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GameCube | Action | Viewtiful Joe

Boxart for Viewtiful Joe
Viewtiful Joe 42 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 5.0
  • SOUND: 5.0
  • CONTROL: 5.0
  • FUN FACTOR 5.0
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.8
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.8
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

Feature: Game of the Week [10/06/03]: Viewtiful Joe

Feature by PONGSIFU | 10/06/2003 | 15:49:50 PM PST

Capcom's latest is a weird, wonderful exercise in creativity and style. Go Joe!

Regular readers of the Game of the Week may have noticed a slight change in the weather. As of this week, GamePro's Game of the Week will be chosen every Monday instead of Friday. The reason? To clue you in on what you should be spending your precious money on this week before you accidentally go and buy Sword of Crap 2: The Pit of Suck. Fair warning: Every now and then, you'll still run into a Game of the Week that isn't actually out yet, and won't be for a while--when you see that happen, take it as a clue to show some restraint and keep your money in your piggy bank for seven days or so. Anyway, what better way to showcase this new philosophy than with Viewtiful Joe, the only game Pong Sifu's ever given all 5.0s? Here's the Sifu himself to explain...

Video games are like any other popular medium, whether it be film, books, or music, in that market forces make it hard for publishers to take risks on unproven formulas (although the my first mentor at GamePro, Uncle Dust, once said that mainstream games are, on the whole, better than mainstream movies, something I have to say I agree with). And when your job consists of playing games nonstop, day-in and day-out, you start to think that many games are minor tweaks or variations on what has worked before, if not simply franchise installments. Sure?as a consumer with a limited budget there is no shortage of great games to buy every so often as long as you are careful about where you throw your coin and pay attention to reviews and word of mouth. But as a professional who plays anywhere from 2-7 different games a week, by law of averages it is difficult to be truly excited and inspired by many of them, and that's why this is called a job.


Can a superhero named Joe save the game industry from dull unoriginality? Stay tuned!
But then something comes along to rock your world. Something to make you excited to get to your cubicle in the morning, throw off your backpack, and start playing. It takes you back to being a kid and running home from school to pick up where you left off in Legend of Zelda before breakfast that morning. It's those times that you realize that you couldn't invent a better job if you tried and by writing a review, you have a chance to share your joy with other people whom you hope will give the game a chance and feel something akin to what you felt. As a reviewer having come off a slew of run of the mill titles, Viewtiful Joe couldn't have come at a better time.

Viewtiful Joe has to be one of the most aesthetically idiosyncratic and ambitiously designed games ever. Operating on a psuedo-2D plane, it extends itself beyond mere cel-shading with harsh black lines, flat surfaces, trippy palette of bright colors, and wild visual effects, making the end result look more like a living manga than just a cartoon. The character designs are ripped right from 70s Henshin TV series like Kamen Rider, and everything in front of your eyes bursts at the seams with a bold, unique style.

But great graphics alone do not a good game make, and despite its simple old-school side-scrolling beat-em-up formula, the game is surprisingly deep. This is not only because of the time-warping abilities you are given as you progress, but also because of the new ways you continually figure out how to use them against enemies. Playing the game a second time for a strategy guide, I was pleasantly surprised to discover fighting techniques I missed the first time around, which added to the replay value?something integral when talking about $50 for a game.

There's not much more to say than what is said in the game's review, which you can find here. Now that the GameCube has been slashed to $99, there couldn't be a better time to pick one up. And if you do, you owe it to yourself to put Viewtiful Joe at the top of your list along with Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and Soul Calibur II.


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