POSTED 7/5/14


JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE ALL-STAR BATTLE

Bandai Namco
PS3

JoJo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn’t last...

Yeah, yeah (yeah), any excuse to quote The Beatles. But even when they were at their trippiest we reckon John, Paul, George and Ringo would’ve made seriously smooshy “WTF?!” faces upon encountering JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle. Especially as the PS3 hadn’t been invented yet.

If you too are wondering “WTF?!”, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a Japanese manga series that started out back in the 1980s. So if you haven’t heard of it by now, you’re likely not into all this manga stuff. You’ll still likely get some fun from this game, but not as much as if you’ve any whiff of just what the fuck is going on.

As the savvy may have surmised by now, this is a beat-‘em up, in the same general ballpark as your Street Fighters, BlazBlues and King of Fighterseseseses. You’ve six buttons that do stuff – light, medium and heavy attacks, a dodge that skips you in or out of the screen, a nyahh-nyahh taunt and one for style. While you can mash away for a while and feel progressive, like all good fighters there’s a world of intricacy rewarding those who master the myriad combos requiring mad finger-frolic skills. Octodad would rock at this.

Story, campaign, arcade and versus modes are the main attractions, some offering online biff, but allowing CPU competitors if you don’t fancy spamification by those who’ve mastered a single character’s near-unbeatable move. Completing almost anything unlocks stuff, from playable characters to tunes and artwork.

JoJo’s really is bonkers. We messed up attacks just from marvelling at the insanity unfolding onscreen, and wondering what REO Speedwagon have to do with anything. There’s no softcock English voice track, it’s the original Japanese in all its glorious, well, Japanesiness.

JoJo fans, you can’t fight this feeling anymore...

CLICK THIS!



CLICK THIS!