Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble (GameCube) Review

The main thing about Viewtiful Joe Red Hot Rumble is that fact that it looks absolutely stunning. Rich colours pour forth from your screen right from powering on the GameCube, with some pretty darn impressive cut-scenes and animation clips along the way. Unfortunately, though, there is so much going on at times that it is extremely awkward to see what is going on. However, the clever use of 3D and 2D cel-shaded imagery makes for a nice aesthetic treat. The same cannot be said for the sub-par rock soundtrack, overly 'beepy' and brash sound effects and cheesy voice acting. Okay, on the point of the speech it may well be purposeful, but that does not stop it from making you want to pull your ears off...

The premise of this off-shoot of the Viewtiful Joe series is that a TV show is due to be made, but the decision for the leading role has not yet been concluded. Therefore, in the 'interests of fairness' it is left up to all the characters that are in the running to go head-to-head-to-head-to...well, you get the idea, in order to whittle down the numbers and show who is the most worthy of landing the lucrative position. Contrived? Yes. Acceptable for such a crazy game? Certainly!

But the lengths at which you can go to forgive a game for particular downfalls or annoyances only stretch so far and when faced with what is ultimately a 'bash all your buttons like crazy until the timer runs out' type of game, then it can prove to be nothing more than a pain. Yes, a pain in the fact that you feel your time has been wasted and an actual physical ache from crazily rattling the analogue stick and various buttons (you will likely forget which one is which as it all blurs together anyway, leaving little room for actual skill).

Surely this could have become the next Super Smash Bros.? It really does look like Capcom has come to the conclusion that since Melee is one of the biggest selling GameCube games so far it would make sense to pay homage to it. However, a lack of memorable characters and crazy tasks that all seem the same (kill as many enemies as possible, collect more stuff, and so on) and are even completed by the same old button bashing techniques all the way through, mean that it pales terribly into insignificance when sat side-by-side. And that is quite a shame as it is an opportunity missed, but perhaps Nintendo will reel in VJ himself for a guest appearance in the online Revolution version...

But that is not the worst of it, as jump into a four-player brawl and what was originally just a hectic experience quickly turns into an unplayable one. There is so much going on at once that keeping track of your characters becomes almost an impossibility. The cast has potential to become more memorable over time and with perhaps a second shot at this fighting genre Clover Studios might pull off a better Smash Bros.-a-like game, but for now you are left with a game you may well want to play, but simply cannot! Frustratingly disappointing because it could have been so much more and the Viewtiful Joe series is so damn good in general...

Red Hot Rumble has a pleasing amount of replay value, for those that bother to stick with it. Being able to choose different difficulty levels definitely makes a difference to the chaotic play and the addition of collectables throughout the frenetic fighting adventure means that the faithful few out there willing to trudge through the mire will have a whale of a time.