We Need Games Like Viewtiful Joe | Review

We Need Games Like Viewtiful Joe | Review. Viewtiful Joe is truly a gem from a more creatively free time in AA scale game development. It's a fundamentally hardcore, experimental, and difficult action game that can't be neatly categorized by genre. It was created by one of Capcom's most esteemed game developers, Kamiya, and it's fascinating to look back at the history behind this game and Clover Studio. Clover Studio was an risk-taking endeavor by Capcom to take the AAA Publisher's top talent (Mikami and Kamiya), give them funding and creative freedom, and encourage them to "creating new intellectual property rather than sequels." Fun fact, the name Clover stands for "Creativity Lover." During Clover's brief but prolific existence, the studio managed to make three distinct and quality IPs: Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and God Hand. Two of them were widely praised and embraced by western game journalists (poor God Hand), but all three of them failed to meet Capcom's sales expectations and the tension between Clover and Capcom ended up dissolving the studio and the talent from Clover then went on to create Platinum. In the short term, I think Clover was seen as a failure (it didn't generate the big new IP Capcom wanted), but as time as gone on, Clover's reputation has only grown as all 3 IPs the studio created are seen as classics. And this is an interesting lesson that I explore in today's video, that our obsession with short term success has blinded developers from taking those long haul but important creative risks. Ironically, as beloved as Viewtiful Joe has always been by players and critics, I think this series will always struggle the most to find a mainstream audience (but in a good way), due to it's underlying hardcore nature. The "gimmick" of the game is really catchy, the idea of manipulating time in combat matrix-style. But Viewtiful Joe's design is a lot more solid and holistic than just a time gimmick game from the early 2000's, which is a very important aspect of the game's design I explore in today's review. Especially because you can see a lot of the underlying ideas of Viewtiful Joe being repeated in Kamiya's other games, like Bayonetta. As it stands right now, the only way to play Viewtiful Joe is on the PS2 or Nintendo Gamecube. Emulation is a fantastic for this game, especially since it has a genuinely challenging scoring system that benefits from save-state practice. But, as awesome as emulation is, I do think it's a huge shame that Capcom haven't ported this game to current gen consoles like the PS4/PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, but maybe there is some publishing deal type of issues that prevent that, I have no idea. Or, even more likely, Capcom probably don't see Joe as being a solid return on investment, who knows. An expert Viewtiful Joe player to check out is B.Strider! I used some of his footage to show off high-level gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd8P9ALNJpFTZcPwHVwHza2FNGZmSb1Qr Awesome thumbnail created by @boghogSTG Patreon https://www.patreon.com/electricunderground [$2 tier = Monthly Game Review Vote, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast] [$5 tier = Double Monthly Game Review Vote, By Name Shout-out, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast] Website: https://theelectricundergr.wixsite.com/the-electric-undergr Electric Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricUnderground/ STG Revision 2020 Discord (Shhmup Community Discord): https://discord.gg/snRueeH 00:00 We Need Experimental AA Games 05:29 The Slow-Motion Mechanic is More than a Gimmick 10:20 The Fast-Forward Increases Gameplay Density (It Rules) 14:46 The Best Scoring System in a Beat Em' Up I've Witnessed (Learn from Joe) 16:25 The Enemy Design is Dynamic and Elusive 17:19 The Level Design and Scoring are Tied Together 23:50 The Power of Visual Motif to Contextualize Game Design 26:50 The Importance of Pooling Meter and Creating Cost 32:34 Why Visionary Devs Need Strong Teams to Support Them 34:10 Why Large Studios Need Visionary Leads 35:08 Final Thoughts -- Why We Need More Games Like Viewtiful Joe #viewtifuljoe, #bayonetta, #okami