A lot of games with heavy comic inspired style turn out to be very interesting, Comix Zone for the Sega Genesis and the Max Payne cut-scenes are good examples of this. Viewtiful Joe looks like it will not be an exception. Not only does this game simply breathe comic's style, it's also great fun to play. I had the chance to play as Joe for a few levels on the Nintendo USA demo-disc, here are my impressions.

Viewtiful Joe is a 2D platform game mixed with essence of a beat 'em up. Think of Mario beating up Goomba's with great combos and lots of style. You start the game as Joe, and since Joe is not Viewtiful yet, he just has a few simple moves. The analogue stick moves Joe around, the A button makes him jump, and he kicks and punches with the X and Y buttons. Combos are really easy to pull of, just throw in a few punches and kicks and Joe strings it all together, even when you're in mid-air! Right at the start you learn how to dodge moves. A little skull shows where enemies are going to hit, so Joe can jump over or duck under their attacks. If you successfully dodge an enemy, he gets stunned, giving you time to start a combo. The dodging makes the game fun to play from the start; you never feel you're just playing a dumb button masher.

After a bit of running Joe meets his mentor, who gives him his Viewtiful abilities after a short fight. This is where the game really kicks in. With L you can slow down time to make even better combos, dodge bullets Matrix-style or just make the screen look rather cool. The R button speeds up time and will make you dish out even more damage in your combos. These time-altering techniques drain Joe's Special Effects meter, turning him into regular Joe when emptied. The meter fills up again quickly, so you can use all of Joe's cool moves without having to worry about them running out.

All this gameplay fun is brought to your TV in the most stylized comic graphics I've ever seen. Everything is cell-shaded and surrounded by black lines, making screenshots look like they're pictures in a comic book rather than gameplay footage. The camerawork is done very well; you often walk around corners, giving the 2D gameplay a 3D feel to it. The vertical camera motion is also a nice touch, instead of panning up; the camera tilts up when you jump. The animations add even more to the stylized feel, Joe's moves look like they come right out of a Japanese cartoon. The slowing down and speeding up time moves are even more stylized, complete with blurry background and zoomed-in perspective. All in all Joe is not only great fun to play but also great fun to look at. Not because of impressive realistic features but because of it's richly detailed style.

Viewtiful Joe's sounds could come right out of a kid's cartoon, which in this case is a good thing. Joe has lots of cheesy remarks and a witty voice to back them up. When he dodges an enemy move for example, he yells “slooow!” before beating the living daylights out of him. The music and the sound effects are nice but not all that memorable, although the 'wooshy' effects for slowing and speeding up time deserve a special mention.

The controls, graphics and sounds all add to a really solid gameplay. It's a lot of fun to dodge an enemy, go into slow motion (cool graphic and sound effects) and hit him into a bunch of other bad guys coming up behind him. The pace of the game is very high; in the few short demo levels I already encountered multiple (mini) bosses. This makes the game intense and speedy to play, but it can also make the game too short. I hope this will not be a problem in the final version of Viewtiful Joe; it would be a shame if all the fun would be over too soon. The bosses you meet in the demo levels are quite bizarre to say the least. One of them is a black helicopter shooting machine guns at you, not quite a boss you'd expect in a platform game!

I was really looking forward to playing Viewtiful Joe before, but after the demo levels I'm even more anxious to play the rest. Having played only a short preview of the game, all I can do now is assure you that it doesn't just look cool, it plays cool too. All we can do now is wait and of course hope that Nintendo will bring this demo-disc to Europe too!