Kick it sideways with Joe!
The protagonist of this game is Joe, a Fred Durst look alike with a confident and witty personality. You are thrown into the story line rather quickly as you will get pulled into the movie and suit up with your V-watch within the first 5 minutes of play. This is all good anyway as the meat of the game comes from the actual combat system. Enemies will try to strike you high or low as indicated by a warning skull. You can duck or jump out of the way which will leave the enemy stunned and open to a follow up combo. The game does a nice job of slowly introducing improvements on the combat system such as the ability to slow and speed up time. Depending on how well you use your abilities to complete combos on your enemies, you will collect “viewtiful” points which can be used to buy new moves and items between levels. All of the abilities and items are worth purchasing which really gives you an incentive to explore the full potential of the combat system.
The look of the game overall is very comic-bookish which is complimented nicely by the cell shading. The levels are well designed with many platforms and switches that are only reachable via your ability to manipulate time with the V-suit. The bosses are all unique and exciting to battle as you will have to exploit every function of your V-suit in order to take them down. The voice acting in this game is a tad cheesy at times but will make you laugh which helps to make a bright and fun game even better.
I had a great time playing this game and actually played it a few times through on more difficult settings to unlock the other playable characters. This game is a fun edition to any collection simply because it breaks the mold of what’s the norm in today’s gaming culture, and will let your friends know that you think on your own and still like to kick it sideways.
kbshaffer scale of recommendation:
RECOMMEND