Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble Review

Viewtiful Joe was a surprise hit for the GameCube. It looked like something which would easily fall into obscurity, but Viewtiful Joe quickly garnered a sequel and a fighting spin-off across multiple platforms. Then, Capcom shut down Clover Studios, and we may never see this franchise again. So if you want a complete Viewtiful Joe collection, it wouldn’t be hard to accumulate. But is this DS game even worth adding to that? … No.

If anything, Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble does a great job of recreating the console atmosphere on a handheld. The cel-shaded style remains intact and uses 3D character models just like the original game. It’s not as crisp as its console brethren, but you’d be hard pressed to find any noticeable differences. One thing which stands out, though, is that not as many enemies are on screen at the same time as a way to help keep the framerate up, but it tends to dip in places, anyway. The dual screen idea also isn’t used to any great lengths. The top screen merely shows a close-up view of Joe. Wow, that’s… that’s not very helpful.

Viewtiful Joe is mostly an action game, but the move to the DS has also incorporated a lot of touch-based puzzles. Bad guys, while present in droves, usually precede long moments of enemy-less puzzle-platforming. These are always based around Joe’s new DS-specific powers: slide, scratch, and split. Slide swaps the top screen with the bottom screen, which lets you interact up-close with certain objects like turning a wheel or tapping on an enemy. Scratch shakes the screen and knocks loose objects, like rocks, out of their holding place. Both of these are kind of pointless and dumb, though, but the split mechanic more than makes up for the gimmickry. With this, you can split the bottom screen in half horizontally and move the top section left or right to alter the level. For instance, you may need to split the screen in order to duck around a once impenetrable wall or move an object on top of another object. It’s a pretty clever idea.

These new abilities, of course, still deplete Joe’s VFX meter. If this meter hits rock bottom, Viewtiful Joe turns into Regular Joe, a Matt Casamassina look-a-like who can’t do much. But the VFX meter automatically refills itself, and you can collect VFX tokens to increase its duration. However, the powers which are mostly used for puzzles feel a little out of place. Viewtiful Joe works best when it puts the touching away and focuses on the action that made the series a hit in the first place. Even though you can only kick and punch, it’s a lot of fun to pound on a robotic enemy and watch the metal fly. Joe’s slow-motion technique also hasn’t gone anywhere, a satisfying inclusion. Upper cutting someone into the air, then jumping up after them and kicking the crap out of them never gets old.

But I am of the belief that a DS game should either be all buttons or all stylus. Combining the two becomes a hassle. You always have to have that stylus ready to split the screen or swap the screens or scratch the screen. It feels clunky switching between the two. It breaks up the action, leads you to make mistakes when you’re in a hurry to avoid getting hit, and doesn’t give you much time when there’s a small window to act in. And for you left-handed gamers, I regret to say that it seems nobody was looking out for you when this game was made. Letting go of the D-pad to use the stylus often puts you at a disadvantage. Furthermore, some puzzles require you to go into slow-motion via the L button, split the screen with the stylus, and perform an uppercut. I’ll tell you right now, this is impossible with the stylus in your left hand. The inability to configure the button layout, allowing left-handers the luxury of something that’s actually comfortable, is a careless act.

If the touch screen wasn’t an issue, I’d say this was a fun and challenging experience. For every enemy that is a helpless pushover, countless more require ducking and dodging and relying on your special powers. There will be times when your life meter is dangerously low, even in the Kids difficulty mode, but health appears often enough that you will rarely see the dreaded Game Over screen. An auto-save feature ensures you won’t lose very much ground if you died before reaching an official save point, as well.

In the end, Double Trouble is a very short experience. On Kids mode, it may take you 5-6 hours to beat it. On Adults, maybe an extra hour or two. There’s nothing to unlock, though, and because much of the game is puzzle-based, there’s little reason to play it again “for fun.” The original Viewtiful Joe games were fast-paced and action-packed, and it was exhilarating to play through those levels multiple times. These levels are tamer, and fighting a couple bad guys between touch-based puzzles just doesn’t have the same awe as it does the first time around. You’ll play through it once but probably never again.

Final Comments

With the DS, developers face a big challenge in accessibility: making sure a game can be played both by left-handed and right-handed gamers. Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble forgoes the minority, however, to create one of the most frustrating and clunky games for left-handers to control. If this is you, don’t even bother. Right-handers, obviously, will get more out of this, and you can add an extra point onto the final score just for that. But the constant switching between stylus and traditional controls is still awkward no matter where you come from. The touch-screen puzzles may be clever, but they don’t bode well as part of an action game that’s primarily about mashing buttons and blazing through hordes of enemies.