Skate or die! (Jet Set Radio (DC))

Member Name: kero-chan

Product:	Jet Set Radio (DC)
Date:	26/11/00 (232 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great music and graphics, very stylish.

Disadvantages: A little short

Produced by Sega development team Smilebit, Jet Set Radio is the unique product of a team fed up with the archetypical anime styling of Japanese video games. As such, they set out to produce something both visually and stylistically unusual. And they succeeded.

The streets of Tokyo-to are inhabited by skaters known as ‘Rudies’, who spray their personal graffiti (known as ‘Tags’) on suitable locations. Tokyo-to is inhabited by four groups of Rudies –the GG’s of Shibuya-cho (that’s you), the Noise-Tanks of Benten-cho, Poison-jam of Kagane-cho, and the Love-shockers of, err, seemingly nowhere. As the game starts the Police are enforcing a new zero-tolerance policy in regards to skate gangs, and the Love-Shockers are making moves on Shibuya-cho bus station by spraying their tags all other the place. Listening to the sounds of pirate radio station Jet Set Radio (not to mention the police frequency), the GG’s have to move in to protect their turf.

Jet Set Radio is an odd kettle of fish. To a certain degree, it looks like Tony Hawk’s, but to be quite honest it is more like a platform game to a certain degree. The basic idea is that you skate around an area of the city collecting spray paint cans that are used to cover up tag spots. Once you have collected some paint, you need to find a tag spot and paint it up. Either red or yellow arrows denote tag spots – Red arrows are locations featuring a rival gangs tag and have to be covered up, whilst yellow arrows are bonus tag spots that needn’t be covered. A stage is completed once all the red tag spots are covered.

Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. The aforementioned police are on your tails. To begin with, it’s just normal policemen with batons, accompanied by Officer Onishima (who seems to have a grudge against kids). Their techniques soon become rather more extreme, with riot police and motorcycles coming very q
uickly into play. Things get even more extreme just as quickly, with something new opposing you on each stage. I’m not going to spoil them though; the surprise is half the fun!

As well as this, each of the different gangs has what would be called a ‘boss stage’. In these stages, you are put up against three members of a rival Rudie gang. The idea is that you have to collect paint and ‘spray’ the back of the gang members. This is certainly easier said than done. The members will idle until you approach them and then go through one of a number of different skate route – sometimes enormously complex. This basically means you have to skate REALLY fast and catch up with them during a fairly still period (although they will still be moving) and get off as many sprays as possible whilst you’re close. Making things more difficult is the act that each of the three members skate at different skill levels – the easiest is simple to catch, the hardest isn’t!

For each mission you have a choice of several different members of the GG’s. You start the game with just one, Beat, who is your basic Mr. Average. The game starts of with you being given a challenge by Gum. Gum will proceed to perform a set of tricks that you then must perform yourself. Once you manage to perform all three sets of tricks she puts you through, she’ll join your gang and will be playable. After some missions in the game, you will find a challenger from that area approaching you wanting to join the gang. Completing their individual challenges will add them to your teams’ line-up. These missions are of two types, either Gum-style challenges or a race, in which you have to beat the opposing Rudie across town to a tag point. The race missions have a habit of being fairly challenging, whilst those objective presented in the challenges tend to introduce new trick styles and as such are good introductions to play.

Whe
n you start to build up your gang, you’ll note that each member had three different stat’s – Power, Graffiti and Technique. The power rating denotes how much damage a Rudie can take, Graffiti denotes how many spray cans you can carry, whilst technique shows how good their skating technique is – basically how fast you go, how far you can jump and how far you can fall without taking damage. Different missions tend to require a different skill set. Some (boss encounters particularly) require good technique, whilst on some others you will definitely need a lot of power.

Movement in the game is fairly simple. You move in the direction you point in. The ‘r’ trigger causes you to dash (which also makes you invincible to bullets), the ‘l’ trigger will either put you in paint mode or center the camera. The only other button is a ‘jump’ button. Perhaps the most important feature of movement is Grinding. Grinding is when you slide across a small, thin area like the top of a railing. You can grind across a huge number of objects, like power cables or ledges. Grinding also allows you to build up speed and perform bigger jumps. It becomes important because wearing skate means going up stairs and the like is slow. By grinding up railing you can not only move faster but also get to other, inaccessible areas.

After each stage, the game has narration from Jet Set Radios host Professor K, a deadlocked hip-hop dance playing DJ. He throws a few comic asides and basically tells the story in a very cool and amusing style. It’s genuinely entertaining, and adds a lot to the game. Professor K himself is such a cool character.

The level design is excellent. Each stage is superb, looking highly distinctive and full of detail. The number of items you can grind across is immense, and is such great fun. New to the English language versions are two new stages set in the US. The first of these is quite poss
ibly the finest designed in the game, featuring some fantastic stunt and grind areas.

The visual aspect of the game really is remarkable. The games characters are all ‘cel-shaded’. By this, I mean that the rather than the normally gradual shading used in most games each colour on a character is shaded in just two or three colours producing a cartoon look. Add to this the fact that the outline of the character is highlighted as black lines of varying sizes, again causing it to look like a hand drawn cartoon. The surroundings you inhabit are full of flat-coloured textures and little shading, enforcing the whole feel. It’s no surprise that following the games unveiling a number of other cel-shaded games were rushed through production, but none have the consistency (nor the excellence) of this games art design.

The actual character design is superb. Each character is hugely distinctive, from the Goth chick Cube to the huge, ghetto blaster carrying Combo. The texturing on the characters is basic, but that is the point. It all enforces the cartoon look. The police and their vehicles are of an equal design quality, in particular Officer Onishima.

The music in this game is varied, and in general superb. Being Japanese, the game is full of Japanese dance music and a little guitar-pop. The quality of these pieces is great, although you’ll either love them or find yourself annoyed the hell out of them. New for the English version are a few additional music tracks from the likes of Rob Zombie and Jurassic 5. These are only featured in those new stages set in the US, and blend in with varying success.

There are a number of complaints with this game. Firstly, whoever thought of making spray and camera centering the same button should be shot. It can be really annoying when you waste your paint spraying a yellow area when you try to center the camera. Considering there are three buttons not used for anything, it is really
silly.

Another complaint is that the difficulty curve is a little sharp. It isn’t that the earlier levels are, comparatively, anywhere near as difficult as the later ones. It’s more that they throw too much at you whilst you are still trying to learn the game and getting used to the controls. Learning the control system is quite time consuming, and whilst you do get the hang of it eventually it’s annoying that there isn’t a few quiet stages early on.

The final complaint is that the game is perhaps too short. A couple of days play can see you to the ending credits. This is somewhat off balanced by the points system (keep playing to get better scores!) and the fact that you can collect extra graffiti scattered across the stages. These are hidden in simple and not-so-simple places. Finding all 100+ of them is a challenge.

In all, this is really a great game. It really is a refreshing experience, and I highly recommend it.

Summary: