Retro|Spective 096: Viewtiful Joe

[Neon Ignition]

I might be wrong but I feel like the PS2 version added an easier mode.

[QualityChimp]

I might be wrong but I feel like the PS2 version added an easier mode.

Ah, that's really interesting.

Turns out there's a "KIDS" mode.



Throwing In The Towel: Viewtiful Joe

"Like the games of old, Viewtiful Joe is a cruel game. Going back to the game for the first time in at least ten years, I remembered that I never did complete the game when I originally owned it. The game features two default difficulty settings: Kids and Adults. After completing the first few levels on Adults without too much trouble, I began to wonder why I never did finish it all those years ago. A couple of levels later though, I began to understand why.

This game is hard, and I say this as someone who enjoys games that are generally considered difficult, such as Dark Souls and Super Meat Boy. The problem with Viewtiful Joe is that it starts off deceptively easy, and then after the halfway stage becomes a different game entirely.


Chapter five was a particular point when I believed things just started to get a bit too ridiculous. At the beginning of the level Joe has to fight through a horde of enemies, he then has a mini-boss battle against a tank, (which granted is easy is you use slow-mo and hit the tank’s bullets back at itself), after this Joe fights against another boss in the form of a harrier. He then has to traverse through a lava infested sewer system and if Joe falls into the lava (which I did a lot) he loses a decent sized amount of health. He then has to fight through another horde of enemies once exiting the sewer system, before fighting the harrier boss again. It isn’t over yet though, after defeating the harrier boss for the second time, Joe fights another tank on a bridge, and then proceeds to battle against another harrier.


When I was faced with the third harrier boss, I suddenly turned into John McEnroe as I shouted out loud, “Really? You can’t be serious!” I’m all for difficult games, but at this point it felt like Capcom had not just resorted to throwing the kitchen sink at the player, but instead decided to throw the entire house at them. In addition that was only part one of the chapter. No wonder I never completed the game when I first played it."

"For every brilliant gameplay design in Viewtiful Joe, there is something else holding it back. The game is beautiful, the combat is intuitive and the game itself is a wonderful concept, but it’s held back by a terrible save system, and crazy difficulty spikes. I put in nearly 70 hours completing Dark Souls and when I completed the game it felt worth it. At the moment putting more hours into Viewtiful Joe just doesn’t feel worth it at all."

Which neatly leads me to:

https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/05/games-inbox-video-game-easy-mode-battlefield-free-to-play-and-skyrim-re-review-9118376/

"I’ve been reading all the comments about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice with interest and they remind me of the regular arguments people got into when a new Soulsborne game is released. I very much respect those games but I have neither the skill nor the time to play them and I always feel left out. That does not mean I want them to change but I do wish they had an easy mode and I do not understand any argument against it, if you assume that the normal hard mode is unchanged and available from the beginning.

Hard games used to have an easy mode, I remember Viewtiful Joe and Ninja Gaiden in particular and even though they gave them insulting names to tease you they were a totally legitimate way of playing them. It’s only the rise of FromSoftware that’s made easy mode a dirty concept and while I think every game should have the option I wouldn’t even mind that much if From games were the exception. But instead their policies has influenced other games and now it’s very common to have no easy mode, permadeath, and rock hard difficulty – all things I cannot, and do not want to, handle. I just don’t see what’s wrong with other people having fun too."

[wakka]

Yeah, I never finished this. It was really hard, as has been mentioned.

I'm not naturally good at games, not at all - I was also poor at sports and playground games as kid, I'm just generally badly co-ordinated! - but I don't think that games developers have some kind of moral imperative to include an easy mode.

They eventually added the Kids mode to this, obviously, which is all well and good if that's what the creators were comfortable with, but I feel like high difficulty is a core part of Miyazaki's game design id, and that's fine.

[ZipZap]

Kids/Adults was in the Gamecube version as well.

[Neon Ignition]

The From thing is a constant curiosity, especially those who copy them. It gives the player a mental kudos to themselves to have beaten the game but has to cost the company sales. It's arguably a poor design decision to exclude an easier difficulty in default hard games.

[wakka]

Putting the commercial aspect to one side, if you consider a high difficulty level, inducing a high level of stress in the player an intrinsic part of what your game is, I don't think it's bad design not to include an easy mode.

I know you play Dark Souls with cheats SF, which, more power to you if that's how you want to do it, but it's fundamentally a different game at that point.

Dark Souls is stressful, but that's the point. If you take that away by making the game really easy, you're left with something that's missing what the game is really about IMO.

I think it's way too reductive to say making a game which is hard with no easy option is bad design, just as it's not bad design to create an easy game, or a game that is purely experiential without challenge. They're all different approaches with their own merits.

I guess what I'm saying is, creators shouldn't have to dilute their vision if they don't want to.

[Neon Ignition]

I feel like the Souls games have straddled a line between unfair and good design for a long time and often fans have waved away weak moments as being intended that way by FROM when really they came from ropey controls or enemy design... but, to give From their credit I equally think later games like Borne and Sekiro show enough advancement and variation to prove there's a lot of purposeful design at play too so they deserve their credit. Get that balance wrong once though and you risk losing the trust of your fans. It's perhaps not bad design but maybe a flaw in their commercial decision to no include an easier mode in there. It wouldn't dilute their game and would allow players with time constraints etc the ability to enjoy the gameplay, the gameworld and to effectively train up for a better introduction to the standard level. It just needs to be better attuned to new players rather than overly easy. That's From though I guess, for Viewtiful Joe such a hard difficulty no doubt betrayed the image the game had and made the experience disappointing to those who expected a fun beat em up

[wakka]

Yeah, I'm aware I've dragged us way OT here.

The only thing I would say from the commercial side is that, intuitively I'm inclined to agree with you (and at the same time say, hey, I'm happy there are creators that are able to prioritise a project's creative integrity over sales), but at the same time From's games are shockingly popular.

They're far from niche, even at this point when players are going in fully aware of how tough they are - which is kind of incredible.

Going back to Viewtiful Joe, yeah, I'd really have to refresh my view as I last played it when it was contemporary, but from memory it felt too hard for its own good. It was a blast in the earlier levels and then there was just this huge unreasonable difficulty spike and it was hard to understand why. I'd be interested to go back and see how I feel about it now.

[Neon Ignition]

Clue for 097 - Ralph's Gonna Wreck It

[QualityChimp]

I don't think you're off-topic, [MENTION=5490]wakka[/MENTION]. A bunch of us have said that the difficulty level and spike are what stopped us falling in love with the game.
FROM Software have carved a little niche with the challenge being the main attraction for many gamers, but would Clover Studios still be around if VJ had been a bigger success? It could be because of the departure of key Capcom developers after their insistence on 70-80% of output are sequels.

Either way, it does make me wonder about accessibility of games. Maybe that's why walkthroughs are so popular on YouTube?
Could you have a "true" mode, which is how it's supposed to be played and either a more accessible mode for players who're struggling or a tougher mode for those wanting a challenge?

I guess that's something developers have struggled with for decades.

I love Dara O Briain's routine on video games:
"I love video games because they do something that no other art form does. You cannot be bad at watching a movie. You cannot be bad at listening an album, but you can be bad at playing a video game and the game will punish you and deny you access to the rest of the game.

No other art for does this. You've never read a book and three chapters in and the book has gone 'what are the major themes of this book so far?' 'Oh, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention...' *book slams itself shut*

You've never been listening to an album and after three songs it's gone 'Dance for me. SHow me how good your dancing is.'
'Is this good enough?' 'No.' and the album has stopped."

[Dogg Thang]

To be fair, some people are really bad at watching movies.

[QualityChimp]

To be fair, some people are really bad at watching movies.

Yeah, but the closest you get to that is Netflix asking "are you still watching Chip and Potato?"

I mean it feels like it's saying "Bloody hell, are still watching Chip and Potato? It' been on for three hours now. Parent your children, make them get some fresh air. Sheesh, I'm not your babysitter!", but it doesn't stop you if you say yes.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, I know what he means and he's right.

On the difficulty topic, some games are just designed to be hard. And introducing an easy mode won't necessarily make it a better game if the game is designed at its core to be difficult - in a sense, it could just strip the main attraction from the game. Personally, I have no patience for difficult games any more and I especially don't have patience for any game where the challenge seems to be the controls or anything related to mechanics. I think a lot of 8-bit games and even some hailed as classics (Castlevania and Megaman, I'm looking in your direction) are hard basically because the control is so limited and it doesn't give you the tools to tackle the challenges in some parts.

But it's a fine line because, unless you're playing for other reasons (like story - I love a story game and don't need gameplay), a game usually requires some sort of challenge. Too easy and it's boring. Too hard and it's frustrating.

I have no problem with punishing games being out there and it's great that they still exist and haven't all been watered down over the years. But they aren't for me.

[ZipZap]

I put loads of hours into Bloodborne and I spent quite a lot of time with Dark Souls 3 as well. I haven't currently bought Sekiro and the main reason is definitely that I can't really be bothered with the difficulty right now, but I'm not sure an easy mode would've changed my mind.

I think a big part of the appeal of these games is entering a new area where everything is stacked against you, then gradually working your way through it. With an easy mode, the tense and intimidating atmosphere that adds so much to the experience would just be lost.

That said, I can appreciate that I'm a fairly experienced gamer and what is hard to be is impossible to some, and just ruins the game completely.

[Atticus]

The difficulty Souls is a bit different to something like Viewtiful Joe. With Souls you can grind, co-op and focus a particular play-style to get through ... whereas VJ, unless I'm mistaken, is all in the skills.

As for easy modes, I could never select that. I'd prefer to concede the game is not for me.