Manhunt Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 10/7/2024)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Manhunt

Developer: Rockstar

Publisher: Rockstar

Genre(s): Stealth, Horror

Platforms: PS2, Xbox

Release Date: November 18, 2003

The guys over at Rockstar are going to Hell. Pushing the buttons of middle-aged parents with Grand Theft Auto's sleazy and unfettered violence evidently didn't garner enough ethical controversy for their liking. With a game like Manhunt, I feel the studio has promptly stamped their one-way ticket to eternal damnation. Rockstar has always embraced the hysterical outcries their games have received and effectively shielded all accusations of corrupting the youth with a sense of indomitable pride in their work. In the case of Manhunt, however, even they feel as if their libertarian ethos in game development crossed a solid line. Manhunt was a veritable Pandora’s box of controversy when it hit store shelves shortly after GTA was making waves on the PS2, and the brutal nature of Manhunt was shocking enough to momentarily transfuse the public contention away from their best-known series. A nightmare of a court case involved blaming Manhunt for a fourteen-year-old’s death held a strain on Rockstar for years. While the studio stood its ground and ultimately won the legal battle, a part of the team still felt pangs of guilt for the tragedy they got roped up in. Deep down, they still somewhat felt that they had unleashed something unholy into this world. Rockstar may be content with their acclaimed association in broadening the parameters of gaming environments despite the backlash they’ve faced, but Manhunt still makes them take Ambien at times to help them sleep at night. Given that the era in which Manhunt was released was my gaming prime, I’m all too familiar with its storied notoriety. Still, what I don’t know from decades of third-person gossip is if Manhunt is worthy of joining the ranks of its fellow exceptional, yet problematic Rockstar brethren.

So what exactly makes Manhunt extreme enough to give GTA a break? Well, I can’t think of anything more taboo-breaking in an interactive medium than having the player pilot the actions of a serial killer. Before you conclude that the player will be breaking into people’s homes and unceremoniously butchering them like farm animals, there is at least context to the amoral deeds taking place. The playable psychopath is named James Earl Cash, and the state has just failed to euthanize him via lethal injection after he’s been sentenced to death. Soon after he re-emerges from his temporary slumber in the dark and desolate death row, an untraceable voice starts speaking to him. The detached presence manages to release Cash from his cell, but there is a price for his freedom. The caveat to setting Cash loose is that now he must embrace his violent criminal persona set by his conviction and create a snuff film. Considering how the game sprinkles in the footage reel frame, some editor is probably going to stitch each of Cash’s kills into an extensive compilation. Yeah, I’m sure whoever at Rockstar conjured up this premise has a lot of explaining to do, mostly to a certified therapist.

The streets that Cash is now running around as a fugitive are the ones of Carcer City, a fictional American metropolis that may only marginally bear a resemblance to at least one of the USA’s urban zones by circumstance. Carcer City is a vacant, bombed-out wasteland, with architecture so grimy and depleted that one might think it was torn and shredded by the horrors of some unspecified war. The desolate urban decay is a perfect breeding ground for gangs to run amok and conduct shady, illicit business practices. Cash’s victims sacrificed for snuff art are the various members of these criminal factions. He’s eradicating their strongholds block by block, but I’m not sure cleansing the city of these scummy wastrels constitutes a crude gentrification measure. This is especially the case considering his methods of dispatching them. To make a dirtbag descend beyond the pale into the gates of the underworld where he belongs, Cash must find an object on the field because his hands are apparently too tiny and delicate to oust them with pure strangulation. Once he finds his golden opportunity upon getting close to them, an automated sequence commences where he executes the poor sap, with a staticky VHS tape filter over it to signify it’s being filmed. Pouncing on an enemy immediately once in range already delivers a gruesome kill, but holding down the attack button until the target marker glows either yellow or red will initiate an execution of unspeakable brutality. Don’t play Manhunt on a full stomach.

While the centerpiece of the action in Manhunt is obviously horrific, a million-dollar question lingers in my mind: should the player feel remorseful for their deeds if these pieces of human excrement are the ones taking the brunt of it? The various gangs encompass the absolute dregs of society, the kinds of dudes that would make anyone lock their cars or clutch their belongings while walking down the street at even a fleeting glance. Besides the “Hoods” and “Wardogs” who greatly intimidate just on their outfits and statures alone, other gangs exhibit plenty of unsavory traits than just the physical ones. The “Skinz” are a bunch of neo-Nazi rednecks that refer to Cash as a “half-breed.” Cash must only be an eighth African then, which is considered “impure” enough to evoke their wrath. The fatter, balder members of the predominantly Mexican gang of “The Innocentz” exude the stereotypical look of a sex offender, and their perverted dialogue is guaranteed to give anyone the creeps. Sure, two wrongs don’t make a right but in Cash’s dire situation, I’m glad that Rockstar took a firm “no women or children” approach and decided to zone their carnage on the least sympathetic people possible. All the while, the scope of the action combined with the merciless bludgeoning that Cash inflicts on his foes always places him as “the danger,” almost a role reversal that muddles the horror factor.

Even though Cash is ultimately “the one who knocks,” the conditions of his videotaping contract still involve him skulking around to avoid enemy detection. I neglected to mention that while Cash is winding up a swift murdering maneuver on an enemy, he can only perform his specialty when the enemy is unaware of his presence. This statement should connote that Manhunt is a stealth title, a genre of video game that emphasizes a patient, methodical approach to combat rather than storming into the line of fire guns blazing like in its more accessible action counterpart. Gangs tend to work in packs and they outnumber Cash per square inch by six to one, so it’s wise to adopt a stealthy initiative to smoothly bump off their numbers. The outlined prominence of stealth in a horror game such as Manhunt is quite harmonious since one could assume that they’d rather hide from the terrors that be than face them with fierce confidence. If Cash’s cover is blown, several corners and alcoves are available around any area, and their blanketed shadowy dimness practically makes Cash invisible to the naked eye. Still, this form of covert camouflage will only protect Cash from harm if he distances himself from the enemy that has caught him, but the endurance meter is likely not to exhaust if Cash needs to evade any hostilities. If one of the aggressors knicks Cash with a blade or a bullet, a plentiful amount of painkillers will be strewn across the field to heal his wounds, provided the player can locate them in the dimly lit corridors where they are usually found.

Manhunt is relatively lenient with player error, but I bet the developers never predicted that the player could use their leniencies as a tactical strategy. Exposing one’s presence to the enemies just to bolt away to a shadowed corner is the perfect method of laying waste to the city’s various savages. The alcoves and alleyways around the city are deeply darkened enough to completely shroud Cash’s body, leaving any pursuer to tilt their heads in confusion like a dog while pacing around the vicinity doing a triple check of their surroundings. Once they’ve given up or turned their backs on Cash long enough, the player is free to swoop in and whack the stupid fuck. Is this tactic an infraction on the core principle of a stealth game to remain unseen? Of course it is. In my defense, if Manhunt was actually concerned with the player’s elusiveness like any other stealth game would be, its accommodations would lean more towards preventing getting caught and less in the evasion process. I understand that Cash’s line of sight is realistically limited, but the radar that is intended as a reference to the enemy’s positions needs to be smacked for it to fully function like an old television. Whenever an enemy is blissfully unaware and whistling a jaunty tune to themselves out of boredom (that I swear sounds like the Sesame Street theme at times), the yellow arrow marker that signifies their lack of alertness only emerges on the radar whenever Cash is close to them. Even up close, its appearance on the radar is shaky at best, so it's difficult to discern their line of sight. Whenever they’re a suspicious orange or a chasing red, the radar never abandons them. This is why compromising one’s location in Manhunt seems to be the most logical means of eradication. It seems counterintuitive to the definition of stealth, but whatever floats this game’s boat.

Presenting a few clueless enemies every few yards in a level is essentially the recurring objective in Manhunt. Even with the unflinching, stomach-churning violence on display, many players still eventually become jaded by the frequent massacres and chide the game for being repetitive. While there is some validity to this criticism, the game at least makes an effort to alter the scope of the same task every so often. However, I’m not sure they’re welcome adjustments in the long run. Everyone knows that escort missions are the bane of every gamer’s existence, so randomly having to keep track of some drunken bum with no relevance to the plot is an unsolicited ball and chain strapped to the player’s ankles. Commandeering a magnetic crane and flattening guys with a fridge sounds hilariously enthralling in theory, but the loudness of the industrial contraption is an invitation for everyone in the area to run to Cash’s location and ambush him. Saving Cash’s four family members who are bound and gagged puts our psychopathic protagonist in an unusual heroic role, and the guards targeting the hostages instead of Cash if they spot him actually gives the player incentive to stay in the shadows and plan their moves tactfully. Still, the radar screws the player over as some guards emerging at inconvenient moments is almost RNG conditional. Manhunt only offers one boss battle, and it’s certainly a highlight that incorporates all of the best implementations of the game’s stealth mechanics. Cash will start the duel without any tools, as he must scour the dilapidated hallways of the arena for glass shards and wooden picks while finding that golden moment to leap out of the shade and skewer the target. Not to mention, the target in question is an obese, chainsaw-wielding cannibal serial killer named “Piggsy” who veils his identity behind the severed head of a swine and whose mental faculties have all deteriorated from being kept as a prisoner for so long. Piggsy alone is the most vomit-inducing sight in a game filled to the brim with scenes liable to make the player nauseous.

Even though I think the occasional alterations to the stealth gameplay are ultimately unnecessary, I will gladly guide a thousand shiftless hobos through the roughest of ghettos before the game diverts into third-person shooter territory. Once the player advances to the eighth scene of the game, the voice finds it time to grant Cash the usage of firearms. From then on, pistols, shotguns, machine guns, and the rare sniper rifle are integral assets to Manhunt’s gameplay. Must I detail why the deafening bangs of guns are counterintuitive in a stealth game? One may use Solid Snake’s lengthy arsenal as a rebuttal to my rhetorical question, but the series synonymous with the stealth genre utilizes guns in a completely different manner than Manhunt. In Metal Gear Solid, disposing of the common enemies scattered around is discouraged entirely. Alerting the guards carries a bevy of consequences that range from tedious to overwhelming, which incentivizes the player to stay sneaky at all costs. A gun should only be fired either at a safe distance or as a last resort when caught in close quarters. Plus, it helps to conserve ammunition for the various boss fights. When a stealth game is centered around directly interacting with enemies like in Manhunt, compromising one’s presence with unsilenced firearms is a recipe for disaster. Surprisingly with all I’ve stated, Manhunt tends to forgo the stealth gameplay almost entirely whenever Cash finds himself in an area with firearms scattered about. This may initially seem like a relief, but this shift in gameplay is the primary source of suffering while playing Manhunt. Unlike Solid Snake who is an adroit super soldier capable of incapacitating enemies head-on when he needs to, James Earl Cash is an untrained schmuck who moves like he has an acute calcium deficiency. Anyone who attempts to confront enemies face to face will immediately learn that Cash is not equipped to deal with hand-to-hand combat, hence why the developers designed his stilted movement to fit a stealth game. When the game suddenly expects the player to rush all enemies like a one-man army, Manhunt becomes like a severely handicapped version of Max Payne. Cash cannot crouch behind cover, he can’t shift through his weapons swiftly, and the only way to inflict fatal damage to enemies by shooting them in the head is to sprint right up to them almost like Cash is ready to give them a warm embrace instead of a steamy bullet to the brain. The scene called “Border Patrol” is the notoriously difficult mission involving shooting-intensive gameplay, but the level that is most indicative of the fallacies of Manhunt’s gunplay in my perspective is the second half of “Doing Time.” The amount of armed lunatics in close quarters ready to obliterate Cash without any sort of stealth to aid the player made me wish that Cash could instead turn the gun towards his own head and pull the trigger. What a god-awful, inappropriate way to diversify Manhunt’s gameplay.

Ultimately, who the players should focus their frustrations on for all of this broken bullshit is Lionel Starkweather, also known as the identity behind the disembodied voice commanding Cash to commit heinous, amoral acts on camera. Apparently, this man is a successful filmmaker in the canon of Manhunt who also dabbles in creating movies that one can only see in the forbidden sections of the internet. I’d say that his little project with Cash is his side hustle tapping into a lucrative market of depraved people, but he cannot seem to refrain from commenting on his arousal when Cash murders someone in cold blood. Not only is his bloodlust unnerving, to say the least, but his Hollywood sleazeball demeanor makes this man arguably more disgusting than the pig man who feasts on gory human remains and feces chained up in his attic. From his loathsome commentary to all of the sadistic stipulations he instills onto the player, Starkweather becomes the most detestable character in the game and he’s not even the one directly committing all of the murders. I couldn't abandon Manhunt despite how many times the thought had crossed my mind, for I started to despise Starkweather on a personal level and desperately wanted to tear him limb from limb. Once Starkweather decides to sever ties with Cash and leaves him to die after a cheeky white rabbit scenario gimmick for unclear reasons, Cash’s freedom from his all-seeing eye leads him on a warpath to get revenge on his former associate with the aid of a news reporter who is already wise to Starkweather’s shenanigans. The road to payback is not a smooth one, especially since the revenge arc is littered with late-game shooting levels that aggravate me to no end. Still, once Cash climbs Starkweather’s mansion and finishes off his bottom bitch Piggsy in the aforementioned duel, cornering Starkweather in the first and only in-person interaction with the absolute slimebag and eviscerating him to a pulp with a chainsaw is so cathartic that it almost made me pop a chub. Starkweather is one of the most effective villains in video game history, for I’ve never hated an antagonist to this degree where finally bringing him to justice in the grizzly way the player does fills me with profound joy. Does that make me a sick fuck? No, because everyone who has played Manhunt is in the same boat (or at least they should be).

What I’ve learned is that Manhunt is like the Splatterhouse of the 21st-century 3D era of gaming. The 1980s side scroller became a staple in arcades because its horror factor was unprecedented in the medium. Still, it faltered in all gameplay aspects because the mechanics were clunky and presented a main character unfit for the style of video game at hand. Its popularity was truly due to its gory spectacle, a treat to witness but not so much to experience firsthand. The same indictments given to Splatterhouse can be easily attributed to Manhunt, elevating the threshold of permissible content in gaming and provoking the ire of parents everywhere in a vexing package. Manhunt’s stealth gameplay, while competent enough, isn’t exactly intuitive and does not foster the same skill ceiling as something like Metal Gear Solid. When it poses as a third-person shooter for a large chunk of the playtime, the game is fucking atrocious. Rockstar’s presentational strides elevate the game, but not enough that I can forgive all of its flaws so glaring that it angers me that the developers could not see it. Still, no gaming experience matches the same level of visceral and cold, nihilistic violence that Manhunt bestows. For the sake of taste, I hope no other game dares to come to the challenge of topping it.

The House of the Dead: Overkill

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 10/4/2024)

[Image from igdb.com]

The House of the Dead: Overkill

Developer: Headstrong Games

Publisher: Sega

Genre(s): Rail Shooter

Platforms: Wii

Release Date: February 10, 2009

Unfortunately, Sega’s House of the Dead franchise had to exist before zombies were a roaring hot commodity. Sure, it capitalized on the rail shooter trend with the light gun peripheral at the optimal time when such a marvel of gaming innovation was consuming quarters at all the hot arcade cabinets. It’s practically what the series’ legacy is associated with. Still, it’s a damn shame that Sega jumped on the thematic construct of shooting the living dead before everyone wasn’t doing it, and it hardly ever receives the rightful acknowledgment as one of the first video game franchises to do so. A franchise is only as dormant as a developer ultimately wishes it to be and when Sega became aware of how prevalent zombies were in the greater media landscape in the late 2000s/early 2010s, it would’ve been foolish of them not to resurrect their undead-oriented rail shooter series from the grave and reap the financial spoils of its ubiquity. But do you think the team that turned their zombie bonanza into a fucking typing tutor was content to just skate by on the bare minimum and let the trend take the wheel and steer them toward financial success? The House of the Dead always had more integrity to stoop to that, so Sega and Headstrong Games molded the franchise’s comeback into an untapped artistic style for the medium with The House of the Dead: Overkill.

That is to say, Overkill’s presentation and direction are unique in the realm of video games. For the medium of film, too many movies exhibit the tropes that Overkill is paying tribute to count. Many others comment that Overkill is reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s works, but the famous director would be paradoxically flattered and offended at the notion that the iconography on display here is definitively his own. The popularity of his film Death Proof along with its double feature slot of Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror likely only served as the impetus for creating this game. For those of you who are teenagers who just discovered Tarantino's films after only watching Marvel movies and Madagascar sequels, Overkill’s aura and inspiration are deeply rooted in that of a grindhouse film, an orient of exploitation cinema that stretches back to the days of the medium’s history when Tarantino still had his baby teeth. Exploitation films are inherently centered around the cheap selling points of violence, casual sex, and other forms of depravity, but grindhouse films explicitly revel in these content taboos to the point where they’re all defining characteristics. Overkill understood exactly what buttons it needed to press to evoke the idiosyncratic essentials of a grindhouse film, and they hit every nail on the head.

For starters, the overhead narration that sets the scene of the game is perfect. Our enthusiastic host of the feature presentation introduces our cast of eclectic characters. Overkill’s world has been afflicted with a biological infection called “Formula X” that has transformed the good American people of Louisiana into rabid mutants with a hunger for flesh. Notice how the game never refers to the infected as zombies, which is an admirable choice to distance itself from the obvious hype machine it's attempting to cash on. A suave, stoic man dressed in a dapper suit enigmatically referred to as Agent G has been tasked with hunting down a powerful crime boss named Papa Caesar who might be responsible for the outbreak. At his assistance is the police detective Isaac Washington, whose character delves into the blaxploitation branch of the B-movie family tree. No, I’m not stating this simply because he’s black. The man wears a t-shirt on duty and exclaims the word “motherfucker” more than Samuel Jackson after stubbing his toe. A third member of this squad team is stripper Varla Guns, who has a personal vendetta against Papa Caesar for conducting an experiment on her brother Jasper that transformed him into a hideous monster that ultimately led to his untimely death. The names of these characters alone scream the sleazy nonsense of grindhouse movies if their occupations and designs don’t do enough to hone in on the desired homage. Above all of the shots taken of Agent G and Isaac dueling their weapons akimbo style, an unprofessional way to handle a firearm as a police officer I might add, the indelible proof that the developers did their homework is a shot with the well-endowed Varla driving our two protagonists through the Louisiana countryside at night on her bitchin’ Harley. I’m not sure if it’s the vehicle of choice or if it's the group shot overload of exploitation caricatures all at once, but I have a feeling that I’d suspect that this image alone would ring a grindhouse vibe in my mind without knowing the context. It’s difficult to declare this definitively, for Overkill seems to portray the elements of exploitation film so well that it might trump Tarantino’s understanding of them.

Rail shooters and the Wii’s motion controls are a match made in heaven, even if the inherently violent content of such a genre conflicts with Nintendo’s reputation as a family-friendly brand–especially with the widespread accessibility marketing of this particular system. I’ve already noted how surprising it is that No More Heroes and MadWorld were greenlit to appear on Nintendo’s bundle of multi-million dollar joy, so I’m going to declare that Overkill is part of the gilded club of M-rated Wii titles instead of expressing shock and awe of its exclusivity to the console. If they didn’t want vulgar and graphic content polluting their otherwise pristine system, they shouldn’t have modeled their controller to aim like a gun! But the kinetic relationship between the player’s tangible controller and aiming the deadly virtual weapon in the video game is precisely what makes Overkill especially enjoyable. As par for the course in a rail shooter game, the player’s trajectory through each level is fixed to an automated track set by the developers, and they must splatter the walls with the brains of the “infected” before they get the chance to claw their eyes out or sink their gnarly teeth into the protagonist’s warm human skin. The backdrops of the levels are typical settings for horror films, such as an abandoned plantation home, a carnival, a swamp, a prison, etc. Each location is also framed as a new chapter in the game with electrifying grindhouse titles like “Papa’s Palace of Pain” and “Jailhouse Judgment.” While I understand that the camera controls of a rail shooter are similar to a theme park ride, Overkill’s treatment of the genre’s predestined track sequences is bound to give the player whiplash. The screen shucks and jives to and fro from angle to angle even before the player is finished wiping away the enemies from the previous screen. Still, the erratic tendencies of the generated rail shooter courses are but a minor nitpick to prod at. If it was jarring enough to ruin swiftly turning “infected” into bloody Swiss cheese with five different weapons, something would be seriously wrong.

I think that if the player’s attention starts to wane with Overkill, it’ll be due to the ease of difficulty. Sure, the hordes of enemies ambushing them from every corner of the screen are bound to overwhelm and subdue the player from time to time. However, it’s the fact that succumbing to the onslaught of the undead is a trivial hiccup. The penalty for dying in Overkill is that the player’s score is reduced by half of its total amount, and it’s not as if they’ll receive an irreparable “game over” if their total plummets down to zero. I gather that the developers wanted to maintain the relationship between the rail shooter game and its arcade roots where high scores are what the player strives for. Still, the developers failed to realize that the only person marveling at the player’s accomplishments on a home console is themselves. Overtly drawing conspicuous circles around the weak points of every boss certainly doesn’t inspire dread or panic in the player either. Was there still a strict mandate to dumb down the difficulty to maintain the Wii’s accessibility, even though the game is as profane as an orgy in church?

Speaking of the game’s bosses, I briefly thought Overkill allowed the player to dig out of the facile difficulty rut with its final battle. In a nutshell, Papa Caesar, the villain we’ve been pursuing, has been nothing but a red herring for the prison warden Clement Darling–the true mastermind behind the events of the game. This creepy and sadistic madman reveals that the outbreak was a casualty of his scientific experiments conducted to give his decrepit mother a few additional years on this earth. Before you conclude that his motives are sweet but irrationally conceived, the man had an Oedipus complex a mile wide. You can plainly see with this piece of context why Varla is the ideal specimen to use in a brain swap experiment, and our heroes are too late to prevent this unholy crossover from occurring. The experiment results in Varla’s body mutating to beastly proportions in more ways than I can detail. Before Agent G and Isaac can put this horrific abomination out of its misery, the game pulls a “scene missing” reel cut and then leaps to what seems like their triumphant victory. For a second, I thought the game had locked me out of some vital content due to not meeting some hidden conditions, a sign that the game actually expected more from the player. Alas, this was instead a fakeout as the player fights the beast anyway, with Agent G and Isaac blowing the facility to smithereens with a detonator and transporting Varla’s brain around in a jar in what is definitively a happy ending. Phooey.

Upon putting Overkill’s lack of player determination into perspective, I’m not sure exactly what I expected from it. The game’s entire identity is parodying a sector of films where the style is the substance, and that style in question is nothing but tawdry trash meant to cater to the audience’s most primal and shameful sources of titillation. I fall in the middle of the often non-converging Venn diagram of gamers who are aware of and appreciate the grindhouse films that the game knocks right out of the park in terms of portrayal. For those alien to the game’s stylistic inspirations, I don’t blame them for seeing Overkill as an average rail shooter slightly elevated by the system’s more kinetically involved hardware. Given that the game is at least competent, I still thoroughly enjoyed every moment of The House of the Dead: Overkill in its schlocky glory. Its presentation is just too unique to the gaming medium to pass up.

Demon's Souls Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/29/2024)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Demon's Souls

Developer: FromSoftware

Publisher: SCEI

Genre(s): Action RPG, Soulslike

Platforms: PS3

Release Date: February 5, 2009

Every bit of praise I’ve bestowed on Dark Souls has been a lie. Okay, maybe the whole truth behind the misappropriated adulation is that they are half-truths. The first Dark Souls did in fact popularize the idiosyncratic combat, rich lore, and world-building that hundreds of future titles would emulate. However, I’ve been attributing it as a visionary pioneer of its attributes and gameplay mechanics, and that’s not entirely an honest statement. The true innovator, the Nikola Tesla to Dark Souls’ Thomas Edison, is Demon’s Souls, FromSoft’s 2009 title that debuted all of the Dark Souls ingredients that captivated gamers everywhere. Demon’s Souls was critically acclaimed and it gave gamers of the era a stark alternative to the cinematically-inclined titles that ran amok on the PS3. So why is it that Demon’s Souls is relegated to partial obscurity while Dark Souls is the one reaping the spoils of its legacy? The way I see things, Demon's Souls' placement in the Souls family is comparable to how Vladamir Lenin fits in the Soviet Union's timeline. The Russian revolutionary was the governing debutant of the communist empire but was cut down in his prime just as the movement was in its infancy. The immediate successor to the throne (Stalin) reigned the ideals of Lenin’s new world order for decades onward, so it's no wonder that that figure has a clearer association with that particular dogma and political period. In a non-analogous fashion, Demon’s Souls is positioned as a “proto-Souls” game instead of the series’ glorious emergence because its licensing confines it not only to Sony’s grasp but to the now-defunct PS3 system. In order to play it myself, I had to make an extraneous purchase for a used PS3 console. This was an endeavor I never would’ve been forced to do for any future Souls title due to their widespread accessibility as far as their availability is concerned. Given that I’m a staunch veteran who has played through its successors countless times (except for Dark Souls II), I figured that I’d face less adversity in Demon’s Souls. The reality behind my assumption was that the progenitor of Dark Souls threw me around just as violently specifically due to its primitive elements.

To my surprise, Demon’s Souls doesn’t hide narrative context from the player. Every subsequent Souls game makes a deliberate effort to implore the player to seek out the lore and obscured rationale for embarking on this quest through character interactions and organic clues implied by the world’s conditions and general atmosphere. Demon’s Souls blinds the player at first when they are catapulted into the “tutorial” area and a portly beast with a seemingly impenetrable health bar trounces the player with a single swipe of his hulking battle ax. After conquering the feasibly vanquishable first boss, an eyeless woman wearing a black cloak carrying a staff decides that the player has earned the privilege of being informed on what they are experiencing. The kingdom of Boletaria has been poisoned with a noxious fog that carries the presence of soul-sucking demons who have made quick work devouring the inner essences of the kingdom’s denizens. The fog in question is not a thick, blinding wall of aerosol like in Silent Hill, rather, it's a metaphorical malaise that refers to the overwhelming danger that exists throughout. The player’s primary target is Boletaria’s ruler King Allant, who resurrected “The Old One” and his legion of demons to render his world barren out of contempt for it. Naturally, the road up to knocking this tyrant off his prodigious pedestal is filled with gobs of formidable monsters, so this adventure will be an extensive one, to say the least. The mission of quelling the immediate threat that plagues Boletaria positions the player’s warrior avatar into a heroic role, and acting as the kingdom’s savior recalls a more heightened, traditional hero’s journey arc than the mopping up of Lordran the player embarks on in Dark Souls.

At the center of Boletaria from both a gameplay and geographical (in a manner of speaking) sense in The Nexus. The player, on the high likelihood that the “Vanguard” demon pulverized them, would’ve shed their mortal coil at the start if this detached nether realm wasn’t present as a safety net of sorts. The player will only be teleported to The Nexus once upon dying, but they will always be invited to return on their volition because it's the hub of Demons Souls. At the base of the towering temple lies various NPCs that cater to many of the player’s necessities. The aforementioned eyeless figure known as the “Maiden in Black” serves the player in upgrading their stats if their soul count is equal to or more than the amount that she requests. Blacksmith Boldwin will upgrade the player’s weapons and armor given the appropriate smithing materials, and Stockpile Thomas sitting next to him will keep an eye on your overflow of items like a bank. Encumbering the player when they pile on too much bulky equipment persists onward to subsequent Souls games, but Demon’s Souls putting a finite limit on their entire inventory is the first mark of primitiveness the game bestows. The player will “collect” many other NPCs, mostly magicians and sages, after encountering them in the “fog.” The last initial person held up here is the “Crestfallen Warrior,” who does nothing but bitch and complain about how he doesn’t know the whereabouts of his body. Should I inform him that it’s one kingdom over in Lordran, or is my future insight considered a paradox? I not only appreciate the one-stop-shop convenience of The Nexus after the first Dark Souls scattered all of Lordran’s blacksmiths and sages across the map, but it's possibly my favorite hub that FromSoft has ever devised because it's downright sublime. The otherworldly etherealness of this monumental area exudes something of a pleasant dream, making it seem like any harm that might come to the player is ultimately inconsequential. Considering a hub’s utility is to emulate a sanctuary, The Nexus does its job perfectly.

But like all proactive people, they must leave the comfort of their homes and expose themselves to the drudgery of the outside world to work and earn a living. For the player, leaving The Nexus especially exposes them to a world most foul and hostile. I’ve been known to marvel at Dark Souls’ 3D interpretation of a quasi-Metroidvania game displayed as the interconnected world of Lordran. Considering that Demon’s Souls is the primitive predecessor to Dark Souls, one can already assume that its kingdom isn’t designed with the same rich and ambitious world template. Boletaria is divided into five different areas, all accessed through teleporting via the archstones located alongside the arched staircase at the base of The Nexus. Traversing through each area is a linear trek, and each boss conquered is a stamp that marks a significant progression milestone. This is why sections between bosses across all of the areas of Demon’s Souls are conventionally referred to by decimal integers (I.e. the area outside of the castle door in Boletarian Palace is “1-1” and anywhere past the Phalanx boss arena is “1-2”). While the linearity displayed in Demon’s Souls level design doesn’t floor me like Dark Souls’ impeccable world cohesion, I’d equate each area in the game to a rope with tons of knots that interrupt the straightforward pathway. Arriving at the domain of another demon admiral will still involve navigating through several twisted, labyrinthian roadblocks, which still constitutes a deeply engaging design philosophy in my book. Unfortunately, shortcuts and other forms of moderate respite are not prominent tenets of Demon’s Souls’ philosophy. In Dark Souls, surviving past a certain point in an area will often reward the player with a bonfire as another spawn point, or at least they’ll find themselves circling around to an unlocked door or transportation contraption as a more organic form of shortcut. Demon’s Souls, on the other hand, evidently does not subscribe to the belief that the tedium of backtracking upon dying should be mitigated as a reward for incremental progress or astute discovery. If the player is slain in Demon’s Souls, returning to the point of demise, much less the nearest boss arena, usually involves an exhaustive retread. Organic shortcuts are seldom provided at certain extents of progress, but they are definitely exceptions to the general rule and tend to be rather oblique. The pulley intended to transport coal and other materials down to Blacksmith Ed’s workshop in Stonefang Tunnel feels so makeshift that it's as if the developers implemented it as a shortcut unintentionally. For the most part, Demon’s Souls forces the player to hike all over creation without stopping to rest their feet, and conquering a boss to earn that intermission after tiring themselves arriving there is an insult to injury. The “runbacks” to boss arenas are an infamous consistency across all of FromSoft’s output. Still, the lack of any kind of intervals to breathe marks this cumbrous idiosyncrasy at its most austere and unforgiving.

The extent of what Demon’s Souls expects the player to endure for such a lengthy swathe of progress stunned me with incredulity as soon as the “second” level. The area past the armored slug Phalanx and his identical bodyguard underlings in Boletarian Palace is set on top of a narrow stone bridge that directly connects to the next boss arena. Sounds (literally) straightforward, right? Well, confidently stepping into the sunlight after leaving the field archstone will likely incinerate the player to a smoldering crisp. An orange dragon will belch an inferno of flames that engulfs the entire section of the bridge the player is standing on every five seconds, and it’ll switch its flight path to the following portion if the player survives the first fiery onslaught as if it harbors a vindictive grudge against their wellbeing. An underground passage is available to elude the scaly beast, but the ground-level enemies in this musty, dark tunnel will likely eviscerate the player due to their pack-like attack strategy. Once the player reemerges and manages to dodge yet another fire blast from the dragon, an army of soulless soldiers of differing ranks will stand guard to hack the player to bits with a vengeance. Miraculously withstanding all of this strife just to be immediately smote by the gargantuan blade of the stainless-steel sentinel Tower Knight will leave the player quite disillusioned. Before I raised my white flag and wrote Demon’s Souls off as too stringent to even humor, a moment of clarity struck me like a falling apple. I didn’t have to be trapped in this vicious cycle of defeat attempting to conquer Tower Knight, for the other archstones in The Nexus were open and I was free to travel elsewhere. While the individual areas of Demon’s Souls are relatively ironed out to a point of compression, the optional method of tackling them in whichever order the player chooses is the juicy component of nonlinearity that I initially thought hadn’t crossed the developers’ mind yet. It smacks of Mega Man instead of Metroid, but even a less sophisticated depiction of freeform world design is still stimulating nonetheless.

While it's relieving to vacate from Tower Knight’s domain if the player feels like the obstacles are too overwhelming to overcome, I must issue a warning that the player’s ticket out of torture isn’t as golden as one might think. Assuming that the difficulty curve of Demon’s Souls still abides by the order of the numerical integers, shifting from Boletarian Palace to another area presents an entirely different slew of challenges. The leathery, lizard-esque miners in Stonefang Tunnel will be upset if the player interrupts their perpetual labor, and the exoskeletons of both the native rock worms and bearbugs are as impenetrable as a laminated windshield. The eerie Tower of Latria sees illithid guards patrolling the dank prison halls, and they’ll paralyze anyone in their sight to suck their gray matter dry far before the player encounters the mechanized tower that spits rows of arrows. As a melee player, all I could do was evade the torrent of javelin icicles constantly spurting out of the flying stingrays that soar in the skies over the Shrine of Storms. God help you if the Old Hero strikes you down, for the trek back to him with the rolling skeletons and reaper ghouls alongside the swarm of aerial projectiles is possibly the most strenuous journey back to a boss fight across the entire Souls series. If you couldn’t tell, choosing an alternative to Tower Knight is a “pick your poison” scenario and the route is determined by which of these areas presents the path of least resistance. All of these districts of Boletaria are equally arduous in their unique ways but for the love of all that is holy, do not pick the literal poison that is the Valley of Defilement. Take the name of this area as a cautionary warning, for the fifth area that proves Miyazaki had no latency period for his favorite level trope will defile the player at every corner of the sludgy and dismal bog. Still, I think I’d rather invest in a timeshare here rather than excavate through Blighttown again.

The bouts of endurance that the player is forced to undergo to succeed in Demon’s Souls don’t entirely connote that the game is bereft of any accommodations. For instance, the unhinged healing system in this game will stave off any fatal occurrences for a long while. Instead of using the sparkling, possibly tangerine-flavored Estus Flasks, the restorative grass is an item meshed in with the rest of the player’s inventory. Boletaria has a thumb as green as the state of Colorado, for grass is commonly dropped from enemies upon defeat for the player’s taking. The different strands of grass are differentiated by the phases of the moon, ranging from the sliver of crescent grass to the curvaceousness of the full moon grass which signifies the effectiveness of its restoration. Once the player can afford to spend their surplus of souls on other services besides leveling up, grasses are available to be bought in bulk like a Costco member before a hurricane hits. I can definitely see why this method of healing was scrapped in favor of the Estus System with a fixed and reasonably finite amount of uses. The unabated mass of grass I accumulated after a certain point in the game became relied on like a crutch, replenishing any fraction of damage received provided I found an opportunity to distance myself from enemies. My mistakes during combat that resulted in a grave depletion of my health bar became trivialized by the limitlessness at which I could remedy them. In the defense of the grass, perhaps I wouldn’t be desperately chowing down on the plant like livestock if the game didn’t fracture my health bar in half per death. It’s an absurdly uncharitable penalty for failure and I’d chalk it up as another example of the game’s primitive mold if one Dark Souls game didn’t adopt it (it was equally bullshit in that game too). Only conquering a boss or imbibing a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes will mend this unfair affliction, and that particular item isn’t nearly as plentiful as the grass (surprise, surprise). While I was initially appalled by the game’s demerit of death, I eventually discovered that there were benefits to playing with a crappy hand. Another feature totally unique to Demon’s Souls is “world tendency,” which affects certain aspects of the gameplay. If the player is in “soul mode” with half of their total health, the enemies do not brutalize the player quite as relentlessly. On the other hand, having full health comes with the perk of looting rarer items and obtaining more souls per kill with the caveat of tougher foes and frequent black phantom invasions. It’s nice to know that the developers can express kernels of sympathy for the player, but I find the world tendency mechanic to be somewhat condescending. FromSoft can fuck off if they’re insinuating that one death is enough evidence of the player’s skill, or lack thereof, to lower the difficulty.

The bosses will not be affected by the player’s status, even if a good handful of them will have the player questioning if the stipulations of their “soul form” are still seeping into the experience. Surprisingly, the mightiest foes of Demon’s Souls with screen-spanning health bars are the easiest crop of bosses across all of FromSoft’s titles. Instead of seeking out a chance to stab at a boss at a moment most opportune that will ideally leave the player unscathed like the Souls duels we’re accustomed to, several of the bosses in Demon’s Souls are dispatched via methods so unorthodox that they can be interpreted as gimmicks. For example, fighting Tower Knight organically will result in shaving unsatisfactory chips off his health bar. Targeting his ankles and nipping at them like a mangy chihuahua will cause him to lose his balance and fall on his back, giving the player free rein to strike at his exposed head for potent damage. The grotesquely obese cleaver-wielder called The Adjudicator will absorb any and all harm that touches the impenetrable rolls of fat on his body. That is until his bloody fissures are prodded enough times that he’ll similarly fall over and expose the weak spot of the bird piloting this abomination. This puzzle-oriented pattern of boss fights is incredibly prevalent for the so-called “archdemons,” the penultimate boss of an area that concludes the overarching level. The foreboding Dragon God will crumble into the pool of lava below him after impaling him with two giant arrow contraptions found in the arena, shooting the Storm King out of the sky requires unsheathing a special sword with forceful wind properties. The fight against Maiden Astraea is actually with her bodyguard, as she’ll oblige her own demise once the player defeats her means of protection. The aggressive major adversaries that mirror the typical Souls bosses like Flamelurker and Penetrator are few and far between here, and their predictability still makes them pale in comparison. The Old Hero would fit in this category if his blindness wasn’t burdening him, a quirk that situates this boss with the rest of the unconventional pack. At times, it seems like finally arriving at a boss is a relief from the hellish expedition that preceded it, which is yet another amusing instance of Demon’s Souls dipping its toes in the quaint characteristics of retro gaming.

After defeating every demon boss whether they be breezy or a grueling test of one’s Souls prowess, a complete checklist will eventually circle around to continue ascending Boletarian Palace and quashing the king who doomed the kingdom with his hubris: King Allant. The pathway up to Boletaria’s decorated ruler is appropriately one of the most excruciating, with roided-up knights and agile ninjas bombarding the player at all angles and another dragon’s fire to swiftly evade with great precision. Once the player faces Allant, no gimmicks will save the player any strain. King Allant verges heavily towards the belligerent side of the boss spectrum, and his array of sword tactics along with his AOE magic explosion will have the player devouring so much grass that they’d make for a healthy cut of hamburger meat. As epic as this duel is, the formidable King Allant is not the final battle. In fact, this is but a mirage of the king’s glory days. The true King Allant is located in a realm under the base of The Nexus, and he’s pathetically been reduced to what is best described as a sentient turd. Refusing to commit regicide will result in the player taking his position as the ultimate demon lord that will reign in a new era of prosperity for the scourge. On the other hand, returning to The Nexus and letting the Maiden in Black close the portal to the demon world will put Boletaria at peace. It should be pretty clear which decision to make in these final moments considering one ending is concretely labeled as “bad” and the other as “good,” I much appreciate the ambiguous conundrum of ethics that the player is presented with at the end of Dark Souls. Besides, the miserable state of King Allant is an effective forewarning of what is to come if the player takes control, and it’s an existence I can’t imagine anyone would idealize for themselves.

A lesser Dark Souls, Demon’s Souls certainly isn’t. Sure, it’s comparatively rudimentary in plenty of aspects as to be expected from a first crack at an unprecedented type of action-adventure video game. I prefer the seamless world, the frequency of bonfires, the obscured narrative, and the boss fights that require pure skill to defeat rather than the prevalence of puzzle-oriented headscratchers that all became idiosyncrasies of every game in the Dark Souls trilogy. Yet, this is all based on personal preference. None of Demon’s Souls' more “video gamey” attributes inherently make it obsolete, even if working with them made the game infuriating at times. At the end of the day, Demon’s Souls resonated with me on the same scale as any of its spiritual successors because triumphing over all of its challenges gave me the same invigorating sense of personal satisfaction that no other series exudes.

Viewtiful Joe Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/27/2024)

[Image from igdb.com]

Viewtiful Joe

Developer: Clover Studio/Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): Beat 'em Up

Platforms: GCN, PS2

Release Date: June 26, 2003

They sure don’t make 'em like Clover Studio anymore. Can you imagine a triple-A studio bisecting their talent to another sub-faction dedicated to artistically inclined video games these days? Suggesting such an idea would result in the executives releasing the hounds to tear you limb from limb. Before the days when gaming was an oversaturated commodity, game studios could take the risk of developing wholly original IPs with a radical vision in mind. Capcom’s adjunct team Clover Studio developed a meager few titles in its brief tenure during the sixth console generation, and none of these titles sold well enough to break even with the money that was financed to create them. Still, gamers recognize those few titles as exceptional gems that make us yearn for a time when big-budgeted video games still flaunted kernels of soaring creativity. The first title that Clover Studio developed in their terse, yet essential catalog was Viewtiful Joe, a 2D platformer title with a heavy emphasis on beat 'em up combat. Considering the quaint genre of the game with its oldfangled dimensional perspective, perhaps Viewtiful Joe’s ill-fittingness with the burgeoning 3D landscape of gaming at the time inherently condemned it to a cult status. Still, Viewtiful Joe was one of the first titles with an understanding that hindsight and technological progress can elevate the bygone, retro elements of the medium.

Viewtiful Joe is also a power fantasy coming to fruition for all of the media-obsessed dweebs of the world. The dweeb in question is a man named Joe, an unflattering caricature of how the Japanese company Capcom perceived white American twenty-something men during the early 2000s. His backward baseball cap, goatee, and proneness to let his tongue wag out of his mouth while making “radical” hand gestures” makes him the archetypal guy from 2003 who drinks Red Bull by the gallon and plays bass in a third-rate nu-metal band. He’s technically the titular hero but as his everyday self, he’s just an excitable, immature spastic who adores the captivating glow of movie screens. Specifically, he enjoys the adrenalized spectacle of action films starring his film hero Captain Blue, who is unceremoniously defeated in the latest entry of his franchise. While Joe is bemoaning the fall of his idol, his girlfriend Silvia is groaning upon being subjected to another one of Joe’s cinematic excursions that she absolutely shares no interest in. Before she can mouth the choice words needed to dump this moron, the fourth wall is broken between the theater-goers as the sinister group “Jadow” snatches up Silvia into the realm of the movie screen. Joe then immediately warps into the celluloid to the dimension of “Movie Land” where he must simultaneously save his sweetheart and avenge Captain Blue’s demise. The fantastical realm of movies also grants Joe a bodaciously red superhero outfit complete with a cape and “V”-shaped visor on the helmet portion of the costume. Far before he becomes his superhero alter ego of “Viewtiful Joe,” this man’s life already seems far-fetched enough. By every stretch of reality, Silvia should’ve never even made a flattering passing glance at him and he should be either a pale basement dweller or slaving away at a fast food job. He’s either got the luck of the Irish on his side, or the game is totally unbounded by the standards of reality even outside of its entertainment.

One of Clover Studio's hallmarks was a captivating sense of style, and Viewtiful Joe’s alluring pizzazz is unmistakable. Given that the setting of Viewtiful Joe exists in the realm of fantasy, the developers were relatively uninhibited in flaunting a finesse oozing with personality. A recurring visual base used by Clover Studios to achieve their idealized stylistic pomp is cel-shaded graphics, which sacrifice realism in favor of a vivid buoyancy akin to animation. Viewtiful Joe’s specific direction with this graphical rendering leans towards emulating the vivacious artwork commonly found in comic books, a choice likely inspired by the fact that he’s teleported into a superhero movie. Not only do the cel-shaded visuals sparkle and burst like aesthetic Pop Rocks, but the outlines borrowed from comic book illustrations have a subtle, ulterior function to inject the polygonal cracks of sixth-generation graphics with a foundation like caulk. Cover the entire display in a grainy film reel for immersion and all of the graphical snags of Viewtiful Joe are masked like expensive botox. As a result of the developer’s attention to detail, Viewtiful Joe is one of the most visually fetching games of its era and has aged like a wax figure.

Viewtiful Joe is delicious eye candy, but the sugar-rush implications of this common idiom seep into other aspects of the game’s presentation that I’m not particularly fond of. In terms of its aura, Viewtiful Joe is reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon. It reminds me of a Japanese cartoon series specifically catered towards children with that sanitized anime style (Shaman King, Sonic X, that fucking Kirby cartoon). Like the animated Japanese exports I have to dig through the recesses of my memory banks to recall, Viewtiful Joe tends to be irritatingly hyperactive in an attempt to be humorous and lighthearted. So many sound bites are repeated on a nauseating loop, namely an alarm warning and the boisterous chant of a certain boss right before Joe confronts him in his domain. You goddamn better believe I muted my TV during these segments. Joe will vocally express his fondness for the burger health items by saying “MMM YUMMY” every single fucking time he obtains one. It’s grating enough to abstain from feeding him, but I’ll later delve into why it's wise to just tolerate his enthusiasm. Whenever the player presses pause, the “director” of the film that Joe has flown into will break the fourth wall to remind the player to flush the toilet, implying they’ve stepped away from the controller to empty their bowels. “T for Teen” my ass–these are the kinds of sophomoric shenanigans that would only resonate with a younger demographic who aren’t yet concerned with how members of the opposite sex perceive them.

Despite how annoying Viewtiful Joe’s general attitude can be at times, it’s an incredibly well-oiled machine underneath all of its antics. The beat 'em up genre that Viewtiful Joe falls under connotes that our plucky, spandex-wearing hero will be punching and kicking his way to the finish line. His combat repertoire hardly extends past the physical essentials of his own limbs, except for the subsidiary tools he pulls from his utility belt such as the boomerangs and bright pink bombs that he balances on his feet like a hacky sack. Even though Viewtiful Joe technically doesn’t stray away from the fundamentals of beat 'em up combat, its innovation lies in how the basics are conducted. Below the lengthy lines of heart units that Joe calls his health bar is the “VFX” bar, which essentially functions as a magic meter of sorts. The magic in question is the sorcery of film editing that manipulates the audience's sense of what is occurring on screen. In Viewtiful Joe’s case, the visual effects pertain to the rate of the action’s motion. Holding down the trigger buttons on the left and right side of the controller will either cause the action to slow like everyone is swimming in Jello or accelerate it to a speed so blisteringly fast that Joe will catch fire. I think it’s common knowledge that altering the motion to either extreme is a prevalent form of effects trickery implemented in action films for stylistic splendor. The way in which Viewtiful Joe utilizes this trope, however, is a vital facet of its combat mechanics. Either decelerating the screen to a glacial crawl or quickening it to a lightning pace where the celluloid might combust is imperative in defending oneself from the overwhelming throngs of enemies that a beat 'em up typically shovels onto the player. Joe’s lethargic state in the slowing mode even automatically voids any incoming damage at the cost of chopping off a sizable chunk of the VFX gauge greater than the standard rate of depletion. Combine the sedated momentum with the other gauge-draining move where the camera zooms on Joe to execute some seriously crippling damage. Conversely, large groups of grunt enemies can be swiftly dispatched in a matter of seconds by fast-forwarding the combat. Just be sure not to overindulge in this mechanic, for completely draining the meter will revert Joe back to his schmuck self and leave the player helpless for a brief period. The action film context of Viewtiful Joe’s premise allows the game to integrate the bombastic inclinations of the genre, adding a refreshing and helpful way to spice up the bare bones of beat 'em up combat. My only grievance is that the meter restarts after the player finishes a chapter, and they desperately need more juice to face the increasing difficulty curve in later levels. The amount of rings collected on the field that increase the meter should be accumulated across the entire game and increased incrementally like an RPG stat.

One might think that altering the pace of combat at any given point gives the player an advantage that renders the game totally facile. Viewtiful Joe should ideally be easier than its beat 'em up ancestors that were often working under an arcade ethos with cruel and uncongenial penalties for failure. The truth is that Viewtiful Joe is only marginally easier than the older games of its genre in that it features unlimited continues and a save system. In terms of pure gameplay, Viewtiful Joe is a brutal beat ‘em up title even by the standards of the genre as a whole. All of the time manipulation tools granted to Joe don’t make the combat a breeze–they serve to make the scenario of fighting a dozen enemies at a time with a myriad of different attack patterns and defenses manageable. The player might notice that even though their hide is perfectly unscathed by enemy offense using the time mechanics, their own damage input is not as impactful as they might have anticipated. Another prevalent mechanic in Viewtiful Joe’s combat is ducking and hopping over an enemy’s jabs and kicks, and successfully coordinating one’s dodges will leave the enemy in a disoriented state of vulnerability. This docile daze is the only opportunity to execute the ideal amount of damage, as attempting to strike them normally even with time alteration at the player’s disposal will amount to nothing if the enemy is still spry and alertly guarding themselves. Add the duress of a scorecard that grades the player’s performance in battle as Capcom’s properties have a habit of doing and the pressure of eliminating every enemy in a timely and concise fashion is a constant source of stress. Besides the staggering proficiency that the game expects of the player, Viewtiful Joe is also excruciatingly difficult due to the length of progress they must endure between the arbitrarily placed checkpoints with a shop and save points. Health items are also relatively scarce, so the player will be thankful for every burger they encounter, even if restoring one’s health with it will make Joe utter that godforsaken line.

Because the cavalcade of enemies in Viewtiful Joe are all built differently, finding their weaknesses and exploiting them almost verges the game into puzzle territory. I wish the guesswork-oriented aspects of puzzle solving were entirely condensed to Viewtiful Joe’s combat, for they increase the depth of combat tenfold. Unfortunately, Viewtiful Joe dedicates sizable swathes of its levels to brain teasers that are completely out of the game’s element. Joe feels far too energetic and excitable to halt his momentum to engage in bouts of methodical contemplation. Maybe I’d be willing to accept the momentary puzzles as genuine alternatives to the predominant beat ‘em up gameplay if they made a lick of sense. You know how we’re intended to distrust what you see in a movie because it barely holds any ground in reality? Viewtiful Joe subscribes to the opposite viewpoint, for its setting in the film world dictates that the game operates under the illogical realm of fiction. For example, I couldn’t figure out how to open a dungeon door at the initial moments of the first episode and felt embarrassed at the fact I was immediately stuck just as the game began. Believe it or not, the intended method of escape was to slow time down which would then cause the water droplets leaking out of a pipe to expand and slam onto the button below with the force of its newfound weight. C’mon, who taught these developers physics? Rick Sanchez? Alas, so many of the game’s puzzles are devised with this sort of faulty science in mind. The radius of an explosion will swell if the player elongates the time by slowing things down, and a rocket launch would blast off with greater acceleration if only the sequence was slackened as well. This also applies to speeding things up, which causes a propeller platform to move upwards and hasten the accumulation of liquid flowing underneath platforms. What absolute poppycock. I abhor any of these pace-breaking puzzle sections, for no one who exists in the realm of reality should ever conceive the solution to these nonsensical hurdles. While I’m at it, I also find it amusingly ironic that the game in which the narrator asks them if they’re going “number one or two” when they pause the game has this cerebral streak.

However, the sections of Viewtiful Joe I enjoy that require a bit of rumination are the boss fights. Like the enemies that proceed them, Viewtiful Joe’s episode-ending baddies are a varied assemblage of formidable foes. The puzzle aspects of these mighty movie monsters lie in their stark defenses that the player must crack open like a walnut. Even when the player has discovered the chink in their armor, it still may not be the optimal entry point in executing the maximum damage potential. The fiendish bat Charles the Third disseminates into a swarm of smaller bats upon being stricken by Joe, and hitting these tiny winged creatures does decrease a bit of his health bar. However, the player might get the impression that the dainty damage done to Charles when he disperses is not the optimal way to engage with him, so they’ll likely find that swiftly kicking him at an opportune moment and wailing on him while he’s flat on his back will trounce him in seconds. The green, Harley-riding dinosaur Hulk Davidson will inadvertently leave himself vulnerable in many ways, and they’re equally ripe for beating the fossil fuels out of him. The dullard shark Gran Bruce is liable to die in a flash when he’s out of the water, and both Joe’s doppelganger and anti-hero rival Alastor often mask their locations with a hail of dangerous distractions. The only way one would know this knowledge of the bosses is a process of trial and error, for sussing out their tender spots is anything but straightforward. This aspect of the bosses is greatly elevated when facing off against the so-called “Firelord Leo.” The list of tasks to perform before Joe can even scratch this sabretoothed brute is absurdly circuitous, and it’s no wonder that he and the “Magnificent Five” boss gauntlet that he’s the leader of was the point in the game that made a significant percentage of players throw in the towel.

After facing off against Leo and a series of stronger versions of previous bosses, there is only one member of Jadow left to confront: the director of the film himself. Who is this vile madman who gets his sick kicks from abducting flesh and bone women from the real world and holding them hostage in their own creation? In a “shocking” twist, the diabolical leader pulling the strings of this operation is none other than Captain Blue. Up until now, the cerulean superhero has been lionized by Joe, and his spiritual aid of teaching Joe the special maneuvers he’s been incorporating in his battle routine has only affirmed Joe of his idol’s righteousness. Alas, this reveal is yet another valuable example of the adage “Never meet your heroes”. What made this benevolent agent of justice digress to the villainous deeds of kidnapping and sour Joe’s high opinion of him? Well, the issue is that Captain Blue only seems to occupy a space in Joe’s mind and no one else's. The man behind the mask was once an esteemed director whose films were cherished by the public. After trends changed, Captain Blue became a bygone relic of his era of film, and the inspiration behind his heel turn was to break out of the celluloid and make the public remember his greatness, whatever that entails. Apparently, to enact this unfeasible feat, they needed Silvia’s DNA for some ritual because she’s the estranged daughter of Captain Blue. Just roll with it. After duking it out with Captain Blue in a two-phased kaiju mech battle of epic proportions, Captain Blue sees the error of his ways. Hold the phone, Capcom–do you expect us to swallow this contrived mess of exposition dumped on us at the very end? If this isn’t a meta-commentary on tired movie cliches, the developers have cooked up something idiotic to end their game on.

I’m conflicted on whether or not Viewtiful Joe agitates me enough to completely write it off. I’m not discounting the game because its high difficulty frustrated me and I became accustomed to hearing the “director” yell CUT at me for botching his vision with my collective failures. Plenty of other, less admirable aspects of Viewtiful Joe brought my blood to a boil in ways that I could barely stomach. The obnoxious levity of a third-rate children’s anime, the gall to incorporate puzzles in a beat ‘em up game with no basis in logical thinking, and the plot point rife with eye-rolling cliches are enough to lose my patience with this game. Viewtiful Joe is just as punishing in other aspects as its demanding gameplay. Maybe the game would’ve struck the desired cord in me if I had played it twenty years ago, but I dread the alternate timeline where I get my ass kicked at recess because I exclaimed “Henshin-A-Go-Go, baby!” while performing Joe’s hand gestures. Yet, I can’t honestly harbor too much vitriol for Viewtiful Joe because I sincerely admire its striking panache and (practical) efforts to spruce up such a simplistic genre as the beat ‘em up. Whatever score I ultimately decide to stamp onto this review, let it be known that Viewtiful Joe’s gameplay craft and attractive visuals are my reasons for being so charitable.

Mavel's Spider-Man Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/16/2024)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Marvel's Spider-Man

Developer: Insomniac

Publisher: SCEI

Genre(s): Beat em' Up, Open-World

Platforms: PS4

Release Date: September 7, 2018

Spider-Man can do whatever a spider can; so by the logic of this tagline, a spider cannot capture lightning in a bottle twice as far as its video game adaptations are concerned. The loose video game tie-in with the second film in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy was another exemplary licensed game that fractured the stigma behind this notably panned type of title with a recognizable property attached. Thanks to the burgeoning open-world format that Grand Theft Auto benevolently gave the gaming world, other properties could relish in the potential of a non-linear, freeform playground and sink dozens of hours in exploring before any story progress was made. Spider-Man 2 used the open-world format to expertly hone in on what makes Marvel’s most popular superhero, and really, every other effective interactive rendering of a masked vigilante so exhilarating: the feel of controlling the iconic character fulfills every fan’s wishful expectations. The player could gracefully swing through the streets of Marvel’s canon depiction of New York City in its spacious environment without any immediate objectives impeding their merriment, and it’s truly all that any Spider-Man fan could ask for. Why is it then that every successive Spider-Man game has failed miserably in recreating the same harmonious, kinetic relationship between Spider-Man and the player (with the benefit of the doubt that they made a concerted effort in the first place)? Well, mediocrity with any of Marvel’s properties was no longer tolerated by the time that Sony positioned acclaimed developer Insomniac to craft a Spider-Man title exclusively for the PS4. While the game was unaffiliated with any recent Spider-Man film, a video game of shoddy quality would still reflect poorly on Marvel’s absolutely monolithic reign over the blockbuster film circuit and the greater scope of pop culture during the 2010s decade. With the pressure of lofty standards at play, Marvel’s Spider-Man even managed to ascend over the series of films that spurred the necessity to create the game in the first place. Not only that, but it made the previous Spider-Man benchmark of the second movie game a faint, distant memory.

Given that Marvel’s Spider-Man isn’t attached to any specific source material, the developers are given moderate liberties as to where they plant their story on the greater Spider-Man timeline. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a post-college, 23-year-old Peter Parker is the oldest incarnation we’ve seen of this character. We’ve seen Peter depicted as a bright-eyed teenager yet to graduate high school so often that the rare instances where he’s an adult who is seasoned in his superhero duties seem odd and disorienting. Don’t be alarmed, skeptical Marvel fans; this drinking-aged Spider-Man who may have developed a wrinkle or two is still as spry and energetically quippy as his usual adolescent timeframe, shooting spiderwebs as gooey and viscous as he did when he was sixteen *ahem.* Honing his extraordinary abilities that come with his mutant spider DNA is no longer at its awkward and amateur coming-of-age stage. Peter’s new problems he faces are commonplace for anyone situated smack dab in their twenties. He struggles to pay his rent punctually, and an exclamation point is added by his landlord per notice via a series of sticky notes. Mary Jane Watson is no longer the source of inspiration when he shoots the sticky white webs from his wrists– (okay, I’ll stop now…) she’s a product of a bygone romance that soured with time. Peter’s pining for her is much more forlorn now than the wistful eagerness once felt back when she was out of his league. Besides saving the good people of New York as his heroic alter ego, Peter’s main prerogative as his public persona is a paid internship at the laboratory of Otto Octavius developing cybernetic prosthetic body parts for those whose limbs have been unfortunately severed. If you recognize the name of Peter’s boss and mentor as the legal name of the arch-villain Doctor Octopus, his mild-mannered role is indicative of the extent in which the game scrambles the timeline for Spider-Man’s secondary characters as well. NYC mayor Norman Osborn has yet to find pleasure in pelting Peter with pumpkin bombs, and who knew Aunt May was dedicated to philanthropy working at the F.E.A.S.T. shelter? For some reason, multiple film adaptations of Spider-Man feel the need to portray the origin story of Spider-Man and Uncle Ben’s tragic demise revolving around it ad nauseam, and Marvel’s Spider-Man made the wise decision not to gamify it. Then again, shifting away from stringent conventions regarding a narrative is what video game adaptations do best, and getting a glimpse of Peter at a slightly advanced stage in his life is refreshing.

Despite all of the foibles of young adulthood that define Peter’s present life, he’s still obligated to find time to entrap the various criminals of NYC in his weapons-grade gossamers, halting their nefarious deeds. The introduction immediately catapults Spidey into the action of infiltrating the base of Wilson Fisk, who is also notably referred to by “Kingpin.” The opposition of the armed goons on staff for this decorated, fatcat mob boss acts as perfect tutorial fodder for the player to become acquainted with Spider-Man’s combat. In all honesty, a sizable margin of players should already be familiar with Spider-Man’s combat, for the game takes more than a generous helping of inspiration from Batman’s Arkham series in this regard. The Caped Crusader’s popular interactive trilogy is perceived as the quintessential gold standard for superhero video games, so the fact that its influence crossed over to the rival comic conglomerate to keep Spider-Man from fumbling again isn’t the least bit surprising. While I realize that pointing out the similarities sounds like I’m dishing out disparagement to Spider-Man, I’ll make a case that Batman’s signature combat style translates logically over to the red web-slinger. Unlike their peers who defeat vengeful, eldritch gods and diabolical forces of great destruction, the enemies of both Batman and Spider-Man tend to dial down the scale to domestic thuggery. Even the supervillains that verge on the supernatural spectrum still tend to use their extraordinary evilness to siphon stacks of Benjamins from their local bank vault. Both Batman and Spider-Man commonly beat down low-brow criminals, and they have a habit of working in numbers. In Spider-Man’s case, simultaneously attacking and defending in the mosh pit of gang members is far more manageable. While executing a barrage of punching and kicking, another scumbag’s cheap hit from behind is signaled by a white spark over Spidey’s head so he can dodge accordingly. This flash during combat is the tingling sensation of “spidey senses,” a canonical ability of Spider-Man’s utilized cleverly in combat. The same trigger will also activate whenever Spidey is about to be shot by a firearm. For executing Spider-Man’s swiftness properly, the player’s skill will always be rewarded by automatically spurting webs in the eyes of the would-be assailant, making them extremely susceptible to Spider-Man’s torrent of knockout jabs. If one isn’t patient enough to wait for an oncoming blow, Spider-Man can still utilize his sticky white stuff in combat at his own volition. A rapid-fire webbing will tie enemies in a full body harness, the “web impact” will ensnare an enemy with one shot and glue them to walls with its impact, the web bomb is used for crowd control, and the electric web will trap those in its crossfire in a shocking bind like a taser net. Essentially, Spidey’s assortment of webs is equivalent to Batman’s gadgets, secondary tools to compensate for range and or the overwhelming swarm of enemies. While Spider-Man lays out Arkham’s choreographed combat a little too thick, I prefer the inspired imitation here. Spider-Man is inherently more physically adroit than DC’s brooding bat, so the flexibility adds a layer of fluidity to each combat situation. Add a few quality-of-life enhancements to the combat that Insomniac surely thought could’ve been improved on from the Arkham games and the countless instances where Spider-Man has to bust up a dozen skulls at once are consistently smoother than any instance where Arkham’s droogs ambushed Batman.

I suppose Spider-Man’s proficient agility and endurance can be attributed to his regular exertion roaming around NYC protecting its loud and brash denizens. The Marvel universe seems to be contained to Stan Lee’s home city and the real-life headquarters of his comic empire, specifically the borough of Manhattan. NYC’s ritziest and most tourist-friendly borough has been rendered as a world map countless times since the parameters of the open-world genre became feasible, and Marvel’s Spiderman is yet another loyal recreation. Peter’s bachelor pad and the F.E.A.S.T. shelter are located in Chinatown, and Peter is often fashionably late to his appointments at Octavius’ modest working space on the rooftop of a building in Greenwich Village. The rectangular, arboreal space of Central Park is as whimsical as ever, and the northern district of Harlem exudes that rough charm that makes it a haven of artistry. The immersiveness of Manhattan’s interactive model here may be soiled a bit when they see the Avenger’s Tower casting a shadow even over the Empire State Building, but I see it as the salient stamp that marks this NYC as a hyper-fictionalized version that abides by the ethics of comic books (and perhaps it's also a monument to Stan Lee’s ego). Manhattan under the Marvel sun is a busy and vibrant place filled with an optimism that a reality where superheroes don’t exist doesn't have. Most importantly, how does it feel swinging through the city that never sleeps like an arachnid Tarzan? I’m happy to report that it’s absolutely splendid. Insomniac nailed the flow and precarious inertia that should come with perching oneself at the eye level of urban architecture and maintaining that height by hanging by literal threads. Casting a web isn’t automatic as it depends on the altitude, but executing it at the right moment and keeping that rhythm is an aspect of this mechanic that adds to the kinetic feel of being Spider-Man. Even if a mission was located near the remains of the World Trade Center and I was currently in Harlem, I never felt the need to mitigate the time of the trip by fast traveling via the NYC metro system. However, I suppose taking the subway would be pleasant from Peter’s perspective. Waltzing around for too long atop all the skyscrapers will trigger J. Jonah Jameson’s new radio show where Peter’s old blowhard boss channels Rush Limbaugh, scapegoating Spider-Man for every conceivable societal shortcoming from the prices of gas to receding hairlines. You never change, do you, Jonah?

The trek between the main missions will always be interrupted by something if the player beckons to their call. While the cavalcade of Spider-Man supervillains is as quirky as they are notorious, the common crime occurrences are perpetrated by either their insignificant underlings or desperate hoodlums. At what seems like every five seconds, an orange caution sign appears on the radar that signifies a crime is taking place at that exact spot. Gangs will either be robbing a jewelry store, antagonizing the cops with heavy gunfire, or simply stinking up the streets with their noxious intimidation. Kingpin’s goons befoul certain spaces with their presence to the extent where they are designated as gang strongholds, and the process of ridding the site of them is coordinated like a horde mode. All of the nonviolent additional activities to do in NYC essentially boil all of the extra content down to a collectathon. Peter must’ve taken some serious Adderall to study for his trigonometry exams in high school, for the combination of prescription speed and his superhuman abilities has resulted in over fifty different backpacks being suspended from the walls and ceilings all over Manhattan, each holding a Spider-Man-related easter egg. Only under the influence of drugs would inspire such an eccentric endeavor. Peter gets a chance to engage in his photography passion again after quitting his job at the Daily Bugle, collecting the pictures of various Manhattan landmarks he takes with his camera. Black Cat, an original character totally dissimilar from another anti-hero vixen, teases Spider-Man with a series of cat dolls that subtly signify the location of her next robbery. The enigmatic Taskmaster takes a break from toying with The Avengers to test Spidey’s heroic reflexes with several hectic tasks ranging from deactivating bombs to following drones. His impersonal communication methods combined with what he asks of Spider-Man exude an uncannily sinister aura to Jigsaw. Peter’s best friend, Harry Osbourn, will also assign jobs to him from afar, but they involve using environmental science to solve the city’s rampant air pollution instead of sick and twisted riddles and games. Peter can also practice biology and electrical engineering in his workspace, connecting the flow of circuit arrays and matching the genome material to a sample respectively. These might be the most inert activities in the game, but I was consistently engaged with each of them nevertheless. Leave it to the team who created Ratchet & Clank to conjure up some compelling minigames. While not every subsidiary activity throughout the city explicitly involves collecting, completing any of these always rewards the player with tokens. Maybe these won’t be a perfect incentive for every player to humor all of the side content the game offers, but unlocking alternate spider suits and upgrading the gadgets was enough motivation for me.

But how monotonous would Spider-Man’s daily routine be if it was the focal point of the game? Where there’s a superhero, there’s always a supervillain foil to match his extraordinary might. As far as the selection on hand, only the supervillains from Batman rival the overall breadth and infamy of the big baddies associated with Spider-Man. Since The Green Goblin is an elected official and Doctor Octopus has yet to sprout his mechanical arms, which iconic Spider-Man supervillain is the one at the helm of chaos and disorder? Surprisingly enough, the primary antagonist is someone that Insomniac dug through the catacombs of Spider-Man villains to scrounge up, an obscurity that I had to research whether or not he was an original creation from Insomniac. The impetus for highlighting a generally unknown bad guy as opposed to one of Spider-Man’s classic nemeses is to pull the wool over the player’s eyes. Unlike Otto and Norman whose screen presence evokes tense anticipation wondering when they’re going to wear their outfits and shift over to the dark side, Martin Li is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Who would ever expect the kind and altruistic spearheader of the F.E.A.S.T. homeless shelter to harbor psychotic tendencies? He’s practically the epitome of the rule of thumb that it’s always the person you’d least expect, especially in an environment where the deplorables of the world aren’t afraid to show their true colors and make a spectacle of it. I suppose his pale-faced reaction to Peter presenting him with an arcane Asian demon mask worn by the Chinese terrorist group that attempted to ransack Kingpin’s museum exhibit is clear foreshadowing. Once the Demons enact the town hall bombing that begins the second act of the narrative, Mr. Li reveals his villainous persona Mr. Negative to the public and Peter is shocked beyond belief. Under the special cooperation of police chief Yuri Watanabe, Spider-Man spends a hefty chunk of the game tracking down a biological weapon referred to as “devil’s breath,” something that could lead to disastrous consequences for the city if Li ever got his hands on it. All the while, Spider-Man simultaneously attempts to find a clear motive that would lead this admirable humanitarian to forsake the city he provides for. In my perspective, the unclear duality of the character is what makes him an interesting antagonist.

Naturally, Spider-Man’s pursuit of Mister Negative is what drives the narrative. Per usual for an open-world title, the difficulty across the main missions in Marvel’s Spider-Man fluctuates like the stock market. Some are lengthy quests involving perilous chases with The Demons that leave a square of Manhattan in dire wreckage by its resolution. Others essentially boil down to watching a series of cutscenes that automatically further the story, and I’d fervently chastise the game for letting cinematics perform the gameplay’s job if this was a more prevalent instance. Most of the time, Spider-Man will be kicking the absolute shit out of Demons as he would whenever they decide to disturb the peace on the streets, only with story context supporting the action as opposed to the case-by-case instances outside of the missions. Complaints are regularly issued about the repetitive mission content in Marvel’s Spiderman, and I have to admit that the buoyant and responsive combat overstays its welcome. However, Insomniac foresaw these grievances and added some diversity to the gameplay, but it seems like their efforts denote spite instead of accommodation.

While Mary Jane is no longer Spidey’s main squeeze, she’s still an active presence in his life regardless if their romantic bond has been severed. MJ’s life after college has landed her into a lucrative career as an investigative journalist working for Peter’s former place of employment. While the job requires her to proactively get her hands dirty and procure vital information, she thinks that she’s Nancy fucking Drew. Mary Jane is constantly on the prowl in the vicinity of criminals so dangerous that they would ideally be dealt with by the CIA in a world without superheroes. This is why Spider-Man and MJ have a coincidental rendezvous at the museum where we first meet The Demons. Putting herself in peril to take a few measly snapshots is a chronic calamity that must cause Peter’s spidey senses to flair up with the intensity of a nervous breakdown, but she’s equally just as sharp a thorn in the player’s side because every act of “journalistic bravery” is an interactive mission. The player will control Mary Jane snooping around the active space of either The Demons or another criminal faction, occasionally manipulating the environment to divert their gaze lest she suffers fatal consequences. These stealth sections are handled adequately, but their integration with Spider-Man’s gameplay is incredibly dissonant. Playing as a regular human inherently feels quite encumbered in a superhero video game, but that’s the whole point of why Mary Jane puts herself at risk. Apparently, dating Spider-Man has made her delusional, as his extraordinary status and abilities have diminished her confidence. I’ve heard of penis envy, but jealousy towards your boyfriend for their web-slinging is something Dr. Freud couldn't wrap his head around. My diagnosis is that these sections suck, and Mary Jane sucks for stubbornly enacting these charades in the spirit of her insecurities. Another character named Miles Morales is also playable in sections that mirror MJ’s, but I’ll discuss him at a later date.

I would’ve applauded Marvel’s Spider-Man for separating itself from other Spider-Man media with a fresh and underutilized main villain at the wheel, but the final third of the game swerves into total fan service. Once Octavius straps the functional robotic claws onto his backside, you know he’s bound to break bad like Walter White at any moment. Peter is obviously not his Jesse, so the help that Doc Oc needs to dismantle Norman Osbourn’s regime with his newfound appendages is a variation of the classic Sinister Six lineup. Doc Oc storms the maximum security containment center on Ryker’s Island and releases Electro, Rhino, Vulture, Scorpion, and the newest detainee of Mister Negative to wreak havoc to an extent NYC has never experienced before. All of the nameless thugs in orange jumpsuits also take advantage of their prison walls crumbling, so they set up blockades around the city and replace The Demons as the primary common enemy type. Maybe I shouldn’t evaluate this hodgepodge of classic Spider-Man villains with my usual air of cynicism, even if the story should’ve ended with Li’s arrest or Doc Oc taking his mantle alone so the story could maintain its integrity. I’ll gladly eat this exorbitant meal as a Spider-Man fan, and the double duels between them are the most thrilling parts of the game. However, the hallucination sequence caused by Scorpion’s venom is the most blatant borrowing of Arkham’s properties in the game, so I’ll have to dock a point or two from this end section anyway. I suppose it's rather jarring seeing Doc Oc steal Li’s thunder by the end. Not only does he inherently steal the show with his notoriety, but inadvertently killing Aunt May by unleashing the Devil’s Breath tops anything Li ever committed on the scum and villainy scale. Yes, the game ends on a tragic note with sweet Aunt May succumbing to the effects of the contagion and dying with Peter by her bedside. That’s cold, Insomniac.

Marvel’s Spider-Man gets away with two supervillains sharing the spotlight because neither of them are intended to be the primary villain. Despite their toxic rancor, I’ll have to agree with both Li and Octavius when they state that Norman Osbourn is the root of evil in NYC. Sure, he doesn’t actively cause chaos, but he’s a powerful figure who’s letting his city down nonetheless. My last comparison to Batman I’m going to address is that both superhero IPs share the same conflict of a class divide. This is why several of both series’ common bad guys are downtrodden thugs instead of decorated supervillains held up in mountainous fortresses. Comics always focus on the criminal deeds of petty theft or grand larceny and seldom contemplate why they commit them in the first place. Why do you think F.E.A.S.T. is it overcrowded with throngs of impoverished people in its two separate locations? Norman Osbourn doesn’t have to don a green mask and take up skysurfing to negatively affect his city–neglecting its destitute denizens while in a position to potentially help them is doing enough harm as is. That, and he conducted the experiment on Li that murdered his parents and he’s been undermining Otto for his entire career, so that’s more fuel to their respective fires. Despite their biases, there’s a legitimate argument that both maniacs are justified in eradicating Osbourn, so that’s a firm and logical debate regarding acting on the greater good. All the while, Osbourn has his own issues, namely enhancing the devil’s breath prototype to cure diseases instead of causing them for the sake of his sick son. I don’t inherently subscribe to the prevailing notion in modern fiction that all villains have to be somewhat sympathetic to be effective, but the pathos of every antagonist on display here works wonders as examples for nuanced character writing.

Spider-Man 2 who? This was the foggy question that Sony resolutely wanted gamers to ask after they sought to dismantle that dried-up Spider-Man released two gaming generations prior. With so much progress passed in the medium, it seems obvious that Marvel’s Spider-Man would triumph over Spider-Man 2 on presentation alone, and the high-definition graphical gloss and stellar voice acting certainly affirm this assumption. Still, all the immediate successors to Spider-Man 2 fumbled despite their enhanced visual sheen. Marvel’s Spider-Man is a Spider-Man title that understood the acute physics, combat, and world traversal that preserved Spider-Man 2 as the ultimate game with the web-slinger for years. Its prestigious presentation isn't the only trump card Marvel's Spider-Man places on the table. Its emotional story and impeccable characters outclass even the films. Marvel’s Spider-Man is more than worthy of being the interactive exemplar during the MCU’s peak of popularity. The correspondence is ultimately irrelevant, but anything to vindicate this game further.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/7/2024)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Developer: Team Reptile

Publisher: Team Reptile

Genre(s): 3D Platformer, Sports

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PS5, XSX

Release Date: August 18, 2023

Spiritual successors are the future of gaming. I hate to rain on the parades of eager gamers that tend to be less cynical than I am, but I need to make something crystal clear to them: major gaming studios do not give a flying fuck about resurrecting one of their dormant IPs to please you. Even though you and a fairly sizeable quantity of loyal fans would pay top dollar for the chance to experience a new entry in whichever bygone franchise that is festering in their archives like a rotting corpse, you and your friends ultimately still fall into a minority demographic that isn’t worth the time, effort, or budget to spend appeasing. The video game industry is…well, an industry whose primary focus is turning the largest sum of profit with their products. Releasing something from a niche IP that has statistically underperformed in the past will not garner the desired results despite your vociferous appetite as a consumer. However, a portion of these jilted gamers are game developers themselves, and their deferred cravings will inspire them to fill in the hole with the wet cement of an original IP that apes the fabric of the inactive IP. Titles and names of characters are protected under copyright law, but ideas and conceptual makeup are not. This liberal borrowing of a retired video game IP’s constitution has produced a number of exceptional titles over the past few years. Bug Fables exceptionally fed me that nutritious, full-course Paper Mario meal after Nintendo had been stuffing shit down my throat for over a decade, and Undertale captures the lo-fi, bizarre, yet tender (and sometimes horrifying) wackiness of Earthbound that no game ever dared to replicate beforehand. In the case of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk’s existence, someone was evidently hankering for Sega’s Jet Set (Grind) Radio series. As of writing this review, I haven’t played Jet Set Radio or its sequel, for both titles are confined to two different consoles that I never owned. On equal par with those who experienced this game’s inspiration, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk also functions as an opportunity to get acquainted with Jet Set’s unique thread of idiosyncrasies for those who are unseasoned like I. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk satiates my hunger for a Jet Set-esque game, but it doesn’t quite quell my curiosities pertaining to its source material.

I suppose what piqued my interest in Jet Set Radio was its attitude, aesthetic, and unadulterated panache. To harp on the first descriptive word mentioned, BRC revels in Jet Set’s ethos of “sticking it to the man.” Society at large is a bureaucratic beast that squashes all forms of creativity and individualistic expression into a depressing gray paste of conformity. The premise sounds bleakly dystopian, but can we not honestly concede that our Western, first-world government positions its authoritative boots on the necks of our artistic potential? Fortunately, BRC’s world runs rampant with hipster freedom fighters who brazenly reject society’s rules and regulations. They spit in the face of the greater establishment with their strides of externalizing the deepest recesses of the soul with vehicular sports equipment, nimble hip-hop dancing, and, most importantly, graffiti art graphics that they tag with spray paint all across their urban environment. Obviously, BRC’s police force sees all of this liberal gallivanting as impudent acts of transgression, so they work around the clock apprehending these “writers,” the self-imposed term that these vandals call themselves, and caging them in cell blocks so dull and constrictive that it’ll sap all of their vigor. How naive they are to assume that their equally unruly friends wouldn’t have the gumption to break them out of their confinements, which is exactly what occurs in the game’s introduction sequence. BRC begins with the jailbreak of Faux and Tryce. The former character has a glowing reputation as one of the most prolific “writers” on the scene, and the latter character wishes to recruit him as a member of his gang once they elude captivity. Besides the direct opposition of a jetpack-powered police captain, they both manage to escape the grounds of the prison relatively unscathed. That is until a masked man dressed in stately garb decapitates Faux with a vinyl record. This event would naturally signal an abrupt end for the person whom we likely perceived as the game’s protagonist, but he miraculously reawakens with a new cybernetic cranium that is as red as a Japanese sunrise. With the help of Tryce and his bubbly female ally Bel, the freshly assembled Bombrush crew is ready to conquer all of the rival gang factions around New Amsterdam and find the whereabouts of Faux’s misplaced, organic noggin in the process. Much of BRC’s plot requires a suspension of disbelief to swallow, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t pump up my mood for youthful defiance.

The perfect word to describe BRC’s presentation is “funkadelic.” Yes, I realize that this is not a word recognized by any pressing of Webster’s English Dictionary and that is it the name of a funk rock band from the 1970s. Still, if we analyze the two descriptive words as a portmanteau, it’s the only fitting term for the fusion of styles that BRC displays. Before the offshoot of disco congested the dance club scene of the 1970s with its glittery corniness, the earlier days of the decade saw funk music blasting over people’s stereos as the dominant sound to truly release one’s inhibitions. The appeal of funk music is that its grooves are so infectious that they’ll hypnotize your body no matter the surrounding scene. Not only that, but the downright dirty hooks can tap into a primal urge that can verge into the sexual. BRC’s content doesn’t quite tap into that realm, but the unrepressed feeling of funk music drenches BRC’s atmosphere. That devil-may-care elatedness is exuded in the characters' interactions and general demeanor, also influencing the type of artwork they splatter on the brick exteriors of buildings. The psychedelic portion of BRC’s presentational flair relates to the fact that the game’s visuals are highly exaggerated thanks to the vibrant cel-shaded graphics. Every color on a character’s outfit to the glowing contrast of the robin egg blue sky in the foreground is a vivacious splendor for everyone’s senses–so much so that the player will blink profusely as if their sensory perception is being manipulated. Hallucinogenic drugs are perceived as a gateway to the apex of human enlightenment, creativity, and unbounded intellectual capacity to escape the mundanity of reality, so perhaps BRC’s radical visual fidelity taps into this tenet of psychedelia. Take Timothy Leary’s word for it. Add a spoonful of hip-hop culture’s swagger, DIY ethics, and underdog leanings and BRC encapsulates all audible substances that influence people to tear the roof off the sucker. The roof of order and discipline, that is.

The term “funkadelic” is also applicable to BRC because the game’s city map looks as if bass player Bootsy Collins was employed as New Amsterdam’s city planning coordinator. It’s hard to believe that the status quo the city’s police are hellbent on preserving is straight edge and orderly, for it seems as if New Amsterdam inherently facilitates the effervescent inclinations of its supposed “reprobates.” The billboards display lively works of art even before the BRC crew plants their various insignias onto it, and there are solid sculptures surrounding the New Amsterdam streets as well as hanging from the ceiling of Millenium Square’s megamall. Taking the time to stop and smell the roses around New Amsterdam will reveal retail stores that cater to the wares of coffee, records, and stylishly youthful clothing. New Amsterdam is one nation under the spell of a groove, so it's no wonder a large percentage of its denizens dedicate their livelihood to freelance street art. It’s a city so hip that it makes Portland resemble the en masse uniformity of Pyongyang. Not only is each area of New Amsterdam distinctive due to its color schemes, but the construction never repeats itself. Versum Hill is elevated to support the railcar track that loops around the district, Millenium Mall is a spacious monolith of commerce entirely indoors, and Pyramid Island is a vertical barge located a mile offshore of the nameless ocean. Mataan, the final area, postures its climactic scope with a setting that soars over the entire city and is exclusively the only area that takes place after dusk. Even the Bombrush Crew’s compact hideout is a place filled to the brim with a particular aura and design. Periodically between progression milestones, The Protagonist will experience an aneurysm that knocks him unconscious to a dream world level where the physical elements of New Amsterdam are floating in a psychedelic antimatter detached from the physics of reality. These linear series of platforms are incredibly reminiscent of the “secret” levels from Super Mario Sunshine, and they are pleasant to both play and gawk at in the infrequent instances in which they appear. New Amsterdam’s unmistakable quirkiness extends beyond its cultural identity to the architectural foundation of its various places of interest, and the world map on the whole here is wonderfully diverse.

The unifying cohesion between all of New Amsterdam’s districts is that they must consist of grind rails aplenty. Jet Set Radio’s hybrid of a 3D platformer and the ubiquity of extreme sports during the time is equally as idiosyncratic as its dazzling art style. Naturally, BRC follows its inspiration in the mechanical sense as resolutely as its pizzazz. “Red,” the new persona of the beheaded protagonist, fancies himself as a skateboarder. It’s his tool of unchained mobility to use to freely transform the entirety of New Amsterdam into his personal playground, skidding on guard rails and across the smooth surfaces of billboard signs with the utmost grace and adroitness. Bel specializes in rollerskates while Tryce burns some serious rubber on his BMX bike, so the Bombrush Mod Squad covers all bases of potentially injurious transportation sport equipment whose usage is frowned upon by authorities. While all three methods to make sparks fly from the friction of metal meeting movement differ in shape and size, their utility is identical. It’s somewhat disappointing that the three simply meld together, but the objective of BRC isn’t to learn and master the different selections of equipment. The accelerated motion that comes with all three-wheeled contraptions serves as a twist to the 3D platforming aspect. Ramps, grind rails, and billboard signs are essentially realistic platforms used to gain higher elevations throughout the city. The challenge comes with finding where a connecting chain of pathways begins while trying to retain one's balance, similar to any other 3D platformer. Accelerating the motion of movement with a skateboard or bike is also a lovely accommodation when it comes to exploration in BRC. Reaching higher ground or poking through corridors in BRC is all performed with the same objective: to get to or discover the spots that are ripe for graffiti markings or to retread over the artwork of a rival gang to topple their influence over a district and earn reputation points. Simply press the button for the limitless spray paint while in front of a graffiti piece or a space with a hazy yellow pattern and a multitude of cardinal directions will pop up. The specific zigzagging trajectory on this screen coincides with the result of the graffiti piece, and the player will unlock more routes that come with new artwork by completing challenges or finding them on the field. Whether or not it’s the gratification of being rewarded with searching or meeting a destination that was once from a distance at eye level, filling in the blank spaces or painting over another gang’s symbol is a satisfying stamp of success.

Be aware that marking one’s territory with paint is bound to alert the fuzz. BRC’s trouble meter functions similarly to the one from Grand Theft Auto. Each time the player sprays a wall with their illicit vision, the retaliation of the police force will get progressively more tenacious. A few officers will bumrush the player upon gaining one star, and then a stationary unit will pop out of the ground and unleash an onslaught of chains in what is honestly an admirable, yet flawed, advancement in police detainment technology. Eventually, upon ignoring the legal blowback with more graffiti to follow, the police force will start carrying riot gear and then attempt to flush out the player with an assemblage of attack helicopters. They’ve really focused their priorities on combating serious crime, haven’t they? Funnily enough, graffiti is the only offense they seem to care about. Spin kicking them apparently isn’t a form of assault that compounds the player’s rap sheet to a life sentence, and they’ll amusingly scurry away upon being hit one too many times as if they “got served” and have to stand down. This allows the player to defend themselves with little repercussions, but refusing to submit to incarceration exposes a glaring issue with BRC’s mechanics. BRC’s combat feels very…gelatinous. Executing the kicking maneuvers doesn’t have that “oomph factor” that most action games with combat tend to, and delivering them to adversaries feels more like punching a balloon filled with pudding than an organic life form. Even though the cops will increase the efficiency of their strike force with loaded guns at some point, firing accurately at the player will never be enough to subdue them because health regenerates so quickly. Still, the player will be scrambling for an outhouse to change their clothing and elude the authorities in this game’s depiction of GTA’s “Pay and Spray” because they are rather irksome all the same. Calling attention to the police with graffiti doesn’t provoke a harmful threat–it’s equivalent to leaving a window open and having common house flies buzz around your personal space. Given that physical combat is thankfully not the focal game mechanic in BRC, the developers should’ve scrapped it entirely or forced the player to escape the police opposition without humoring the chance of literally fighting back.

The other enemies in BRC are the rival gangs that occupy one significant district around New Amsterdam. The Bombrush Crew’s mission to go “all city” entails that they will seize the territory from each respective gang until the entire map is covered entirely in whichever color signifies their dominance. The process of annexing an area is rinsed and repeated for every new area uncovered. Getting the rival gang’s attention requires painting over a certain amount of their graffiti spots, which will then lead to individual members challenging the BRC folk to assorted duels involving their ride of choice. All of the posturing will culminate in a legitimate ranked match coordinated and refereed by the “oldheads,” elder statesmen of the “writer” ranks who resemble pruned versions of the Bombrush Crew. The ultimate challenge that decides who will rule the roost is based on which crew can accumulate the most points by executing the most flashy combo stunts in succession. The surefire method of winning every final bout is to utilize the sharp corners of every grind rail to increase the combo multiplier and to hold down the button that activates the angled manual move to prevent the streak from stagnating. If you’ve sufficiently scoured the area beforehand, taking another gang’s land from them in this ritual will be a cinch. However, the recycled process does tend to dilute the impact of victory upon subsequent gang challenges. The fact that each gang is essentially the same arrogant, braggadocious bunch despite their difference in uniforms doesn’t spice up the stakes in the slightest. What titillates me the most regarding this overarching goal is how much it borrows from The Warriors, a cult film involving street gangs in affiliated colors with the same sense of a cool, urban aura. DJ Cyber even reappears often and says the definitive quote “Can you dig it!?” as an overt reference.

While the rival gangs are nothing to sneeze at, the conflict involving the game’s true main antagonist becomes progressively more interesting as the story unfolds. One can probably assume that DJ Cyber is the primary nefarious subject in BRC due to his decapitation count stacking up higher than the French Revolution. However, he’s simply a decorated agent acting on the rules of a system that exists outside of the ethical parameters of civilized society. Separating Faux’s head from his body with the edge of his vinyl blade was simply an act of prompt justice, but what crime is he being convicted of? In a twist, Faux is guilty of the three disses: disloyalty, disrespect, and dishonesty. Faux and DJ Cyber used to run with this cat named Felix (not the cartoon one) who took it upon himself to achieve “all-city” ascendancy on his own because he possessed “writing” skills that surpassed anyone else in New Amsterdam. In an act of jealousy, Faux kills Felix by knocking him off of a ladder into the rapid blades of a ceiling fan. Faux was taken into police custody not for the usual “writer” fare, but for the heinous act of murdering his friend and partner in crime. When DJ Cyber thought the rat bastard was cooked when he cut his head clean off, we learn that the police are preserving Faux’s head and using some kind of communicative synapse system so Faux can sing like a canary and give them the information they need to shut down the “writer’s” subculture indefinitely. That petty motherfucker. Fortunately, it’s revealed when Red’s helmet gets cracked that the face behind the mask is none other than Felix, whose head was evidently found in the nick of time and replugged onto a host body, Faux’s before its mental faculties collapsed. This reveal is fortuitous, for Felix is the only person who can oppose the monstrous mech that Faux’s head takes to the cliffs of Mataan to destroy his old allies. While the plot still needs patience to fully accept it as reality, the subversion regarding the main villain is executed quite well. The passionate conversation between Felix and Faux before one has to end the other isn’t even as cheesy as the climactic scope would suggest.

Whether or not it's an HD retread of an IP from long ago, the modern gaming landscape needs more titles like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Its indomitable, maverick spirit is infectious and speaks to my inner beatnik, hippy, and all other rabble-rousers that strike against society's stifling conventions. Still, I can’t help but feel like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is hollow overall. Its central gameplay of riding around skateboarding and such never tires, and I even found myself absentmindedly doing it without a clear objective because I was enjoying it so much. However, all of the concrete elements that progress the story are sadly repetitive and simplistic. I wonder how much of BRC’s boneless foundation is due to the meager indie developer budget, which is why I’m curious to see if Jet Set’s core is a solid one in comparison. It’s a chocolate easter bunny without an inside, but it consists of the most delicious chocolate I’ve ever eaten. Maybe I’m just a fucking square (sue me, I’m pushing 30).