Our hero is introduced in the opening cut-scene as a bubble-headed, California-accented Sk8r Boi, on a date with his girlfriend Silvia at the local movie theatre. Whilst she pesters him for attention, Joe fights her off, determined to catch the flick. On the screen in front of them, Captain Blue - Joe's own personal superhero - battles his arch nemesis. As Joe wrestles with Silvia, Blue is shockingly defeated, and Silvia is dragged into the screen by the evil villain. Captain Blue is knocked into the real world, and commands Joe to enter the movie world to retrieve her, and save the universe!
Once this rather neat segue has occurred, your control of the action begins. Captain Blue acts as your guide, explaining the moves you'll need to battle the mechanical and mutated hordes, rescue your girl, and save the day. The Gamecube pad works surprisingly well for a game that is, at grass-roots level, a beat 'em up: the stick moves you around, with up and down enabling you to dodge moves; X serves as punch, and Y as kick, with the A button making you jump. The action is initially laid-out on-screen as if you were watching old film footage: scratched and blurred (a nice effect), with the film 'leaders' bordering the screen. However, once Joe receives the V-Watch from Captain Blue (the key to changing into your super alter-ego), Joe utters his word of power - Henshin - and standing before you is...VIEWTIFUL JOE!
Viewtiful Joe is stronger and more agile than normal Joe (naturally), and is armed with a far wider range of moves. For a start, Viewtiful Joe can, with a second press of 'A', jump even higher (in the typical Capcom fashion) than your 'regular Joe'. In the air, Joe can perform punches and kicks, which are essential for making combos and chains further into the game. To kick-off the action a tutorial begins, with Captain Blue as the tutor. On-screen graphics guide you through the available moves, and the key to victory is soon revealed: when an enemy is about to strike, an icon of a yellow skull in a jagged red box will appear either high or low on your body. Pushing the stick in the correct (opposite) direction to the skull will make V-Joe dodge the move, and will cause the enemy to be stunned. Once stunned, the enemy is weakened towards your attacks; more susceptible to both punches and kicks, and to the use of your special abilities.
The special moves in Viewtiful Joe are a thing of genius. As the game is set in the Viewtiful world, i.e. actually within a movie, your powers are - ingeniously - based upon movie techniques. The first move acquired is the Slow Viewtiful, which operates like Bullet Time: engaged and toggled with the left trigger, the amount of skill that can be employed with just this one move is incredible. The most obvious is that V-Joe has more time to react, so can dodge enemy attacks with greater aplomb. Similarly, your own moves can be timed and executed with more precision. On top of that, combos and juggles are easier to execute, and on top of that, multiple attacks against multiple enemies can be chained together for larger point scores and greater rewards. Just when you thought the limit of its (already vast) usefulness had been tapped, Slow also allows you to dodge bullets and even strike them to return to - and damage - your attacker. With a single, perfectly coded special move, Capcom have opened up a new world of possibilities. Slow is no mere gimmick, and the gamer finds an even wider use for its charms further into the game...
The next power-up of major impact is Mach Speed. With a press of the right trigger, V-Joe speeds-up to sound barrier-breaking levels. This allows V-Joe to deal with a far greater number of enemies at once, and can be powered-up even further. At its highest level, Mach Speed sends numerous copies of V-Joe around the screen during its use, which is useful for striking a larger number of background items and collecting items dropped by downed enemies.
Of course, all this power comes at a price: Joe must wait for his VFX bar (the source of Viewtiful Joe's power) to refill before it can be used. Slow and Mach drain this bar (as do all types of special move), so must be used with both skill and cunning - it's not possible to just fly through a level, Mach Speed on, enemies smacked down in all directions, for example. The VFX bar can be increased in size, however, so that its effects can be longer lasting: cans of film (with the requisite pink 'V' emblazoned on the side) are dotted around the levels, and collecting 50 increases your VFX bar by a notch.
Defeated enemies drop Viewtiful tokens, and collecting them increases your Viewtiful total. The greater the combo employed using your special moves, the larger the number of tokens gained. The Viewtiful total is equivalent to cash, which can be redeemed in the 'shop' option at the end of each level (and, occasionally, mid-level). The shop allows you to purchase many useful items, such as extra energy for your life bar (represented by hearts, in a similar fashion to the Zelda series of games), Cheeseburgers (which replenish your life bar) and several other helpful trinkets. More importantly, though, you can also buy further special moves for use in the game. These add yet another layer of depth to the experience, as each can be employed with the existing specials in a multitude of ways. For example, if you buy the Air Joe move, this gifts you with a mid-air combo that makes chaining attacks together more simple and effective.
The third major ability to complete the triumvirate is Zoom. By tapping the B button, the camera goes into extreme close-up, and V-Joe's moves alter yet again: kick will attack opponents either side of you, jump will propel Joe upward with a corona of energy around him (damaging enemies) and holding punch will start a flurry of blows called the Red Hot One Hundred. When these three are all set to go, the player can begin to experiment with combining them. For example, you may find yourself surrounded by a group of four enemies, one of whom fires bullets whilst the others attack with feet and fists. Noticing the skull icon appear at your feet, you push up on the stick to dodge the incoming attack, and the first enemy is dizzied. You press and hold L, and the action slows down immediately. A target appears around the foe, and you tap punch from your aerial position, sending him flying. You dodge the next attack, land, and launch a kick at the next enemy's legs, who then catapults into the air, whacking your first attacker in the process. You turn and uppercut the next baddie, just in time to see a bullet fly towards your head. Hitting punch sends the projectile back at the gunman, destroying him and carrying-on the chain. The guy you have uppercut is now descending toward the ground in a heap. You zoom-in with B and hit kick, spinning to smack the final two attackers. Finally, you let go of the L button, and time returns to normal with you the stylish and unscathed victor. Slick. And that's just a basic set of moves. Just wait until you start using the Mach speed properly, and buy a few more attack moves from the shop...
A lot has been made of the visual aspect of Viewtiful Joe, and it's when you see the game in motion that you understand the importance of both the general aesthetical presentation and the perspectives the camera employs. 'View' is the key part of the title here, and shows Capcom's emphasis: Joe is, at its heart, a scrolling platform beat 'em up. However, much like the old superhero films it gently lampoons, Joe also contrives to take a dilapidated genre and put a massive spin on it. Not only does the game deliberately include clichés, such as hovering platforms and sewer sections, it blasts them apart by skewing the perspective and altering the way you interact with these levels. The most obvious inspiration for this approach appears to be the old Megadrive game Comix Zone, which similarly placed the character in a fiction-within-a-fiction. Joe takes this a step further. Although the layout of the levels is superficially similar to platform action games of yore, another dimension is added by both the use of 3D effects and your special abilities.
Early in the game, V-Joe must jump on top of a rocket-propelled bus in order to clear a large jump. The bus cannot reach the other side in its normal trajectory, and clever use of your different functions is necessary to make it across. In another section, a leaky pipe drips onto a switch on the floor, but isn't large enough or heavy enough to trip it. Again, figuring out how to manipulate the physics of the game solves the puzzle and trips the switch.
Such puzzles increase in both frequency and complexity the further you progress. Coupled with the unique perspective, which chooses cinematic angles to display the action, and you have a weird, but brilliantly effective, platform action hybrid, that operates on a two-dimensional plane, but works-in and utilises the power of polygons to create an M C Escher-like world. Scenery plays as big a part as both your character and the enemy characters do.
One of the most exhilarating and enticing features of Viewtiful Joe is the boss encounters, which are frequent and challenging. The equivalent of 'mid-level' bosses appear, normally at the end of a section, and these require the use of many of your acquired powers. When first encountered, these enemies are often mistaken as the end of level boss, such is the difficulty. For example, early in the game, you face an attack helicopter within a banquet hall. The mechanical death-machine comes crashing through the ceiling, spewing bullets at you and dropping enemies at the same time - a tough proposition. Yet this is merely a lackey-type, and a breeze compared to villains such as Davidson: the homeboy Rhino who likes to set you on fire, or Alastor: another super-hard supervillain with powers comparable to your own.
Cel-shading waxes and wanes in popularity with the general public, with many seeing the visual effect as trivial and childlike. You would have to go a long way to discriminate against the visuals in Joe though, as the impact they create is immediate and startling. Set in a comic book-style fictional universe, Joe takes Cel-Shading further than ever before, by creating a baroque, pseudo-Gothic dreamland of faded pastel shades and heavy black lines. Much in the style of EC comics of the 1950s, the surreal imagery and dark, rich comic-horror hue is offset by the characters, which are drawn in the Japanese 'Sentai' style.
Sentai generally refers to teams of heroes in the Power Ranger and Voltron style, where a team can combine their powers to fight evil. It can also refer to individuals, though, which is where Viewtiful Joe comes in - the heavily camp and over-the-top wackiness of Sentai suits the genre to a 'T'. Additionally, the cuteness of the characters - miraculously - melds perfectly with the very Western backdrops, with both bolstering the impact of the other.
Joe is divided into both levels and sections of levels, and you are graded on your style and efficiency at the end of each. These grades range from 'Viewtiful!' to 'A'wesome, right down to 'D'oh! The game obviously doesn't take itself too seriously - a theme that rings true all the way through: Captain Blue is a washed-up, corny figure with a pot belly who spouts motivational speeches about finding your 'hero-ness'; Joe is a blonde moppet of little brain, who comes across as a lobotomised surfer dude, and the villains spout tongue-in-cheek clichés and painful ripostes. Thankfully (and finally), Capcom have employed some decent voice actors to deliver the lines and, whilst the dialogue is seldom laugh-out-loud funny, it is quite witty, and always well delivered.
Sound effects are perfect in tone as well, and really excel whilst special moves are being used. Whilst using the Slow move for example, the pitch and timbre of the effects compliment the actions exactly as you would expect them to (deeper, more bass-y, lasting longer), and even help with the altered timing of moves. Music is typical superhero movie cheese, underpinned by modern techno beats - the tunes are less energising than the sound effects, but create an adequate enough backdrop to the action.
An important aspect of the game's setup to note is that of the difficulty level. Not only is Viewtiful Joe significantly larger than many similar titles, it is also extremely difficult. Capcom have used a similar setup to Gamecube Resident Evil, by giving the difficulty options unusual and misleading names - in Viewtiful Joe, the two initially selectable options are 'Kids' and 'Adults', which is seriously misleading. 'Kids' is, in fact, what ought to be termed 'Normal' difficulty, and 'Adults' is, undoubtedly, 'Hard' mode. Gamers who feel as if their maturity and game-playing skills are being slighted by selecting 'Kids' mode needn't worry: this mode offers a stiff challenge, despite the misleading appellation.
For a game that demands a great deal of practice and refinement of skill from the gamer, there are bafflingly few opportunities to save, and long sections in-between them. On top of this, the option to replay a section does not appear immediately upon completion of a level, which is an odd move on behalf of the developers. Levels can be quite substantial and, even though the loss of a life will start you at the beginning of the last section, the use of a continue (vital for beginners) will thrust you right back to the start of the level - often a good few minutes of play time behind. This constitutes the only flaw in the game. Due to the title's nature, a better spread of save points and a 'replay level' option would have been welcome additions to the mix. Still, judicious use of save points by the player should prevent this from becoming too much of an issue.
What Capcom have done with Viewtiful Joe is tweak and fix and improve a genre until it is all but unrecognisable. What makes it so effective and modern is the variety, quality and consistency in the game world. It truly is in the hands of the gamer which moves to use in any given situation, making Joe such an unusual and unique proposition. Many reviewers will miss the point, and criticise the high difficulty, but Joe is a game that demands practice and skill, as well as lateral thinking and fast reactions. Seldom do games provide such freedom, or such a sense of satisfaction, and there really are no flaws in the game that detract from that satisfaction: it is technically flawless; deep and flexible; tough but fair; pretty yet brainy... and hugely fun and rewarding.
So, step into your skin-tight Lycra and prepare for a thrilling, action-packed spin through movie fantasyland. Henshin a go-go, baby!
Review by Stuart Peake
+1 for a remaster or remake of the first two games