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Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble

It is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s the case, then Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble is hitting on Nintendo’s Smash Bros. series like a drunken romantic, paying her a whole cache of uncomfortable compliments whilst clinging to a nearby lamppost for dear life. This is made especially awkward by the fact that the inebriated buffoon is wound tightly in a straitjacket. You see, if it was possible for lines of programming code to combine and create a digital form of insanity, the result would be a lot like Red Hot Rumble. Very few games have come this close to giving pure madness a visual representation, much less an interactive one. With four players, the game just goes bonkers.

And believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, most of the game’s positive points come attached with the very same proviso of “four players”. As a single-player title, Red Hot Rumble doesn’t quite work and, unlike the Super Smash Bros. gameplay it clearly models itself on, the combat mechanics don’t hold up nearly as well. Presented in much the same way as Nintendo‘s frantic fighter, with brightly colored 3D characters duking it out on multilayered, side-scrolling levels, the game’s fighting is far more frenetic and visceral than it is fair. While the sheer on-screen chaos can be reveled in by a group of players, it provides more confusion and frustration than anything else when involved with fewer participants.

In the single-player campaign, you are often tasked with more than just picking a character out of Viewtiful Joe’s wacky cast and sequentially battling the rest of the lineup. Coins determine the victor of each round, and these can be beaten out of opponents and other stage hazards which the game will liberally throw at you. It’s a constant struggle to gather and maintain a decent number of coins and many power-ups that appear in the arena will either help or hinder you in this regard. One of the crazier ones opens up a vortex in the level, sucking up all the characters and suddenly initiating a random minigame which can involve anything from intense button mashing to an impromptu game of tennis. These events are quite a lot of fun and the idea behind them is that they can reverse the current spread of coins amongst the combatants and give a trailing player a second chance

Now, that seems like a fine gesture should you be on the losing end, but the AI has a nasty knack for coming out on top when you’re currently in the lead. Having your coins taken away from you by a silly minigame in the final moments of a match can prove to be quite frustrating, especially if you earned them in the first place by playing well. If there is an element of skill required to succeed here, it is undone by these rapid reversals. They make the single-player aspect of the game less enjoyable, quite a problem considering that there really isn’t much substance as far as story or variety goes.

With that being said, it’s important to keep in mind that Red Hot Rumble is, at its core, a fast-paced brawler that is best enjoyed in the company of friends. The complaints against the single-player campaign are largely drowned out by friendly laughter and players exclaiming “What the hell is going on?” You’ll quickly grow accustomed to it, as the levels of on-screen anarchy are pushed to the extreme as soon as four players start flipping through the air and hurling fiery punches at each other. It’s a sight to behold, but it’s not necessarily one you’ll always be able to make sense of. With power-ups, switches, enemies and Viewtiful Joe’s trademark VFX powers (such as Zoom, Mach Speed, Slow-Mo and the new Replay) sharing the screen, things become so ridiculously chaotic it’s a real challenge for your brain to interpret the vivid, stylish visuals and not have a seizure on the spot. It’s also a challenge to not have fun.

While flaws still remain in the combat, they’re just not as apparent in the madness of four-player battle. When you have giant characters stomping about, bombs exploding and fireballs flying, it’s hard to take a step back and criticize the lack of skill required to win. The game’s multiplayer mode is just so crazy, it’s almost impossible not to extract a good time from it. It meshes perfectly with the zany style the Viewtiful Joe games have become known for and, thanks to extremely simple controls, lets just about anyone hop in and play the game to its full extent almost immediately. And while there are a handful of stages where the camera is zoomed out too far from the action, making it difficult to see what’s happening, the game thrives on over-the-top action and unmitigated pandemonium to the point where you’ll become bored when it’s no longer present.

Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble is a blast to play in the company of friends and you would have to search far and wide to find a fighting game that’s as frenetic and as downright insane. It may be directly inspired by Smash Bros., but not even Nintendo’s brawler can match up to the visual excesses and overwhelming action presented here. The very chaotic nature that makes it great with multiple players, however, also contributes to its easy and unbalanced fighting engine. Ít’s unfortunate that the game isn’t a more complete package, but the enjoyment to be had with four players certainly makes it worthy of consideration. If you’re lacking in either friends or controllers, don’t bother.

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Posted by Ludwig on Apr 30th, 2006 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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