Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble
Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:09 amGameplay: 6
Graphics: 7.8
Sound: 6.6
Value: 6.6
Tilt: 6.6
Overall Rating: 6.8
The story in Red Hot Rumble is pretty straightforward. Captain Blue has retired from being a superhero and has decided to direct a movie. He's having a problem casting the lead role, though, so along with his sexy but otherwise uninteresting assistant, Sprocket, Captain Blue hatches a plan to hold an audition in the form of a series of all-out brawls. The toughest and most stylish will certainly win, and he or she will be cast as the lead in the movie. Just about everyone from the two Viewtiful Joe games shows up for their chance at the glitz and glamour of becoming a big-time movie star. So you end up fighting battle after battle against an array of quirky characters on a variety of movie sets, with themes ranging from a Western town to Atlantis. Each scene is divided into several battles against at least one other opponent.
The controls are fairly simple in Red Hot Rumble. By default, you can move around using the D pad or the analog stick, jump using the X button, perform a regular attack with square, and a special attack with triangle or circle. You can also use VFX powers with the L or R buttons. You can modify your attacks by pressing the control stick in any direction. If you hold down and attack you'll do a slide, and if you hold up and attack you'll do an uppercut. Joe can do a red hot dragon punch, Sylvia can do a triple shot, and Captain Blue can summon blue thunder. Each character has several special moves, and you'll usually rely much more on your special moves than on your basic ones. As you fight and when you kill enemies, VFX orbs will appear randomly. You can collect these orbs to use VFX powers. There are four powers you can get: slow, which slows down everyone but you and makes you invincible; mach speed, which lights you on fire and lets you fly around the screen; sound effects, which let you materialize a sound effect and throw it at your enemies; and zoom, which makes you about five times larger than usual so you can pretty much beat the crap out of everything on the screen.
Red Hot Rumble does support up to four players for ad hoc battles, but the multiplayer battles are pretty much the same as the single-player battles, just with a couple of extra characters to confuse the situation even more. You can play any of the battles from single-player story mode in battle mode. There are more than 20 stages in all, and even though there's decent thematic variety, you'll pretty much get the exact same experience of the single-player story when you play in multiplayer. Another problem arises in multiplayer because a lot of the characters in the game look very similar, so when you have four characters onscreen at once and they're all wearing helmets and spandex, it's really easy to get mixed up. The best part about multiplayer is that Red Hot Rumble on the PSP has a game-sharing mode where you can enjoy two-player battles with only one copy of the game.
Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble is just a bit too crazy for its own good. It packs in all the style of the Viewtiful Joe games, which is great, but there just isn't enough room on the screen to contain the action. The gameplay is a mess of bright colors and unsatisfying button mashing. Its heart is in the right place, but the game lacks focus and feels disorganized. Viewtiful Joe fans will appreciate all the characters and the game's look and feel, but as a fighting game, Red Hot Rumble just isn't very satisfying.
Graphics: 7.8
Sound: 6.6
Value: 6.6
Tilt: 6.6
Overall Rating: 6.8
The story in Red Hot Rumble is pretty straightforward. Captain Blue has retired from being a superhero and has decided to direct a movie. He's having a problem casting the lead role, though, so along with his sexy but otherwise uninteresting assistant, Sprocket, Captain Blue hatches a plan to hold an audition in the form of a series of all-out brawls. The toughest and most stylish will certainly win, and he or she will be cast as the lead in the movie. Just about everyone from the two Viewtiful Joe games shows up for their chance at the glitz and glamour of becoming a big-time movie star. So you end up fighting battle after battle against an array of quirky characters on a variety of movie sets, with themes ranging from a Western town to Atlantis. Each scene is divided into several battles against at least one other opponent.
The controls are fairly simple in Red Hot Rumble. By default, you can move around using the D pad or the analog stick, jump using the X button, perform a regular attack with square, and a special attack with triangle or circle. You can also use VFX powers with the L or R buttons. You can modify your attacks by pressing the control stick in any direction. If you hold down and attack you'll do a slide, and if you hold up and attack you'll do an uppercut. Joe can do a red hot dragon punch, Sylvia can do a triple shot, and Captain Blue can summon blue thunder. Each character has several special moves, and you'll usually rely much more on your special moves than on your basic ones. As you fight and when you kill enemies, VFX orbs will appear randomly. You can collect these orbs to use VFX powers. There are four powers you can get: slow, which slows down everyone but you and makes you invincible; mach speed, which lights you on fire and lets you fly around the screen; sound effects, which let you materialize a sound effect and throw it at your enemies; and zoom, which makes you about five times larger than usual so you can pretty much beat the crap out of everything on the screen.
Red Hot Rumble does support up to four players for ad hoc battles, but the multiplayer battles are pretty much the same as the single-player battles, just with a couple of extra characters to confuse the situation even more. You can play any of the battles from single-player story mode in battle mode. There are more than 20 stages in all, and even though there's decent thematic variety, you'll pretty much get the exact same experience of the single-player story when you play in multiplayer. Another problem arises in multiplayer because a lot of the characters in the game look very similar, so when you have four characters onscreen at once and they're all wearing helmets and spandex, it's really easy to get mixed up. The best part about multiplayer is that Red Hot Rumble on the PSP has a game-sharing mode where you can enjoy two-player battles with only one copy of the game.
Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble is just a bit too crazy for its own good. It packs in all the style of the Viewtiful Joe games, which is great, but there just isn't enough room on the screen to contain the action. The gameplay is a mess of bright colors and unsatisfying button mashing. Its heart is in the right place, but the game lacks focus and feels disorganized. Viewtiful Joe fans will appreciate all the characters and the game's look and feel, but as a fighting game, Red Hot Rumble just isn't very satisfying.