Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai (3DS)

Back when The Game Hoard was just beginning, Nintendo announced the Wii Shop Channel was going to close, so I quickly set about playing digital only Wii games before they were gone. In this unofficial “Farewell to WiiWare” series I played an unassuming game called Jett Rocket that was decent albeit not too noteworthy in its simplicity. It did receive a sequel though, Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai coming out for the 3DS and not really landing on my radar until history repeated itself. Nintendo announced the impending closure of the 3DS eShop and with it the disappearance of many exclusive games, and so once again I find myself playing a Jett Rocket game to try and experience it before the legal means to acquire it disappears.

 

During the final battle of the original Jett Rocket, the robotic leader of the Power Plant Posse, Kaiser Taikai, is soundly trounced by the planetary inspector Jett Rocket. Sent to tumble through space, Taikai begins to seethe with nothing but his anger for company and soon finds the power to fly back to try and exact his revenge. Taikai manages to capture the group of identical robots that assist Jett Rocket in surveying new planets and scatters them about the world with a few mechanical generals and their robotic underlings to guard these captives. Jett Rocket quickly takes off to face them, but rather than being a 3D collectathon platformer like its predecessor, Jet Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai takes a bit more ambitious approach to its level design.

In a mostly alternating pattern, each level of Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai will either be a 2D or 3D stage. Both of them are action platformers in their approach, Jett needing to maneuver around hazards and defeat robotic enemies in both, but the two stage types have different gameplay tones. While both stage types only require you to reach the end for completion, the 2D side-scrolling levels tend to emphasize the difficulty of navigating around dangers in your path and embracing temporary power-ups while the 3D stages trend towards exploring more open spaces to find or make your own way forward. The side-scrolling levels end up the more entertaining of the bunch because they’re more willing to push against the player and ask for spot-on movement, moments like needing to time movement tightly through the constant barrages of energy blasts from turrets or trying to avoid the eye of enemies while swimming underwater contrasting with the foes you face in the 3D stages.

 

Many of the robot types in Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai are committed to constant movement and attack loops that make them work well in the limited space of 2D stages but can be easily jumped around in a 3D level. There are some foes that will pursue Jett or only fire their shot when they see him, but even then, the wider movement area in a 3D level means you can often avoid the danger easily enough. A few unbeatable foes like flamethrower turrets exist to ensure some dangers are present enough that both levels can offer potent hazards to avoid, but the 3D levels are certainly more relaxed and often focused more on properly jumping to new areas rather than risking your life. Jett’s abilities are partially responsible for declawing the dangers in 3D spaces, his forward roll that serves as an attack on ground also granting him a second jump in the air. Wall jumps also open up more vertical reach and with certain limited use abilities like jetpacks and moving platforms you can place where you please you start to get many more ways to navigate a level that aren’t so easily challenged when they aren’t locked by the limits of 2D movement. However, the somewhat relaxed design of 3D levels also makes looking around for collectables richer than simply investigating both forks in a road that a 2D stage features, the player needing to better notice incongruities in design to find the souvenir photos, solar cells, and bonus stages.

 

This does lead to an interesting case where one level type focuses more on challenge and the other on exploration and neither truly sacrifices the other in its totality. 3D levels still have moments that require smart platforming, especially when it starts adding in platforms that change state whenever you use your double jump. 2D levels can throw in better hidden secret areas as well and holding onto a limited use power like the jetpack can help you overcome the stricter dangers of their designs. There is a bit of a finite amount of variability within the stage designs for both types though, and while you will head to new area types the robot enemies and hazards become quickly familiar without the stage design altering the challenge enough to keep things constantly fresh. The limitations placed on power-ups might actually be partially responsible for this. A lot of the levels are made to focus on simple jumps to get around dangers and repeat appearances by old enemies but the jetpack, diving helmet, and platform creator each have a set amount of uses before they disappear. When you can use them the game can start placing designs that ask for more careful use of your movement tools to overcome what’s ahead with item refills at the start of that segment in case you misuse the ability, but after its area is done you’re back to basic skills being used to overcome basic obstacles again until the level’s end.

Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai does add in some pace changers to the end of its worlds though. Boss battles wisely stick to the 2D form of play where their abundant attacks can be more difficult to dodge and the robotic boss’ weak points are harder to hit for the limited movement space, and with many of the regular levels starting to blend together, having a capable boss cap off the small worlds of the game injects a little life into the experience. Following these there is often a new type of play introduced to explain how Jett traveled to a new location, minigames that take the form of skydiving or jet skiing not too difficult but involved enough to pique the player’s interest during their short duration. These are mostly tied to collecting the solar cells that make up the game’s most abundant collectibles, solar cells able to be spent in minigames found in the level select area. Some of these are straight up gambling for extra lives or health, slot machines and pachinko drops cheap enough to play for resources that will at least see some use in the levels. Some like a game where you kick a robot to try and hit objects in the air require more thought to grab your rewards and are more skill focused, but even at its hardest Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai isn’t so difficult you’ll need to play these so much as these can provide a few resources that help you avoid potentially restarting a stage. The minigames aren’t entertaining enough to really play them for their own sake though, again a stain of simplicity keeping it hard to invest yourself in the game’s content.

 

While every normal level of Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai concludes with rescuing one of Jett’s robot friends, the game actually offers up a Mirror Mode once you beat it where this is made a bit more difficult. Not only does Mirror Mode reverse the stage so you start at its end and need to make your way back to start, but the only way to free the robot and beat the level now is to find the five hidden golden solar cells in each stage. Special signs placed about will show you their locations but you’ll often need to use some power-up or smart jumping in less than typical ways to grab them, but a fair few of them are just really high up and the exploration is less about finding interesting hiding places and more about trying to get high up enough the camera will show you that a golden cell was floating just out of sight. This doesn’t quite rectify the simplicity of the core platforming play really, but it does give this extra mode a new identity so that the game’s initial offering of 15 regular levels plus bosses and bonuses doesn’t seem so slight.

THE VERDICT: Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai is broad in the types of play it features but too simple in how it embraces them. Jett’s limited abilities and small set of opposing enemies and hazards are tested to a decent degree but fail to stand out since the play mostly remains basic and focused on jumping about. Having 2D levels focus more on challenge and 3D on exploration do stave off some of the staleness that begins setting in and the boss battles and minigames inject a little more freshness as well, but gameplay ideas are not taken very far and ones with potential like the power-ups only get small and quick devoted sections rather than really influencing the layout of levels that as a result end up blending together.

 

And so, I give Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai for Nintendo 3DS…

An OKAY rating. By constantly shifting up its gameplay type, Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai manages to avoid the boredom of constant repetition, but the inherent stage design concepts at play do mean even swapping between side-scrolling and more open stages can’t completely obfuscate how few ideas are in play. Breaking up the play with new things like legitimately good bosses and the shallow but still novel travel minigames helps to split things up at least and your movement options are a good set for the moments when the game is willing to be more difficult or asks the player to be smarter in how they leap from platform to platform. The 3D levels certainly needed either more danger or more interesting terrain to challenge their movement though and the 2D levels don’t really shift up the gameplay enough even when they try to introduce something new like swimming. Jet Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai dabbles in a lot of ideas but doesn’t have a core appeal to latch onto and develop, and while the shifting around is what ends up being its identity, the play could have benefited from fleshing out each idea to provide more than just baseline novelty. However, besides enemies being a little easy to take out in 3D levels, there’s not too much that went wrong in designing Jett Rocket’s second adventure, the gambling games perhaps the weakest but they’re rather bland but practically negligible since you don’t really need to interact with them to complete the game.

 

Much like the first Jett Rocket wasn’t quite the WiiWare hidden gem people talked it up to be, Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai isn’t a particularly interesting 3DS digital-only title. It does provide small bits of decently designed levels in a few different formats but lacks any strong hook and doesn’t give enough attention to its basics to test them in captivating ways. It has a generically enjoyable core that sometimes lands a hit with enemy types or power-ups and those offset the more mundane moments of play, but Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai is simply a sampling of game ideas that doesn’t commit to any one strongly enough to elevate the experience.