INTRO:
The first Joe Danger game was itself an homage to Excitebike. That the titular Joe Danger was wearing an orange-red jumpsuit was a notable sign of this tribute.
After having had some success with the first game (likely due to it being a more colourful alternative to Trials), Hello Games had made a mostly mission-pack sequel for those who could not get enough of what the first game did.
MEANT FOR CONTROLLERS:
There is a computer version of this game, and that is the one that this review is based on. Unfortunately, its launcher executable would make it quite clear that this game has been intended to be played with a controller. Instead of starting the game, it brings up a window showing the options to change the display settings and the button mappings for the keyboard. The options seem mostly thorough, but that is the most that Hello Games has done for the porting.
None of the visual indicators for control inputs in the game have been updated to reflect the use of the keyboard. There are no in-game menus that show the aforementioned options. If the player wants to check the list of control inputs, the player will need to take a screenshot of the launch window.
PREMISE:
Joe Danger’s comeback in the first game has attracted the attention of a movie director with access to a ludicrous budget. The director happens to be an incredible fan of his exploits, so in addition to having hired him, he also named the films after Joe Danger.
Yet, there really is not much of a story to be had here. Whatever passes for story in this game is little more than Joe living his dream.
In fact, there will not be any cutscenes or exposition whatsoever. Unless the new player knows about the first game, the player would have no idea about why things are happening the way they are.
OBSTACLE COURSES A.K.A. FILM SETS:
The film sets are practically obstacle courses. The aforementioned director did not shy from placing a lot of hazards in the sets, so eager he is at watching Joe Danger handle them (or wiping out on them).
Each obstacle course has a starting point, which is sometimes marked clearly. At other times, the player begins in what appears to be in the middle of a scene, such as a vehicle chase. However, each obstacle course is guaranteed to have a finish line; the line even has checkerboard patterns, just so the player can recognize it.
INDEFATIGABLE AND INDESTRUCTIBLE JOE DANGER:
The main gist of the gameplay is similar to the one in a similar game, namely Trials. The player character is expected to go through an obstacle course, no matter how many injuries that would have been inflicted on the protagonist. Like the player characters in the Trials titles, Joe Danger is indestructible and has limitless energy. This is the typically ludicrous excuse for letting the player restart segments of a course or its entirety.
JOE’S HITBOXES:
That is not to say that Joe is invincible; if something hits him, it will hit him and knock him out.
Since Joe’s body is mostly obscured by his vehicle, hits that would knock him out would have to land on his head. Incidentally, since he is the kind of cartoon character that has a ridiculously proportioned head, the hitbox for his head is huge. Chances are, anything that hits the vehicle is likely to hit his head too, causing an immediate wipe-out.
Therefore, it is generally in the player’s interest to avoid having anything hit the vehicle. Even if Joe is not hit, the vehicle would be damaged; vehicular damage is described later.
CHECKPOINTS:
There are checkpoints sprinkled throughout each of the obstacle course. When the player character reaches these, the player’s progression through the course is saved up to that checkpoint. The next checkpoint overrides any auto-save that has been made in earlier checkpoints, so the player cannot revert to an earlier checkpoint.
When the player returns to the most-recent checkpoint, Joe’s vehicle is at rest. Consequently, it has to spend time to accelerate in order to reach viable speeds; this will not help in the player’s efforts to score below par times (more on this later). Therefore, it is in the player’s interest not to have to use checkpoints. Yet, these checkpoints are still useful for focusing one’s efforts on specific stretches of a course.
VEHICULAR COURSES:
In addition to the stunt bike that Joe Danger would use, there are other vehicles, like carts, police bikes and trikes.
Most of them work similarly to each other. Joe can tilt the vehicles, have them hop and do wheelies in any of them, regardless of how ungainly they are. Therefore, the differences between them are mainly aesthetic.
Joe Danger also operates a jet pack, but this works very differently from the vehicles. In fact, courses with the jetpack are noticeably different from those with vehicles. These will be described later.
SLOPES:
Any vehicle can move forward, but will eventually hit a flat speed as long as it moves along a flat horizontal line. However, the obstacle courses can have designs that can change speed.
Firstly, there are slopes. Downwards slopes accelerate the vehicle, whereas upwards slope decelerate it, as gravity would dictate. Knowing when to use other means to change the speed of the vehicle when moving along these slopes is important. This is mainly to avoid mishaps like failing to overcome a slope, or overshooting from the top of a slope.
Similar physics are also used for vertical loops, though of course the player character needs to already have considerable speed to even traverse them.
BUMPS:
The second obstacle design that alters speeds is the bump. Bumps are non-lethal obstacles that are intended to slow down the player character’s vehicle, simply by causing it to hop and lose horizontal speed when it hits the bumps. Usually, bumps appear in courses where the main objective is to outrun a moving hazard.
RAMPS:
Ramps are generally in a course for the purpose of making jumps, or to receive the player character’s vehicle at the end of a jump off an earlier ramp.
More often than not, collectibles are placed in the path of a ramp jump. Usually, these are intended to guide the player character’s vehicle down onto an optimal landing spot – usually so that more collectibles can be collected.
JUMPS:
Joe can make any vehicle jump, no matter how ridiculous it seems. However, the default jumps are generally just high enough to clear low obstacles like bumps. They will not be high enough to clear deliberate barriers, like striped barricades.
Interestingly, Joe can make the vehicle do a second jump after the first. However, the increase in height is too small to be useful for anything.
There are two ways to increase the height of a jump. The first way is difficult to execute, because it requires the vehicle to be already moving at considerable speeds. The vehicle has to be already airborne, and the player has to make the jump just after it lands. (Presumably, there are scripts that converted the impact of the landing to elastic energy that is released during the jump.)
The other way is to use boost. However, this also requires the player to know how to tilt the vehicle in the correct orientation. This will be described later.
SPRING PAD:
Hello Games fancies Joe Danger 2 to be a bit of a platformer too, so there are spring pads in some courses. Like all video game spring pads, these launch anything that is on them upwards. Usually the player needs these to reach a higher platform, because a boosted jump off a ramp is not available.
The spring pads give the player character a lot of airtime, something that the player can use to pull off tricks. Indeed, expending all fuel just before a spring pad and then using the airtime afterwards to replenish fuel is a viable strategy at saving time. (There will be more on fuel shortly.)
If the player times a jump when Joe lands on the spring pad, he will be launched higher. More often than not, this is needed in order to collect certain collectibles that are not in immediate sight.
VEHICLE BOOST & FUEL:
All of the vehicles have been (dangerously) modified to have what appears to be nitro boosters. Using the booster increases the speed of the vehicle along the direction that it is facing; this is not the same as the direction that it is actually moving along. This difference will be described later.
The player can boost at any time as long as the vehicle has fuel. Boosting understandably uses up fuel. To regain fuel, the player character has to perform stunts. Somehow, doing so would reward the player with fuel replenishment. The amount of replenishment depends on the impressiveness of the stunts and how long their combo chain was.
TILTING:
Tilting the vehicle causes it to move on just one wheel (or a pair, in the case of vehicles with four wheels). The player has to be careful not to tilt it too much, lest the vehicle simply capsizes.
Tilting the vehicle while it is moving counts as doing wheelies, which are the easiest stunts to do. This is the main reason for tilting. That said, if the player’s fingers are substantially well-practised, the player can maintain a balance and not tumble up and over.
Tilting can also be used to get through certain places. Indeed, the mark of differentiation between a fresh rookie player and an experienced one is the ability to tilt the vehicle at the best angles at the best time.
BOOSTED JUMP:
One of the practical ways of using tilting for movement purposes is to facilitate boosting. As mentioned earlier, the vehicle gains acceleration in the direction that it is facing.
If the player could tilt the vehicle and then have it jump, boosting will cause the vehicle to accelerate in the direction that it is tilted towards (which is, of course, its forward facing).
The player has to learn this early on in the game, just to be able to get collectibles and achieve a certain secondary objective.
CAPSIZING AND TUCKING IN:
Generally, if Joe’s vehicle has turned upside down, he will wipe out as soon as his head touches the road or track.
However, it is possible for the capsized vehicle to comically slide along the track or road anyway as long as Joe is tucked in (or “ducked”, to use the Director’s own words). To tuck in, the player holds down the control input for jumping; incidentally, this is what Joe needs to do before a jump anyway.
Tucking in lowers the hitbox for his head, so it is possible for the capsized vehicle to continue moving without Joe being knocked out. It might seem comical that the vehicle is technically sliding along using Joe’s back.
However, if the vehicle turns any further in the direction that it was turning before it capsized, Joe’s head will connect with the track or road and he will be knocked out anyway.
SWITCHING LANES:
Despite his daredevil personality, Joe can follow a straight path quite well, even if it goes through or over obstacles and hazards. However, there are vertical and high obstacles that cannot be jumped over, and which Joe will crash against if he does not get out of the way. To avoid collisions, there are scripts that become active when Joe is in the vicinity of these obstacles.
These scripts allow him to switch lanes. The first several obstacle courses have lane-switching that generally only allows the player character to switch in only one direction. Thus, this gives the impression that the lane-switching gimmick is little more than a do-or-die hurdle.
Fortunately, later courses provide a bit more freedom and more convincing challenges; there may be more than one lane to switch to, and each lane would have its own hazards. Some collectibles can only be obtained through one of these other lanes too.
Obstacle courses that happen on city roads have incoming vehicles near the lane-switching zones. If the player did not correctly time Joe’s approach and lane-switch, he will collide with these vehicles and wipe out.
DIRECTOR’S CALL-OUTS:
Most vehicular courses require the player character to continue moving, often due to things that are chasing him or trying to knock him out. There can be a lot of things to look out for, so the game has audio cues to help the player. These cues are the Director’s call-outs.
If there is anything that the player character must do to avoid a wipe-out, the Director will call it out. Most of the call-outs are for ducking (or tucking in), jumping or switching lanes. In the case of duck and jump call-outs, there are also visual indicators on-screen.
VEHICLE DAMAGE:
Although Joe Danger is cartoonishly indestructible, his vehicle is not. Indeed, his vehicle is of the cartoonish kind – specifically the one that is doomed to be wrecked spectacularly.
Anyway, the vehicle may be hit with a glancing blow from a hazard. If Joe is not wiped out, the vehicle is damaged. It will continue to perform just as well as when it was not damaged, but its appearance is a reminder that it cannot take another hit, even a glancing one.
Nonetheless, most hits on the vehicle are likely to be powerful enough to just wreck it outright.
JETPACK COURSES:
In some film sets, Joe gets a jetpack instead of a vehicle. The jetpack works quite differently.
There are no tilting controls whatsoever. Jumping is not possible, but the control input for jumping is replaced with one for a fast fall. Boosting causes Joe to move upwards, regardless of the facing of his model. The jetpack’s fuel also self-replenishes rather quickly.
Such different controls might seem odd and out of place to someone that prefers the game to be consistent about its Excitebike-inspired gameplay. Indeed, some may even opine that the jetpack is easier and less challenging to use.
Nonetheless, the controls work, and with enough practice and experience, a skilled player can eke out reliable performance from the jetpack.
COLLECTIBLES – OVERVIEW:
Like the first game, the film sets have collectibles strewn throughout them. Some collectibles are placed in plain sight to guide the player onto the correct path. Some others are placed out of the way and not within immediate sight. In the case of the latter, the player may see glimpses of the collectibles as the cameras move.
Incidentally, getting the collectibles happens to be some of the objectives of the obstacle courses. Indeed, if this happens to be the main objective of an obstacle course, the player cannot complete the course without having collected each and every collectible of the required type.
STARS:
Stars are the most numerous collectibles. Indeed, in some of the obstacle courses, especially the ones with the jetpack, there may be hundreds of them to collect.
Among the collectibles, these ones appear in the player’s path the most, mainly to guide the player. For example, they may be arranged along the most optimal trajectory for a ramp jump.
COINS:
Giant coins are the second-most numerous collectibles. More often than not, if they are in an obstacle course, collecting all of them is the main objective. They are not easy to miss, because of their large hitboxes.
In some courses with coins, the coins are already there to be collected. Others require the player character to collect red coins first; this is more than likely a reference to Super Mario World 2.
BANANAS:
Some courses have giant floating bananas; these may or may not be an homage to Donkey Kong. The bananas are rare (pun not intended), which is just as well because their collection is hardly if not never the main objective for any course.
This is because getting them is not easy. Firstly, the player character needs to obtain the first bunch. Indeed, the very first bunch of bananas will require the player to learn how to do a boosted and tilted jump. Anyway, getting the first bunch is the requirement for the other bananas to appear.
Secondly, the player character is replaced with an animatronic monkey with a fez, riding a bicycle. Of course, there is no change in the handling of the vehicle; in fact, the transformation preserves the player character’s momentum. However, the monkey’s head is noticeably large. The player has to collect the other bananas with the monkey and its bicycle, often uncomfortably close to hazards.
HUGE GOLDEN STARS:
In addition to the small stars, there is a huge one that can be found in certain courses. They are often tucked away in easily overlooked places. Usually, the list of medals in the information of the courses would reveal the presence of such a star.
These large stars often require the player to spend time to get them. This can be difficult, if the player has to balance this against time records (more on these later).
LANDING ON HUGE BUTTONS:
Some obstacle courses have huge buttons on the ground. These have to be pressed by having the player character land on them. Pressing the buttons may be the main objective of some of the courses. In others, they bring up shields that protect the player character from incoming explosive projectiles. (There will be more on these later.)
Before they are pressed, these huge buttons pose as low obstacles, meaning that the player character’s vehicles would stop when they hit them. This can be unpleasant to learn the hard way. After the buttons have been pressed, the buttons’ surfaces are level with the ground.
FINISHING THE COURSE:
All of the courses have to be completed by having the player character cross the finish line. This is in addition to whatever has been set as the main objective.
The player character can pass the finish line in any way. To elaborate, he does not have to be on a vehicle, or even conscious, for that matter. He could wipe out just before the finish line and still finish the course by sliding on his face past the line. As long as it happens within a few seconds of wiping out, this still counts as a finish. Of course, this is very convenient, and quite entertaining.
TRICKS:
Joe is a stuntman, so doing tricks is part and parcel of his job. He happens to do them with gusto.
Doing tricks requires the player to either periodically press the buttons to do tricks, or hold down the tilt buttons to do wheelies. Either method will require the player to reserve fingers for the buttons to do so; this is easier to do with a game controller than a keyboard.
In addition to replenishing fuel, the tricks build up the score that the player is racking up for the course that is being played. The second function is mainly for those players who pursue leaderboard rankings.
COMBO:
As long as the player character pulls off trick after trick within four seconds of each other, the player maintains a combo. This does not amplify the points that the player would get from successive tricks. Rather, it is used to determine whether the player has been maintaining a combo. Incidentally, there are some obstacle courses with main objectives that are about maintaining a combo all the time.
The qualification conditions are generous though. The player can start the combo at any time within the first several seconds of the course. As mentioned earlier, any consecutive trick can be made within four seconds of the last one.
TIME RECORDS:
Games that are oriented around obstacle courses or races almost always have “par” times, if only to challenge the player to shave seconds off their run attempts. Joe Danger 2 is no different.
Trying to beat the par times while achieving the other objectives can seem daunting. However, if the player achieves other objectives in addition to the main one, the player is rewarded with time reductions. This can bring the player under the par time, and in some courses, this is one of a few ways to do so.
PUNCHING:
Joe takes on the role of an action hero in his films. Thus, like all action heroes, he is expected to punch things. Like everything else he does, he does so with gusto. In fact, he punches so hard that he can eventually thrash a van.
The first film set that has him throwing punches has him punching other stuntmen, who have been cast in the role of “Team Nasty”. (Incidentally, Team Nasty is the group of antagonists in the Excitebike series.) More often than not, in these courses, the main objective is the elimination of all Team Nasty members.
Team Nasty members will not attack Joe directly (which is perhaps a tactical mistake, but then they are making a film about a hero beating up villains). Rather, they toss hazards into his path, such as mines and contact grenades. They will continue to do so, until Joe knocks them out. In the case of Nasties on bikes, one punch is all that Joe needs for each of them.
Of course, the player character still needs to catch up to them in order to knock them out, but they rarely accelerate to get away if Joe has caught up to them.
There are also Team Nasty members in sturdier vehicles, like vans, or members who happen to be tougher than the rest. These often have floating hit point bars that indicate how much more that they can take before being knocked out. Of course, they also happen to be what passes for bosses in this game.
THROWING THINGS:
In some obstacle courses, Joe is throwing actual things instead of punches. One course has him tossing explosive newspapers, of all things.
Joe automatically throws papers at whatever opponent is ahead of him; the player does not appear to have control over who the target would be. However, this is generally not an issue, because moots are knocked out immediately from any hits, often leaving their boss alone.
DODGING THINGS:
Unfortunately, not all enemies can be eliminated. There are courses in which there is a massive enemy hovering about in the background, firing projectiles that automatically fly towards Joe. (One wonders how the production studio managed to have the budget to implement them.)
Ostensibly, the player should try to have Joe take cover whenever these projectiles come too close, or boost hard and attempt to outrun them. Most of these courses also have buttons on the ground that can be pressed to raise shields.
Yet, not all of this methods work. This is because the projectiles have area-effect properties too; having some land just behind Joe’s vehicle will wipe him out anyway.
The worst part of this gameplay element is that the player is not able to enact any comeuppance on these antagonists. Most of them do not even appear to be defeated off-screen when the player completes the course.
MEDALS:
When the player views a film set in the stage selection screens, the player can see the list of objectives that it has. These objectives are called “medals” in-game, and sometimes “stars” too. The latter term can seem a tad confusing at times, considering that there are collectible stars in the film set.
Anyway, the methods to obtain some medals are not explained entirely in-game. The film set that introduces a medal usually has the Director telling the player what to do, but these instructions tend to be not thorough. Furthermore, the main objective of such a film set is often about doing things that lead to the medal in the first place. This can be bewildering sometimes.
Fortunately, not all medals are obtuse. For example, there is an early course with a main objective that is about collecting all the stars which appear in the level, thus leading to the acquisition of the “get all stars” medal.
A medal that has been earned remains earned; the player does not need to try for its associated objective again in later attempts of the course.
CURRENCY STARS:
Each medal earned is converted into a “currency” star. The word “currency” is used in this article to differentiate this star from the other stars. These stars are required to unlock subsequent courses.
Speaking of which, merely completing courses will not unlock other courses. Quite a number of the subsequent courses would require the player to “pay out” in these currency stars. This is obviously progress-gating, but it has another purpose.
These unlocked courses can be more challenging than the previous ones, and the ones that come after would be even more so. Gathering the stars to unlock them would have required skill and determination, which in turn would prepare the player for the courses ahead.
ALTERNATIVE PLAYER CHARACTERS:
One of the medals is the “Pro Medal”, which is awarded upon having achieved all objectives in a course with a Pro Medal. Earning a Pro Medal also unlocks alternative player characters. They function exactly like Joe does, but have different voice-overs.
Some player characters are already available from the start. Incidentally, this game was made during an era when indie developers were sure of themselves, and had no issues about cross-promotion. It was also an era when Valve’s Steam was generally seen in high regard.
Thus, in the case of Joe Danger 2, the alternate player characters include the default player character from Minecraft, and all of the nine mercenaries from Team Fortress 2. They received models of their own for this game, complete with ridiculously proportioned body parts (and in the case of the TF2 guys, even more so). However, their voice-over assets are taken from their parent games. In the case of the TF2 characters, the player should expect them to be calling out for the medic a lot.
DELETED SCENES:
The “Deleted Scenes” are a set of courses with gameplay mechanisms that are slightly different. For example, the first Deleted Scene course has the player playing the Spy from Team Fortress 2. He is riding a monocycle and he has to collect all the coins while balancing the monocycle, lest he wipes out.
The game recommends these courses for players that have learned “advanced” techniques for controlling vehicles. Indeed, in the case of the aforementioned monocycle, the player has to learn how to tilt a vehicle forward and backwards in alternating patterns in order to get a stable wheelie combo.
MOVIE-MAKER:
The developer has packaged some of the tools that they used to design the levels into the game. This feature is the only one which utilizes the mouse in the gameplay. The player uses the mouse cursor to select, drag and drop course obstacles and collectibles. The mouse is also used to click buttons on the radial menu that appears when the player wants to manipulate the objects.
Since the tracks are linear, adding objects on the tracks should be simple, especially for players that have played games with level editors for tracks, such as the original Excitebike.
Interestingly, the movie-maker feature itself has a set of pre-made courses. These act as tutorials; they happen to have collectibles that can only be reached by editing the courses, thus providing the player with hands-on lessons.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
Like the previous game, Joe Danger 2: The Movie has a cartoonish presentation, which served to keep its age rating low despite the number of crazy hazards that Joe would be wiping out from.
The cartoonish visuals also kept the computing overhead low, at least that which is spent on animations and model rendering. The game’s highest settings do include high-quality shadowing and lighting (at least for the game’s time), which can cause frame rates to tank on computers with low-density GPUs.
As for the animations, there are not exactly a lot that can be thoroughly examined when things are going by at high speeds. Furthermore, the odd proportions for human characters make it hard to see what they are doing with their limbs, especially when they do tricks. However, their oversized heads display their facial expressions quite well, which is perhaps to be expected when their heads are so huge.
SOUND DESIGNS:
The first thing that the player hears from the game are the voice-overs, including the myriad of “hellos” for Hello Games splash intro. The Director has the most voice-overs, including his very enthusiastic enunciation of the name of the game. That he is the number one fan of Joe Danger would not seem to be a far off guess, considering his avid response to any of Joe’s tricks.
As for Joe himself, he barely says anything. He might make exclamations when he wipes out or does something awesome. Still, this is not much different from the player characters of similar games, especially those of Trials.
The music is the next thing that the player would hear from the game. The music is not impressively new, considering that they are tracks for film sets that are based on archetypal movies. Nevertheless, there are a few tracks that stand out. One example is the elevator music track that plays whenever the player brings up the menu options during runs of a course.
Speaking of things happening during a course, the player will be hearing mechanisms whirring and grinding as they activate. There are, of course, numerous explosions too. Most of these are for the sake of gratuitousness, however. Other than the Director’s call-outs, there are few other audio assets that are used for gameplay purposes.
SUMMARY:
Games like Joe Danger 2: The Movie are mainly meant for people who are alright with rapidly repeatable trial-by-fire gameplay. Of course, there have been other titles with similar gameplay, namely Trials, and they may have prettier presentation too (again, Trials).
Nevertheless, Hello Games has made a game that ticks all of the checkboxes of competently designed Excitebike successors, chief of which being controls that are easy to use and have considerable effects on gameplay. This is so, despite the lack of any visual redesigns for the button prompts that appear in the gameplay.