Remember when Sega had their “Make War Not Love” promotional giveaway? I’m only just now getting to those games. That’s how far back my backlog goes.

• Jet Set Radio
  

  6 hours playtime

  9 of 30 achievements

Anyway, this is a variation on the 3D collectathon platformer. Rather than going to specific locations on the map to collect the objects, you need to collect spray cans, then go to specific locations on the map to use them to paint your graffiti. If more than one spray can needs to be used, painting is done via a series of quick time events that involve rotating the control stick (because nobody learned anything from Mario Party 1). Although the game itself is well made, I’m not too fond of this alteration to the formula since you can only hold a certain amount of paint cans at a time (it depends on the character you choose to play as), and it can be rather annoying if you run out of paint and have to backtrack for more, especially if you just made it to a hard-to-reach area. Speaking of holding paint, when you’re on the character select screen, it will show you stats of the characters. Normally, the larger the bar, the higher the stat, but for the amount of paint they carry, this is the opposite; the higher the bar, the less paint they can carry.

During the levels, you’ll have to avoid the police, and it gets over-the-top rather quickly. It’s quite amusing seeing the authorities send tanks and airstrikes just to take care of a few juvenile delinquents. Levels are usually divided into three phases: the beginning, when there are no enemies, the 1/3rd mark, where the initial enemies are called in, and the final third, where the more powerful enemies come in. This adds a bit of strategy to the game since you’d want to prioritize the graffiti that takes the longest time to paint first since that would give the enemies less time to catch up to you. If you are in the middle of a quick time event when the enemies get near you, the camera will cut to them before panning back to you, which is a neat touch.

The game also has boss battles, and they’re probably the worst part of the game. Basically, there are three members of a rival gang skating around, and you have to spray paint on each gang member’s back ten times. If you’re quick/lucky, you can get most or all ten hits at once, but the area you have to be in order to spray them is rather finicky and won’t activate at times it will seem like you should be able to get one. Plus, if you do spray a member’s back ten times, they stay on the field, right where you beat them, and they can still hurt you and slow you down if you collide with them while trying to chase the remaining members, which is rather annoying.

A few misc. things about the game: most stages are unique to their mission, as areas usually only get reused for extra missions, like when you have to undergo a race or platforming challenge to unlock a new playable character. The platforming challenges are probably the hardest levels in the game since any jump that isn’t straight forward requires you to fight the game’s momentum, which takes a bit of getting used to (you can barely turn to the side while jumping, and you can’t increase or decrease forward momentum at all while jumping). Normally, unlocking characters involves them challenging you to said challenges, but at one point in the game, new characters show up asking to be in your gang, and you play as them while the characters you’d normally play as are the challengers. At first, I thought that was a unique way to show your gang becoming more popular as time goes on without taking away the extra challenges needed to unlock new characters, but it turns out that was a one-time-only event required for story progression, and the rest of the characters go back to challenging you. Oh well.

Something I found amusing about the game is that you can make a custom image appear when the characters spray graffiti in the game. It’s a neat touch, though I wish the interface was updated more for the PC port, maybe even give the option to import images.

A few more things I should note: the different stages don’t have a unique song to them. They might start off playing a certain track, but once that track is over, it switches to another song. Even the end credits just cycle through the different stage themes. The camera also has a tendency to hover over the player character if you’re against a wall and try to face the camera away from the wall, but that’s the only camera issue I had.

Overall, this game has issues, but if you’re a fan of 3D platformers and you have a few bucks to spare, I say check it out. Now if only Jet Set Radio Future would get a PC port…

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