Pandora's Box: The Ultimate GameCube Tier List

#50: Viewtiful Joe

Rating: T

Players: 1

Price Range: ~$35 USD

One of the infamous Capcom Five.

For one, I just wanted to thank you all for paying attention to this silly little ranking of mine. I greatly appreciate your support and interest in this project, as it is something of a passion of mine.

I really hope I open your eyes to some stellar gems, whether they are forgotten or beloved over a decade later.

Now, with that, let's get on with the Top 50!

Now, Viewtiful Joe...

What an interesting game.

This 2D side-scroller beat-em-up is quite good.

Possibly the most iconic parts of the game are the graphics, style, and gameplay.

You see, the game was one of the first to use cel-shaded graphics, and honestly, it makes the game age incredibly well visually, while also allowing the game to run at a consistent 60 FPS.

Like movies from the 2000s, they could have easily just cut out frames to give the illusion of slowing down with one of Joe's abilities, but no, they still made the game run the same way, which is quite nice.

This also complements the game's style, going for a hero comic book aesthetic, which really fits in with the whole premise of the game's plot being in a movie, which is wholly unique. Even when your meter runs out when using Joe's abilities, the screen looks intentionally worse and fuzzy, as if the "movie" is very rugged and old, before returning to clarity and smoothness once it recharges. It is very inspired.

The gameplay and combat are also amazing. You see, Joe has about three moves, one in which he slows down time to deal more damage at opportune moments and become invincible to attacks at the cost of a large chunk of his VFX meter if hit, slowing the environment around him, one in which he does the exact opposite and make things incredibly faster, causing the world to go into over drive while allowing him to punch and kick at blistering speeds, and one that causes a close up that allows Joe to perform very powerful close-quarters attacks. This not only plays into the boss fights, but also into the puzzles within the game's levels. Some of these are actually quite clever and pretty fun to figure out.

However, despite these praises, the reason why the game is this low is due to the game's incredibly high difficulty.

The game is insanely hard, and not the challenging type of hard that Soulsbourne or even some games later on the list have, but more so the "pull my hair out" type of hard.

At closing in on the midway point, you'll be getting game overs and be shockingly low on money trying to purchase anything to help you survive longer without going back to previous save, which, by the way, is not after every level, as sometimes there is just a shop and nothing else. It is also shockingly easy to die in this game, especially when you are trying to decipher the game's puzzles. So, safe to say, you'll be dying a lot, and it does not feel intentional at all, for unfortunately, there isn't much you can play around with to improve your chances of survive.

Even as a seasoned gamer, I never saw the credits, and I doubt many people ever did.

Still, if you are even slightly interested, try it out. I also think that the sequel improved on the difficulty scaling, so try that out too if you like.