Review: Jet Set Radio HD

Howdy folks!

Since it's announcement I have been thoroughly excited for the return to a favoured childhood game of mine. Being a fan of the series since I first owned an Xbox, I immediately jumped into the story and started on with the tutorial.
But this is where the issues begin.
While the game itself is just a spit-shine on the old classic title, only the bare controls seems to have been updated. While the tutorial gives you the gist of movement and jumping, what it lacks is the wholeness of the controls. The AI's in game move with speed and precision, with the use of some traits that you can unlock later in game. However the simple tasks they wish you to perform are much harder and challenging without these traits, the odd and clunky camera angles not helping at all.

This aside, the game moves in quickly afterwards and the story progresses quite fast. For folks who never had a chance to play the original game before its sequel JSR Future, the game consists not of free roam and travelling but of level choosing and picking which areas to attack and control first. As said, the controls are definitely much harder when first starting and having a time limit makes the game that much more of a challenge. Voice acting is the same as its always been; the only fully talking character is DJ Professor K (Voice by DJ Professor K. No I'm not kidding!) and every other character has what I would call either a grunt or a catch frase; such as "Hey" "Oh-ho yeah!" or "Hi". Graphics are as simplistic as ever but still bring that great feel of graffiti coming to life, near literally. The soundtrack is of utter greatness as always, with the few audio sounds of screaming people dodging the skaters and cars rolling by, it's quite possible to get lost easily in the game's twisting and ever developing storyline.

As a gamer for nearly sixteen years, I've never enjoyed another game near as much as the two Jet Set Radio games. While repeatingly playing JSR Future has slightly spoiled me to the return of the clunky gameplay styles of this classic game, it has barely dampened my affection to the fun of kicking the crap out of Captain Onishima and the Rokaku Police!

Out of 10, I gave Jet Set Radio an 8/10

Good Points
+ Soundtrack is fun and addictave to listen to
+ Storyline quite creative
+ Graphics are original; imperfection looks like perfection

Bad Points
- Controls are as cruddy as ever
- Timing speeds the game too fast
- Newcomers will not pass with flying colours

Jet Set Radio is out now for 800 MSP ($10)