Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble tries to bring Capcom's popular and unique franchise into the realm of mascot focused brawling, but does so with only marginal success. Despite a heaping helping of characters from previous Viewtiful Joe games and a unique presentation, Red Hot Rumble just doesn't have the magic that Super Smash Brothers Melee still offers on the GameCube -- even four years after its release.

The story in Red Hot Rumble sees Captain Blue retire from being a superhero, instead donning the role of a director. On this new path as a film maker, Blue is in search of the perfect person to play the lead role in his first film, but is struggling to find him or her. Then an idea blossoms - what if he simply invites the greatest heroes and have them slug it out for the role? Blue and his assistant Sprocket seize on that idea and decide to hold a "hands-on" audition comprised of a series of brawls, with the toughest and most unique talent being rewarded with the lead role in his film.

Red Hot Rumble offers 16 playable characters to choose from, with many unlockable after completing challenges in the game. You'll see characters fro all the Viewtiful Joe games including Joe, Sylvia, Hulk Davidson, Gran Bruce, and new characters including Android Rachel and Blue's assistant Sprocket. After choosing your character, you'll find yourself fighting it out in various movie style areas against one or more familiar opponents like the Wild West or the lost city of Atlantis.

Battles always have an objective that you have to complete like destroying enemies, be the last one left, defeat some sort of boss character, collecting gems, and more. If you pull each challenge off you'll collect coins, which serve as a gauge of how well you are performing in the audition. Obviously you collect coins by completing objectives, but there are other ways to collect coins because they are just about everywhere in the game. You can even engage in VFX battles that allow you to beat your opponents and steal their coins.

Players will spend most of their time fighting, jumping, double jumping and using VFX powers to beat the snot out of opponents. Players can jump and double jump by using the A button, a regular attack with B and or Y, a special attack with X and their VFX powers using the right L or R buttons. There are also a few other moves available like the ability to slide, and modified attacks using the control stick in tandem with an attack. To use your VFX powers, you'll have to collect orbs which appear when you defeat enemies or at random times. There are variety of these orbs that offers such powers as invincibility, slow motion, fast motion, zoom and sound effects.

One of the biggest problems with Red Hot Rumble is that all of these battles are inundated with too much action on the screen. Everything is so busy and so fast paced that you often lose track of your character. Combine the backgrounds with a bunch of other characters and their attacks in one place and the game begins to get a little too frantic and too much to take in at times. It's a real shame because the style of the art in the game is pretty decent, and the overall presentation is fun and unique. But the action can tend to get a little too frenetic and a little too crazy to make heads or tails of just what the heck it is your doing in the game..

Red Hot Rumble supports up to four players, with many of the multiplayer battles being the same as the single-player battles. You can replay all of the single player battles from story mode in battle mode. There are a total of 25 stages in all, all of which can be played again with friends in multiplayer. Since a lot of the characters look the same, playing it in multiplayer makes the aforementioned business of each challenge even worse because most of the characters look the same. At times this makes multiplayer a mixed up mess for all involved because you can't tell who's who and where the heck you are on the screen..

In the end, Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble retains the style of Capcom's Viewtiful Joe series perfectly, but doesn't back it up with a very deep action experience. While some Viewtiful Joe fans will get a kick out all the characters and the overall presentation, most gamers will fee dazed and confused after playing this game. Give it a rental if you're not one of those ardent and faithful VJ fans.