E3 2003: Viewtiful Joe Hands-On

One of E3's most refreshingly good titles was Capcom's Viewtiful Joe. To say that we were impressed would be an understatement. Come inside for the details.

Here's a game we'd pretty much ignored most of the show. Bad Joe, VERY bad! Luckily, we got in more than enough playtime through the E3 demo to get a great feel for the game. Viewtiful Joe is so incredibly fun, and brought back some old-school gaming thrills. I was literally beaming after playing this wonderful game.

Viewtiful Joe was the brainchild of Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 2's director, Hideki Kamiya, as well as Steel Battalion's producer, Atsushi Inaba. Shinji Mikami is overseeing the project. With those kinds of credentials you know it has to turn out pretty good eh mates?

With Viewtiful Joe, Capcom has taken a more traditional arcade style side-scrolling beat 'em up approach and has coupled it with wonderful graphics and sterling gameplay.

In Viewtiful Joe, a character named Joe gets sucked into a cartoon movie world to rescue his girlfriend Sylvia, who was warped into a movie they were watching of Joe's favorite superhero, Captain Blue. Now it's up to Joe to locate her whereabouts in the movie, fight the enemies thrown his way and rescue her.

Lucky for Joe, he doesn't remain just an ordinary dude while in the movie. Joe changes into Viewtiful Joe, and gains new powers that enable him to perform cool visual techniques that affect time. These can be used with his basic offensive moves to create devastating combos on the enemy cretins, as well as solve puzzles throughout the bizarre world.

As both Joe and Viewtiful Joe, he'll run around great looking 2.5D cel-shaded noir environments and fight against a variety of zany characters. The idea is that, in the end Joe will win back his beloved Sylvia and in the process help Viewtiful Joe make a successful action film.

The gameplay of Viewtiful Joe is excellent with a capital E. The only minor gripe we had was that there were no throws to perform, especially since Capcom's other beat 'em ups like the Final Fight series among others had throws to accompany their offensive moves. Also I kind of wish there was a two player co-op mode. Other than that, the game plays ultra smooth and is highly addictive.

So, you start the game off as a regular guy named Joe, running around punching and kicking enemy characters that approach him from all sides in this slick looking cel-shaded comic world. Eventually Joe hears a friendly voice, that of a guide, a mentor that he fights against to prove himself and earn the power of Viewtiful Joe.

When you first start off as regular Joe, he can only perform single jumps, kicks, punches, foot sweeps, jump kicks, jump punches and an uppercut that will launch some enemies into the air and leave them vulnerable to juggling attacks. He can also perform short quick jumps to avoid attacks to his legs and can duck to avoid attacks to his head.

The cool thing about Viewtiful Joe is that before most of the characters attack you, a skull-like indicator appears on screen to let you know whether they'll be aiming for your head or legs. By avoiding their attacks either by ducking or jumping, they'll miss and spin out of control causing them to become dizzy and vulnerable to counter attacks, which Joe is more than happy to serve them a nice gourmet plate of ass whoopin.

What's fulfilling is when the indicators show high or low, you manage to successfully duck and jump above their high and low attacks, without running past them. At the end of certain sections in each level the game ranks you on several areas and provides you with grades on your performance.

However the REAL meat of the game and the incredible fun starts when you change into the caped crusader, Viewtiful Joe! He can perform regular Joe's moves and has a few super enhanced tricks of his own. Viewtiful Joe can do Joe's regular jump, a single jump into a flip and a very high double jump into a flip before landing. The double jump is pretty cool and helpful as you can be falling and still boost yourself into the air before landing on whatever it is that lies beneath you, quite helpful when dealing with spikes and other dangers. I've always loved games with double jumps, and I feel this one has the best of them all.

The coolest enhancement of Viewtiful Joe however is his ability to speed up or slow down time, especially while beating the crap out of enemy characters and solving puzzles.

Holding down the Left shoulder button activates the "Slow Power" (slow motion) feature which allows him to see an enemy's attack before it strikes him and beat them to the punch.. or kick. Also if timed right, Viewtiful Joe can deflect some of the enemy projectiles thrown his way such as the little rockets shot out by the helicopter boss at the end of level 1. The slow-motion effect is very cool as the camera zooms in on Viewtiful Joe and his attacks become more powerful than they were before. Such an element does add a sense of ease to the game But it also adds incredibly fun gameplay to it as well.

Holding down the Right shoulder button activates the "Mach Speed"(Speed up) feature which causes Viewtiful Joe to move at blazing speeds, enabling him to dish out some incredibly fast paced punishment to the enemy characters in the game. When this power is used, everything on-screen is moving at a faster rate except for the enemies, who still react at their same old pace, making it seem like a bunch of slow pokes fighting. Holding down the punch or Kick button while in this mode will have Viewtiful Joe unleashing a series of super rapid fire punches or kicks, which look pretty cool and are very effective.

Using any of these time altering special abilities will drain energy from Viewtiful Joe's VFX (Visual Effects) bar for as long as their buttons (L or R) are held down. Once the VFX bar is completely drained, Viewtiful Joe will change back into his "regular" Joe form, like the Incredible Hulk changing back into David Banner. Fortunately the bar refills itself quickly everytime and Joe is able to return to his Viewtiful Joe form within a few seconds.

Along with his basic fighting moves, you can string together some unique and cool combos while fighting stronger opponents. For example, while fighting against the helicopter boss at the end of the first level, I made use of both the Slow Power and Mach Speed effects to do some serious damage to it during my first attack, and possibly could have done the boss in during that first assault, or come close to it. Waiting till the helicopter approached me, I jumped into the air to meet it, then used the slow motion effect to position myself perfectly in front of it to land one slow-mo punch or kick, then quickly switching to the Mach Speed effect and holding down the punch or kick button for rapid fire action, the helicopter was being pummeled relentlessly until it flew past me with its life bar almost completely depleted.

Along with stringing together combos, you can also juggle some enemies in the air with some of your repeated attacks which will keep them up there until they implode. I managed to repeatedly uppercut some of the easier enemies 8-9 times without them ever hitting the ground.

It would have been so much sweeter to have access to throw moves as well so that we could launch an enemy into the air and then jump up after them and slam them to the ground, but regardless, the gameplay system of Viewtiful Joe works superbly well.

As you make your way through the levels, you'll collect items such as Viewtifuls to I guess increase his gauge and Burgers to replenish Joe's stamina. There are also keys that you obtain to open doors leading into the next sections of the levels. With plenty of traps, cool puzzles, and plenty of enemies to test your time altering and combo skills with, the game just never seems to feel repetitive.

The game sports some really good cel-shaded 3D graphics with 2D gameplay to give it a very nice 2.5D presentation. The animations are pretty good with smooth movements coming from all of the characters in the game. The character designs are cool, Regular Joe looks like a skater dude while Viewtiful Joe looks like a wacky little Power Ranger with a cape. The backgrounds are great; it really feels like you're playing a comic book. Everything looks hand drawn and the noir environments are beautifully detailed and are just perfect for this type of game. I couldn't have asked for anything more where the visuals are concerned.

And if the game's great visuals and fantastic gameplay weren't enough, Viewtiful Joe also sports a pretty cool soundtrack. The music is energetic and catchy stuff, with a variety of electronic styles. The voices used throughout the game are pretty fun to hear and add a certain excitement to this already great game. When Joe ducks a punch, you'll hear him taunt his foes by shouting "Can't Touch Me!", and also shout "Up you go Fella" or "Bye Bye" after upper cutting an enemy into the air. If they miss a low attack on Joe, he'll shout "Gettin Slow!". You'll also hear an encouraging female voice shouting "Just Go For It!" a few times during each level, and hear a director shouting "CUT! CUT! CUT!" whenever you lose. You also receive some applause whenever you're ranked. If you receive a great grade you'll hear plenty of highly enthusiastic clapping sounds accompanied by some whistling. If you receive a bad grade, you get what sounds like maybe 1 or 2 people clapping and no whistle sounds. The sound effects are pretty cool, in fact everything is just COOL about this game.

Viewtiful Joe is an excellent game and easily one of the most engaging at the show. Viewtiful Joe hits U.S. shores in October, with the import version out in June. "You Want some? Come and Get Some!"

Joseph Jackson
Staff Writer, Kikizo Games