I decided I might start doing things like this more often. Here goes.
Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble is a successor to the supposedly amazing game, Viewtiful Joe on the GameCube. It was highly praised and is considered one of the best GameCube games of all time. This DS "sequel" is not.
To be honest, I've never played Viewtiful Joe before, so I was a bit confused when I started the game. Why did this guy just wander on to some movie set to try and beat an actor up, only to realize he can't use his powers outside of "movie world (whatever that is)?" What kind of superhero doesn't already know his weaknesses? This is how the first sequence takes placed. I figured that this guy only has real super powers in movies, but not off the set (or something like that), and now he wants to save the world from crime, but he can't for obvious reasons. Ok, makes sense to me. I guess.
Then we're told that some guy who Joe knows has this camera that lets him use his powers in the real world. It's never explained where this camera comes from or how it does what it does, it just appears with this old guy and he tells him to shout the magic words and power up. This is where I realized the story in this game probably isn't that great.
The game is your average beat-em-up side-scroller. You find robots (who's appearance are also unexplained) using your "V-Power." V-Power gives Joe special abilities, such as the ability to slow down time, or the ability to... scratch enemies? What?
Yes, you're supposed to scratch enemies, and it's treated like kicking or punching someone. It's supposed to be for enemies that are, in a sense, blocking your attacks by attacking you. The problem with this is that it's out of the way. It's hard to pull out your stylus and start scratching the enemy in the alloted time, and you can't see anything if you stab your finger around on the screen.
At this point, I stopped playing the game.
I will commend Capcom for making a game that, aside from the touchscreen aspects, didn't use the DS's gimmicks. The top screen shows you fighting, the bottom screen just shows a more zoomed in view. The microphone, to my knowledge, is never used. This is surprising for a game released fairly early in the DS's lifecycle, when features like these were abused to no end.
Capcom also did a good job with the graphics. They pushed the limits of the DS by making pretty big levels with a bunch of moving, 3D objects. They also utilized "cell shading," something the DS excells at. So, all in all, the graphics aren't that bad either.
So,what's the problem?
Double Trouble has controls that work, apart from the touchscreen aspect, which is a pretty hard concept to grasp. The graphics aren't that bad, and it doesn't abuse the DS's features. The real issue is that that's about it. There's nothing very interesting about this game. You beat up bad guys and move on. The story is barely a story at all, as things just seem to happen with no explanation. There is no online or multiplayer, there's no cool feature that changes the game at all. It's just a regular beat-em-up.
I'd give this game a 7/10. It's not horrible by any means, but there's nothing to keep you interested, and the touch screen thing just doesn't work. If you want a regular beat-em-up, this game is what you want, but it doesn't seem to change a whole lot as nothing seems to happen ever.
Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble is a successor to the supposedly amazing game, Viewtiful Joe on the GameCube. It was highly praised and is considered one of the best GameCube games of all time. This DS "sequel" is not.
To be honest, I've never played Viewtiful Joe before, so I was a bit confused when I started the game. Why did this guy just wander on to some movie set to try and beat an actor up, only to realize he can't use his powers outside of "movie world (whatever that is)?" What kind of superhero doesn't already know his weaknesses? This is how the first sequence takes placed. I figured that this guy only has real super powers in movies, but not off the set (or something like that), and now he wants to save the world from crime, but he can't for obvious reasons. Ok, makes sense to me. I guess.
Then we're told that some guy who Joe knows has this camera that lets him use his powers in the real world. It's never explained where this camera comes from or how it does what it does, it just appears with this old guy and he tells him to shout the magic words and power up. This is where I realized the story in this game probably isn't that great.
The game is your average beat-em-up side-scroller. You find robots (who's appearance are also unexplained) using your "V-Power." V-Power gives Joe special abilities, such as the ability to slow down time, or the ability to... scratch enemies? What?
Yes, you're supposed to scratch enemies, and it's treated like kicking or punching someone. It's supposed to be for enemies that are, in a sense, blocking your attacks by attacking you. The problem with this is that it's out of the way. It's hard to pull out your stylus and start scratching the enemy in the alloted time, and you can't see anything if you stab your finger around on the screen.
At this point, I stopped playing the game.
I will commend Capcom for making a game that, aside from the touchscreen aspects, didn't use the DS's gimmicks. The top screen shows you fighting, the bottom screen just shows a more zoomed in view. The microphone, to my knowledge, is never used. This is surprising for a game released fairly early in the DS's lifecycle, when features like these were abused to no end.
Capcom also did a good job with the graphics. They pushed the limits of the DS by making pretty big levels with a bunch of moving, 3D objects. They also utilized "cell shading," something the DS excells at. So, all in all, the graphics aren't that bad either.
So,what's the problem?
Double Trouble has controls that work, apart from the touchscreen aspect, which is a pretty hard concept to grasp. The graphics aren't that bad, and it doesn't abuse the DS's features. The real issue is that that's about it. There's nothing very interesting about this game. You beat up bad guys and move on. The story is barely a story at all, as things just seem to happen with no explanation. There is no online or multiplayer, there's no cool feature that changes the game at all. It's just a regular beat-em-up.
I'd give this game a 7/10. It's not horrible by any means, but there's nothing to keep you interested, and the touch screen thing just doesn't work. If you want a regular beat-em-up, this game is what you want, but it doesn't seem to change a whole lot as nothing seems to happen ever.
