Saturday, January 7, 2012

Video Game Review: Joe Danger Special Edition (XBLA)

Is Joe Danger: Special Edition worth your recently gifted Microsoft points? Read our full review to find out.


Joe Danger: Special Edition is one of those games that will plaster a big stupid grin on your face and leave it there through most of the game. It's easy to pick-up and a blast to play, partly because you've been preparing for it since you were five. For anyone who has ever turned a book into a ramp for your hot wheels or set those tracks up in a loop that ends up sending your cars soaring; this game is for you. Quite simply put the game is fun, challenging and everything a gamer looks for in a purchase.

Joe is an aging stuntman with determination, guts and his trusty motorbike. As the titular Joe Danger, you'll fly off ramps and jump over shark tanks to reach the finish line of each track. In between you'll do a variety of tricks to boost  your combo meter and to sky rocket your score; which will net you a gold medal and put your name on the leaderboards. In these regards it's not much different then Trials or the old Tony Hawk games. In another respect though it's akin to a Mario game.
As a child, Joe only played with two toys...Fire and Danger.
In each level there are a number of different objectives. There are stars to collect, gold coins to snag on a timer, and special hidden stars to find. As you continue the challenge goes up to nab these collectibles much in the same way as a platformer. In addition to collectibles, you can also earn points and rewards for finishing a course as fast as possible, or for running the whole track without ever letting your combo fail. Scattered throughout some levels are the letters that make up the word Danger. Endeavoring to collect these will lead to unlocking avatar awards and other goodies.

The special edition of Joe Danger has also added Pro Medals to some tracks.  By completing every single bonus objective in one go, you'll unlock a pro medal; which unlocks new tracks, avatar awards, wallpapers and characters to play. As you complete the optional tasks in each level you'll earn overall stars that can be traded in to progress in the campaign or unlock new challenges in the Lab.

The Lab is another new edition of this updated version of the game which shows you the stuntman's origins. This is the place that the developers used to test out tracks and ideas before going into the final game. Now it stands as a challenge area that will test your skills to the max while also teaching you to master certain moves that will help you throughout your experience. The earlier tracks are fairly simple but by the end the difficulty is greatly ratcheted up. You'll use every technique and skill you've learned along the way to truly master the Lab and fail many times along the way. This isn't really that big of a punishment because of the way Joe Danger approaches failure.
The Lab: Where greatness is created...or destroyed.
In a lot of games failing would send you to a loading screen as you cursed the cheapness of the game, especially after seeing the failure for almost an hour straight. Not Joe Danger. Failure was, for me, never frustrating in the game. First off the graphical charm of the game and your erstwhile stuntman makes falling into a shark tank or smashing into a hurdle something that never failed to draw a smile from me. Sometimes it was an outright laugh as I watched Joe crash and ragdoll on the environments. The greatest thing though is the game drops you, right away, back to the last checkpoint you passed; no loading, no waiting. You can instantly try again and due to the fact that almost all failures encountered were my fault and not the cheapness of the game; I was always ready to try again. Games like Trials left me frustrated with continued failures but I was always ready for another go behind the handlebars of Joe's motorbike.

Really the game could have stopped with the campaign and the Lab and with trying to complete all the objectives you would still be playing for dozens of hours. However. Hello Games wasn't satisfied with just those wonderful modes so they also added split screen competitive racing as well as the Sandbox; an area where you can build and upload your own tracks. I was pleased with the simplicity of learning to build my own tracks and a fun tutorial is even hidden in the main campaign. Usually in games with level creators I never use them, but this one had a minor learning curve. I made a track and shared it with my friends that was both challenging and fun, without reading 12 pages worth of text to do it.
The creator is user friendly and fun
While building the track you can not only add in the standard ramps, nail strips and hurdles, but also collectible items. Making sure my collectibles were obtainable while testing the balance of the game made me think like a developer and was a very cool experience. Still you can be as shallow as you want and even the most casual of players can make a track. Your editor is added right there in the test mode and you can switch from editor to playing your level with the touch of a button. It makes the whole thing remarkably user-friendly.
Score raising vehicular stunt mayham AND Mario style collecting? I didn't even know I wanted that!!
Joe Danger is one of those rare titles that is just flat-out fun to play. The game is easy to pick up and play yet has plenty of challenges for gamers willing to devote more time. Joe Danger is jam-packed with content featuring, an editor, a multiplayer mode, a campaign, and a challenge mode that will test every ability that you learn. All of the content in the game is high quality and every bit as fun to play as it is to build. Even if you've previously played before on the PlayStation, this version is worth re-buying for the additions that it provides. In the end, Joe Danger: Special Edition finally comes to the Xbox 360 and easily ranks among the elite top-tier titles on Xbox Live.

Score: 8.5 out of 10

A copy of this game was provided to Unexpected Parcel by the publisher for review purposes.

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