Same old song

You know the sense of familarity you get when you play sequels to your favourite games? It seems to be a prevalent issue with most Capcom games but with Viewtiful Joe 2, it's almost a crime. Though Viewtiful Joe was a great game, i dislike the cop-out ending (don't worry, no spoilers here) and now when i play the sequel, i could almost get a sense that Capcom/Production Studio 4 intentionally held back during development of the original and some of it's ideas were carried fore to develop this sequel. Perhaps the original game's director Hideki Kamiya, who seems to have developed a reputation for spending too much time developing a game didn't have enough time to finish the first game and thus had to abruptly finish development on the first game. Anyhow, i won't hold it against the first Viewtiful Joe because it was and still is a revolutionary 2.5D action game, and had one of the coolest end game credits and cool bonus unlockables in the Playstation2 version, like a fully playable Dante with his own storyline and sidekick. Having experienced all that, it's kinda hard to stomach the fact that save for a new playable character in the form of Joe's girlfriend Sylvia, the sequel is devoid of any of it's predecessor's innovations. Then again, perhaps i'm been too harsh on the game, after all the decision to make Sylvia return and playable in the sequel almost seems like a F-you to the focus group of the first game which hated the character Slyvia. Hideki made it known that he was displeased with this practicular opinion of his game and character and decided to ignore it and keep the game just the way it was. Perhaps this sequel is a continuing evolution of that idea...

Anyway, without Hideki's involvement i was almost going to skip this forgotten sequel till i heard there was a Leon from Resident Evil 4 cameo in the game. I only hope my interest wouldn't waived till i get to that part...