeheartedly, and assures you that its money well spent. In the words of Joe himself - Henshin-a-gogo, baby!
