For those who don't know Joe, he's an action movie icon. But the new Captain Blue movie doesn't have a leading man yet because Captain Blue himself has retired and decided to direct. His idea of casting is to let the characters duke it out for the job: player vs. player. The new mode mixes the established Joe gameplay with what you'd find in a group fighting game like Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. So the moves you once used to dispatch scores of mindless enemies can now be turned on other players.

You'll be judged in a few ways. Some scenes have objectives, like beating up on a certain number of enemies or hitting switches. But you can also best your opponents by collecting more coins, which will be all over the place.

It doesn't take long to notice the big difference between the effectiveness of the characters. Some are slow and cumbersome while other can fly around the screen at will and toss out devastating attacks. The most obvious path to success for players using lousy characters is to collect coins instead of getting mauled, but because some battles have other victory conditions, you'll have no choice but to do your best.

On the screen at the same time are, potentially, four characters, coins and orbs (which appear when you beat people up). You have to collect orbs to use VFX powers, which include invincibility, mach speed (which also allows flight and sets you on fire), sound effects (which are attacks) and zoom (which makes you bigger). Obviously, those powers make you powerful. But with four players, and all those visual effects, it also makes the screen nearly incomprehensible. And there are animated backgrounds and interactive parts to those backgrounds. Well, those can explode, adding more effects to the jumble of animations that occur in so many layers – at the same time – that keeping track of your character is a headache.

It doesn't help that a lot of the characters look alike – lots of helmets and spandex. Amid the chaos, they all blend together. Sometimes the best way to tell which is which is to look for the player frantically smashing buttons because they can do as well as anyone who's playing carefully. This is even more evident when you get into a VFX battle, which starts when you get a super orb. These are minigames that consist of timing exercises and other very simple objectives like filling up a meter. These mini battles can turn the tide of the game, so you have to take them seriously.

You can play the game through the story by yourself, too, and that makes the action a lot easier to figure it out. So if you're a fan of the earlier games, this version has more of what you liked. And playing against one other player isn't as messy as playing against four. But ultimately, the entire game can be played almost as well with frantic button presses as it can with careful use of the available moves and powerups. And even without a four player assault on the eyes, the action has moved from the colorful but manageable chaos of the early games to an over-saturated assault.