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Viewtiful Joe! YEAH!

Nilkad_Naqadah

Entry posted by Nilkad_Naqadah

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Hey everyone, it's time for another positive rant! Today I'm going to rant about the sugar-coated ball of goodness that is Viewtiful Joe!

 

Alright, so, many of you probably don't know this, but one of my favorite development studios is Clover Studios. They are responsible for both the Viewtiful Joe series, and the Okami series, two of my all-time favorite game franchises. I personally prefer Viewtiful Joe, but both series are amazing, and they also have many similarities in both art style and humor. I'll probably rant about Okami later, but for now let's focus on V-Joe.

 

Viewtiful Joe is a fast paced action platformer, which alternates between exciting high-speed brawling and some light puzzle-solving and platforming. The puzzle-solving and platforming is placed perfectly to give the player a chance to calm down and get their barings straight between encounters, and makes good use of the multiple innovative and imaginative mechanics incorporated into combat, which also save the title from becoming a simple button-mash fest. Now, all this is great, and honestly these aspects alone would be enough to sell me on the game to some extent, but what lifts the game into the realm of greatness for me is the style. The graphics are cel-shaded, which results in superbly smooth animation and a very nice aesthetic feel in general, not dissimilar to the graphical feel of such games as Okami and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. (More so Okami than Wind Waker.) Beyond that, the style as a whole is very busy, with complex backgrounds and environments full of things, as well as a nice blend of 3-dimensional models and 2-dimensional sprites that works very well. The entire design of the world lends a very comic-book like feel to the visuals.

 

Anyway, now that I'm done with the statistics, I'm just gonna gush for a bit.

 

Man, I love how the combat just has two attack buttons, but the VFX abilities completely change how it feels! And the graphics are just so cool-looking! And Joe's transformation sequence is just so awesome, and Joe himself is just such a fun character! And isn't it cool how Captain Blue will show up to give you a trial and make you earn your next ability! God, I just don't see how a game can be this damn awesome!

 

Ok, got that out of my system. That's it, I guess. I really need to think of a more consistent format for these rants.

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Legendary Emerald

Viewtiful Joe is hands down one of the greatest games Capcom has ever published. The first sequel was no slouch either, though it didn't add much to the formula.

 

It's just too bad the series committed suicide soon after. "Double Trouble" for the DS was okay, but "Red Hot Rumble" is one of the worst mascot fighting games ever concieved. The anime, whether in its original Japanese or the English adaptation, was just boring and poorly thought out, despite its great art style and soundtrack.

 

But there's little point on focusing the negatives. For a short while, we had an amazing series full of originality and character that is rarely seen these days. For a small period of time, we truly lived in a

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Radiance64

Yeah, VJ was pretty awesome, never was able to beat it and I didn't like 2 as much though.

I'm glad most of Clover still lives on in Platinum Games, who made some truly awesome games this gen like Madworld and Bayonetta. :)

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Nilkad_Naqadah

Glad to see I'm not the only one who feels this way. It's really too bad that Clover's games aren't very well-known, they really are some of the best ones published by Capcom. Clover definitely knows what they're doing when it comes to style, and have shown their versatility as well, making such fundamentally similar cel-shaded styles feel very different and very fitting to the environment and story in both Okami and V-Joe.

 

Yeah, VJ was pretty awesome, never was able to beat it and I didn't like 2 as much though.

I'm glad most of Clover still lives on in Platinum Games, who made some truly awesome games this gen like Madworld and Bayonetta. :)

 

I agree, it really is great that Platinum is around, and Madworld and Bayonetta both did a great job of having wonderful style and gameplay, just like V-Joe and Okami did. It's not often that developers will continually make games completely over-the-top while maintaining a premium level of quality throughout. (The only other studio I can think of that came close to reaching this goal is Suda 51, and while I love Killer 7, No More Heroes, and Lollipop Chainsaw, I've gotta admit that the combat was a bit simplistic and got stale eventually. Still great games, but just not on the same level as Clover and Platinum.)

 

The anime, whether in its original Japanese or the English adaptation, was just boring and poorly thought out, despite its great art style and soundtrack.

 

 

Agreed, while the series did keep a lot of the style I love so much in the games, it didn't keep the quality of writing or the fun story.

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