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Review: Jojo’s Venture |
Okay, let me start this review by NOT saying how bizarre Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is. (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is the name of the Japanese version of the game, if you didn’t know). However, I will say that the game is one of the most rocking and revolutionary games that I’ve ever played. I never imagined a manga-based or anime-based videogame would turn out to be this good. Why? Let’s get down to business now…
First of all, the graphics. The games’ look is determined by one factor… the setting of the third chapter of the manga. So, there’s little point in saying how the character and background designs look weird or incomparable to the “norm” because it is all taken from the ideas of the artist, Hirohiko Araki. In other words, STOP SAYING THAT CAPCOM MADE THE CHARACTERS LOOK GAY AND WEIRD, THEY ARE NOT SAMMY. Actually here’s a fun fact kiddies; Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has a lot of references to Western rock music - from band or musician names, to album titles. So yes, the characters aren’t gay. But the makers possibly are.
Over all, the visuals of the game are pretty decent, with a great effort made to make the videogame look like the series. After all, Capcom couldn’t really do anything about the designs of the game. Well, duh. For an arcade game using the CPS-3 engine and still getting about 95% of everything, the PSX version is impressive. The backgrounds are wherever the story progresses - from a jail cell to a street of a town at nightfall, however most of them are dull. I mean, who the hell wants to stare some regular old back alley?
Like I said, this game is revolutionary, even the way the onscreen action affects the graphics, for example - some attacks that change the whole scenery into something to drool over - super moves like Chaka’s Dimension Cut (which cuts the background in half, ph33r) or Kakyoin’s Raging Demon-like move (which shows his Stand, Hierophant Green going inside the opponent’s body and beats the hell out of him inside) are only one of these several examples. One of the sweetest eye-candies in this game is the fact that by killing an opponent with a super move, you can see his how his face looks with all the bruises and blood flashes up on screen. This dramatization of the death of your opponent is very flamboyant.
Furthermore regarding the quality of the graphics, seeing that this game is a PSX port, the graphics aren’t a perfect arcade conversion and compromises have been made by removing the technicolor of most of the Stands and coloring them with just one color (unless the Stands were only consisting of one color in the first place). Star Platinum is completely colored in green, while Magician’s Red is completely colored in red, etc.
In addition to the Stands, the other, less noticeable things are removed - a few animations, like the introduction poses before a fight between Midler and Joseph, where Midler’s Stand, High Priestess comes out of Joseph’s metallic hand first. Second, there are originally three ways to show how your opponent croaks depending on which super move you use. A) Normal death scene. B) Normal death scene with face being cut in half. C) Normal death scene with holes in the face. In the PSX version, option C has been removed. Third, the blood spills from some moves have been removed, making some moves look less cooler (Chaka’s Dimension Cut comes to mind). Lastly, I think the number of animation frames in general has been reduced but I’m not gay enough to complain about that. :P
The sounds. The background music is not made to fit the stages, but the characters, so yes, there are specific character-themes. Actually, most of them suit the individuals that they refer to. For example, Kakyoin has a fast-moderate piano beat song for his constant pose changing. While on the other hand, Vanilla Iced has a heart-pumping song to match Mr. Unblockable-Ball-of-Death, which you must constantly avoid. The list goes on … But, the music isn’t exactly pleasing to hear and get into since, seeing that it goes with the weird characters, it sounds weird for the ears too, but who knows. Between the earlier stages the beat deliberately changes the mood into a “mysterious” feel, as the story develops. After a while, another beat comes in to settle the “shocker” feel, like when this or that guy croaks. Or just when something new happens, it’s just cool.
Gameplay. Now, like I said before, the game is unique and different with a whole new gameplay indeed. You have, of course, the joystick that everybody likes to play with and four buttons: light, medium and heavy attack and the Stand button. Well, the story is based on the entities known as “Stands”, the fights are also revolved on these Stands. Each character has his own Stand, each different from one another and each with his own abilities. Having a Stand is simply like having an enhancement and helper both at the same time. These Stands are spirit-like objects that can be activated and turned off anytime by using the Stand button (switches between normal and Stand mode respectively). However, there is a limit to whether Stands can be activated with a small bar called the Stand bar, which is below your life bar that will decrease for each attack that you block when your Stand is on. Eventually, when this bar runs out, you experience a “Stand Crush”, which causes you to be stunned and receive any attack from your opponent much like the Guard Crush from SFA3. Your Stand will automatically disappear, but you can instantly activate it again as soon as your Stand meter recharges. Turning off the Stand allows you to recharge the meter too and avoid possible Stand Crushes.
In the game, using Stands tend to make you more damaging and bad-ass, with most of the Special moves coming out differently and being generally more useful compared to using them without your Stand activated. Also, a universal combo of light attack to medium attack to heavy attack can now be initiated, which all of the Stands can use when activated (with the exception to one Stand, Allessy’s). Despite what I’ve heard about the universal combo being gay and breaking the game, it has its other purposes as players can continually use it as they learn the ropes of the game or to further develop the potential of the characters’ abilities. With this, the game can easily be learned and is more fun. Meanwhile, deactivating your Stand has its disadvantages too - as you receive block damage from ANY form of Stand attack whether it’d be a normal attack, but on the other hand you also have the advantage of being a smaller and peskier target and the ability to do the “Ditch.� The Ditch is a new rip-off.
I mean, ability for a Capcom game resembling the KoF series’ roll. By pressing all of the three attack buttons, a character in normal mode only can use the ability where his character moves forward in a blurry state.
While in this state, he cannot be hit but only thrown; even hitting him at the end of the Ditch is not possible (unlike the roll in KoF.) Luckily, the start-up time is slow so it isn’t really abusable. Another thing that’s also coincidently present in the game that’s also present in the KoF series is the capability to do a hop jump (i.e. tapping the direction for a jump then holding it down). Eat your heart out Universal Overhead.
And for the record, a player cannot be “cheesed” to death when he has nothing anymore in his life bar much like in the Rival Schools series so don’t worry about blocking Stand attacks in normal mode.
Another new ability in the game is the “Stand Tandem Attack”, by doing QCB and holding the Stand button (at the cost of one level of the super gauge, you can input a set of command moves that the Stand will do upon the release of the button and - while the Stand is attacking, your character is free to join the attack. However, Capcom didn’t do much balancing, as the damage being done by the Stand is completely worthless, making the ability pointless. END.
To summarize the combo system of the game, normal mode = Street Fighter series engine while Stand mode = DarkStalkers series engine. Both modes for each character have a whole new fighting style from one another that’s completely different, opening up strategic possibilities and that shit called “Mastery”. Also, what surprised me the most is the �Stand Combo Attacks.” These are personal combos that can only be done by that specific stand, with each combo having its own personal benefits. Take for instance, Jotaro�s s. A1 > s. A1 > s. A2 > down + A3 Stand combo, which does the normal chain combo but ending with a low sweep kick than the straight punch. Amazing.
The combination of the general abilities like Ditch, etc. and the ability to activate the Stands brings you a whole new strategic game to actually *think* a way to beat your opponent. There are a lot of options available within the game so the engine proves itself to be give a challenging complex fight between you and your opponent. This is actually what made the game very fun for me, since you have to counter what the opponent throws at you (like constant throwing, oh hahahahahah), by using what the system has to offer. At the same time, your opponent is doing the same thing to you.
The new characters that were added for the sequel of the arcade game have been added to this version. They are mostly the type of characters that don’t activate their Stands to fight and because of this, the whole cast of this version has a separation between the original type of Stand-using characters who can activate Stand mode and the new type of Stand users who always fight in normal mode.
The PSX version itself has several play modes - Super Story Mode, Arcade Mode, Versus Mode, Training Mode, Gallery Mode, a “coloring book” mode that saves the things you’ve already accomplished and Option Mode. Let’s fast forward to Super Story Mode. In this part, you play as Jotaro and company, given 39 stages each having its own task to do and in the end for each stage, you’re scored out of 40 on how well you did. Scoring has four factors (each out of 10): Life, Time, Exceptions and the Secret Factor. Life and time are obvious on how much life and time you have left respectively.
Exceptions are scored by doing something “fancy” in the stage, say if you killed this guy with a throw, didn’t used supers or got a high hitting 20+ in one single combo where each of these “small things” are scored for one point to a maximum of ten things you can do. You can’t possibly get all 10 of these things in one try, so score for replay factor. Lastly, the Secret Factor is a single condition that you must activate during the stage (For example, defeat this guy with this Super move, etc). These Secret Factors are based on what happened in the story itself.
Rather than just playing the game by fighting continually against pathetic AI (well, it’s true), you’re given numerous other types of challenges to test your skillz in the form of… ph33r, mini-games. And they’re all FUN! Furthermore, in this section, the whole story of the third chapter is revealed in the most detailed form EVER! Even Arcade Mode doesn’t have any good shit to compare to the shit of Super Story Mode… Err… Anyway, playing Super Story Mode also gives you the opportunity to unlock more goodies like more characters and the gallery, which has background images, music/sound clips, original artwork and etc. If you check the main menu, you will notice a long bar at the right. This bar records the total score of the stages you’ve played out of the 39 and by reaching a certain amount of points you unlock stuff one by one until the maximum of 1800. I hope you have a lot of free time on your hands.
Oh and there are no more middle story sequences in Arcade mode (which were all present in the arcade), so uh… crap. But then again, who wants to see the good guys die one by one EXACTLY the same way with only a different bad guy? *gasp* a spoiler…
Another interesting section is that coloring book I was talking about. Here, you can review all of the endings you’ve finished and replay the mini-games you’ve accomplished in the Super Story mode. In addition to the mini-games, a full Tarot card reading is available for fun as well as to see the stats of the Stands.
The PSX version of the game is technically Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure 1.5 with a few elements new to the game that come from the sequel (the new characters) but with a few things missing that are present in the sequel (no new moves yet, crazier combo engine to do 99 hit combos ^_^). Jojo’s Venture is one of the most interesting, complex and fun games I’ve EVAR played. Capcom’s beautiful design of the game brings fans of the series to feel the splendor of the fighting industry. Likewise, fighting game fanatics will want to know more about the manga. Now, I’d like to leave you with two links:
1) A Jojo FAQ that fans of the game or series would like to browse and enjoy.
2) My very outdated Jotaro FAQ. Read at your own risk.
