Moving On

Hey everyone,

I've decided to take on a new series for review, though I'm changing up the format and website.  I'll occasionally still post Mega Man stuff, but now I'll be doing so from my tumblr account.  If you enjoyed any of my previous work, and you'd like to see my thoughts on different games and series, check it out at http://cycomatix.tumblr.com/

Mega Man's 25th Anniversary: Street Fighter x Mega Man

It's Mega Man's 25th Anniversary today, and it's been a pretty rough year for the Blue Bomber.  Capcom has been playing their cards close to their chest after the backlash from Mega Man Legends 3's cancellation, and what they've featured this year up til now has been pretty underwhelming.  Today however, Capcom has released a free PC download of a game they had been collaborating with a fan developer, Seow Zong Hui, Street Fighter x Mega Man, a game celebrating the dual anniversaries of the two franchises.

Capcom USA is going to be watching this game closely, and Capcom USA Senior VP Christian Svensson promises there will be more to come this year.  What that entails exactly is anyone's guess, but for now the only official Capcom game we have to tide us over is this one.  This morning, I played through the entire game and I'd thought I'd post a quick review since today is a pretty special day for one of my favorite games.

Street Fighter x Mega Man was a interesting little fan game floating around as a demo in its early stages in 2010.  I believe at the time it only had Chun Li's stage available, and in a very early form.  It showed potential, but many fan games remain in limbo for such a long time you wonder if the project will ever come to fruition.  However, Seow Zong Hui, the game's creator, managed to get Capcom's backing, giving this title the extra push most fan games would only dream to have.  With the game getting published as a free release on Capcom's own website, Seow Zong Hui now is not only living that dream, he gets to be a part of legacy.

The game goes right into the roots of the classic 8-bit series with your jumping and shooting controls feeling right as home as if they were straight from the first six games themselves.  I played on an X-box 360 game pad, and while some configuration was needed, and there was a lack of D-Pad support, the game controlled well, as if a direct continuation of the original six games.  Sliding and charge shots also return, two things notably absent from Mega Man's arsenal since Mega Man 9, and you'll need them, since SFxMM's boss fights are some of the most action charged of the franchise.

Easily the best part of this game is getting to a boss and having a duel with your Mega Buster.  The boss movements are quick, and most of their attacks flow without any significantly noticeable pattern.  Combat against them feels great, and you'll be surprised how flexible the system is against them.  Dodging is all reflex based, and since the bosses don't seem to have significantly noticeable patterns, and you'll find that sliding is your most powerful tool in this game.  You get a lot more freedom with the slide than a typical Mega Man game, and it works a lot of the time it feels like it wouldn't in previous entries, such as sliding under Chun Li's spin kick.  You'll be required to learn their attacks, and be ready to switch up your defense on the fly as most of the bosses pull out just about any move from any other move.  Bosses will also build up special attack meters based on the damage you dish out to them, and when it fills up, they'll unleash a more devastating attack that you'll have to be on the ready for.  Special weapons all require a bit of finesse to use against the bosses as well, as they usually require some thinking to make the most out of, such as a weapon you'll have to use to reflect Ryu's hadoken's back at him.

Each boss resembles a Mega Man version of themselves from their respective games, and range from silly looking to awful.  Most of them just look like a modified Mega Man sprite, but a couple in particular, Urien and Rolento, are pretty rough around the edges.  They animate well though, and it's pretty funny that Mega Man uses Dan as his weapons training test dummy.

The stages themselves need a bit more polish.  There's a lot of branching paths in this game, but also weird dead ends that don't seem to go anywhere, and outside of a few levels having a special gimmick or two, aren't particularly memorable.  The enemies are well thought out in placement though, and a lot of this game you'll have to stop and think about how you'll want to approach the enemies in the room, as each one of them will have different types of attacks you can't deal with by charging directly head on.  That said, a few of them feel like they have a bit more health than necessary, which means sometimes the better option is just to take a hit and run through it.

The music is a blend of classic Mega Man themes and Street Fighter remixes.  You'll hear the inspiration in each stage, and the original score gets the job done for the most part.  There's nothing in here on the levels of Mega Man 2, X, ZX or Mega Man 9, but it works well enough.

The weapons are all pretty good as well, each having their own little utility.  Some of them are a bit harder to figure out the proper use for, such as the weapon you obtain from Blanka, which is reminiscent of the Mega Ball from Mega Man 8. Each weapon has clearly designed utilities, and its easy to recognize when certain weapons will be effective in certain situations, which is something even most official Mega Man games have trouble with.

Overall the game is worth playing just to experience the boss fights, but lacks the total package polish of an official game.  All of the game's story is packaged in less than a paragraph of text stashed away in the game's readme file, and the game lacks a proper intro or ending.  And it ends abruptly too, with a final encounter with M. Bison in a field that feels pretty anti-climatic.  It makes you wonder if anything was cut to make it out for the anniversary in time.

Capcom is throwing us a bone for now, and SFxMM satiates more than completely satisfies, but its well worth the price of admission.  While the fight for everlasting peace, or at least the push for new games continues, we have to look back at the character's roots to understand his success.  In its day, Mega Man 2 was an underdog that Capcom didn't believe in and almost never made it.  It became one of Capcom's best selling games of all time.  Mega Man X came at a time when the series stagnated on the NES.  Mega Man 9 arrived during lackluster sales of Mega Man Star Force to become one of the highest downloaded digital distributed games of all time.  And Legends 3, despite its cancellation, continues to garner support from the fans.

Mega Man has always been an underdog that his company never believed in, and here we are, 25 years later in the same shoes he was in after his first game.  Uncertain of what the future holds, we'll just have to keep rooting for him to pull out one of those amazing successes he seems to have a habit of doing when he needs to.

Capcom is gamefaqs polls most hated gaming company in a matter of days

Although Blizzard is just barely behind, Capcom has pretty much gone from one of the most well loved gaming publishers to the most hated virtually overnight.

When Mega Man Universe was canceled, I was disappointed.  It was okay though, Capcom's word was that the game wasn't shipping up too well, and the few that did play the game said the controls needed more polish.  All well, better to not release a Mega Man game than to feed us a cruddy one (I'm looking at YOU X7!).

Then Legends was canceled.  Incredibly irritating, and many fans were understandably frustrated.  The backlash was predictable, because saying the game doesn't meet your criteria, when the complete wave of arbitrary bullshit that does is beyond comprehension doesn't exactly fly well.  But THEN the European Cacpom twitter has the gall to tell fans it's their fault the game didn't get made.

Death of a Legend(s3?)

So despite my earlier snarkyness, I am pretty disappointed that Mega Man Legends 3 is not getting released.  I had my problems with this game from the beginning.  The fan participation seemed, at the time, like either a case of too many cooks in the kitchen, or a dumb marketing gimmick.  I was pleasantly surprised the former was handled with much care to prevent that from happening, and obviously the latter was ineffective or nonexistent.  I also have problems with the series in general being basically Mega Man in name, and having very little to do with it's predecessors.  I'm all for innovation, but Legends always felt like the apple that fell just a bit too far from the tree with me.

That said, I did enjoy Legends.  The controls were terrible, the camera could be a pain, but overall these games were fun.  Perhaps it was that intangible good feeling that's hard to get with a game, or perhaps it's how 1up.com's Jeremy Parish put it, that Legends was a game with heart.  While I'm not taking the news as hard as some people, I do feel like this string of cancellations is a bitter pill to swallow, and Legends 3 was the closest thing to the series ever moving forward that there has been in a long time.

Oh man!

Am I ever so glad I don't have to drop $300 on another Nintendo gimmick system!

What Makes it a Mega Man?

Rockman Day Wallpaper showing most incarnations of the series.

Pardon me for the abstract thinking of today's post, but after seeing the latest wallpaper released by Capcom on the fan holiday of Rockman Day (June 9th, see this post by Protodude), I got to thinking about this series in its roots, and in its saturation. 

In a recent presentation, series creator, and former Capcom Keiji Inafune, stated that Capcom had a policy in place setup to reject new Intellectual Properties.  Here's a snippet from Joystiq:

In one anecdote, former Capcom exec Keiji Inafune illustrates how he got so high up in the company and the kind of behavior that likely led to his hasty exit. During a presentation at Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University, the Neptunia Mk-II weapon dished on the corporate culture at Capcom, and how he gamed it to get Lost Planet and Dead Rising made.

Before those games, he said, Capcom had a rule requiring 70-80 percent of the games produced at the company to be sequels, and the management rejected pitches for new titles even beyond that proportion. Inafune started up two new projects, Lost Planet and Dead Rising, and just kept them going even after the prototypes were rejected.  Source Joystiq

Keeping that in mind and seeing all the incarnations of Mega Man as he is today, one has to ask themselves how many of these games would even exists if they did not bare the Mega Man label?  Beyond profit motivations, and references to past games, what ties these games to the Mega Man property?

The Mega Man Fan Film

I figured what better way to start off the new year on my blog with a review, and this time I've finally gotten around to watching the Mega Man Fan Film by Eddie Lebron. Is it everything we could have hoped for in a Mega Man Movie or nothing more than a glorified Live Action Fan Fic? Well don't just take my opinion below, see it for yourself on Screwattack!

Plot Synopsis
The story of Mega Man is far from a complex tale, after all it fit into about a paragraph or so in the original game's instruction manual. Dr. Thomas Light, genius in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, constructs 8 new powerfully advanced robots with the assistance of his long time confidant and lab technician, Dr. Wily. After introducing his robots to the world, and being adored by the media, Dr. Light decides the next robot he'd like to create without Dr. Wily's assistance, due to a complication relating to their first prototype. This of course infuriates Dr. Wily, who hatches a nefarious plot for revenge and world domination!

The new Robot turns out to be Rock, programed and designed to be the most human like in both body and mind of all Dr. Light's robots. After only a day of being built, Rock goes through a mid life crisis, unable to find purpose with his existence. This goes on FOREVER until Dr. Wily finally kidnaps Dr. Light's robots and sends them loose on the city.

Knowing he is the only one who can stop Dr. Wily, Rock convinces Dr. Light to upgrade him into a super fighting robot, now known as Mega Man. Mega Man initially struggles to defeat each robot master but then is aided by the mysterious prototype robot who had fled from Dr. Light's lab. This robot, Blues, through a mistake in his core design, somehow managed to have free will, and for now, has decided to aid Mega Man in his quest against Dr. Wily.

Eventually Mega Man defeats all of Dr. Wily's robot masters, but is then trounced by Wily's war machine, The Yellow Devil. Blues destroys the monster and takes Mega Man back to Dr. Light where, broken and battered, he tries to recover.

Meanwhile, Dr. Wily has stolen Mega Man's schematics, and sent in a Copy Machine to kidnap Roll to use as a hostage. Roll is easily deceived by the Copy Machine and captured just as Mega Man recovers. Dr. Wily threatens to kill Roll if Mega Man doesn't come and surrender at his floating skull fortress of doom! Mega Man eventually beats the Copy Machine, defeats Wily, and saves Roll. Dr. Wily surrenders and begs Mega Man to not hurt him just as the police arrive.

Mega Man and Roll are then seen looking at the city from a park bench, with Mega Man stating that he now feels fulfilled. The two then spot Blues from a distance as they are leaving, while Mega Man gives an approving nod.

Critique
From the off-set this movie has many things going against it. First, being an independent film, it has some horrendous acting in it! Truly the most robotic performance here is that of Dr. Light. Edward X. Young has a great voice, but is so deadpan and emotionless that his character is so hard to care about. Most of the acting is stiff as it is, with Mega Man and Roll being particularly bad as well.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Dr. Wily gives a hilarious, if a bit hammy, performance that I think single-handedly saves the film! It's insane, it's over dramatic, but damn if I couldn't wait to see what the guy would say next!

The second problem with the film is that it is based on a franchise of which the auteur is, if anything, fellating, rather than adding to. There is a lot of tongue n' cheek references, humor, and camp added to this movie that not only feels unnecessary, but I think ultimately hurts the film. Much of the film has representations of Mega Man using his 8-bit sprite, and there is a particularly groan inducing sight gag (which you would only get if you had played the games) where Dr. Light suggests tracking the robots using the select screen from the first game. Of course this never comes up again, so it only serves as a pointless reference.

The robot masters themselves are also ripped straight out of Mega Man Powered Up, exhibiting the exact same personality traits, such as Ice Man's split personality, and Fire Man's BURNING JUSTICE! The characterization here though isn't done for the purposes of the story, but to nod and wink to all those fans that "got it."

That said, I love the direction they went with Proto Man, and the orchestral remix that was done with his theme is a huge highlight to the film. It really fits the mood, and Proto Man's dilemma between death and free will easily makes him the most interesting of all the characters. If the cast was as interesting as Proto Man, this could have been a much better film.

Next, working on a low budget means cruddy special effects, and bad fight choreography. While there isn't a lot an independent director can do about some of this stuff, the cheese factor is off the charts with the badly rendered 3D models of some of the robot masters. Perhaps if all the robot masters were 3D rendered, this wouldn't have looked as bad, but Mega Man vs. Guts Man for example, looks just so silly.

On top of this, the fights are extremely quick, incredibly anti-climatic, and lack creativity in the weapon usage. I grant the games don't give much wiggle room in say doing something like, using the Rolling Cutter to cut a tree down so it falls on somebody for instance, but this movie had every opportunity to keep the fights from being "Mega Man blasts robot, robot blasts Mega Man." Unfortunately for the majority of the fights, they decided the back and forth shooting was the route to go.

There was one really good use of the special effects, and that would be Ice Man's surfing freeze move, which was done quick and not focused on heavily enough to detract from the effect. Good movies disguise their faults, but this one seems to take no issue with it.

Finally there's the writing. There's a story in here about the humanity of man and what it really means to be alive... except it's really hamfisted in here and painfully delivered. So blatant are the characters emotions, the dialogue may as well be "Beep boop, I am sad." "Boop Beep, I am sad too."

There's a lot of milling around in this movie, especially at the beginning as the director tries to establish these characters for the audience, and they really eat up a portion of the movie. The characterization doesn't come off very well, as the cast redundantly goes over the same issues, from the same perspective, the same way. Scenes not dedicated to Mega Man's post-activation depression feel like the characters are quizzing each other on plot holes. A typical scene plays out like this:

Mega Man: Dr. Light! Why doesn't Dr. Wily do this?
Dr. Light: Oh Mega Man! Because of this technology thingie!
Mega Man: Well how bout I do this?
Dr. Light: Sorry Mega, you're stuck with this other technology babble thing!

By contrast, the actions sequences are incredibly brief, as if the director was feeling the need to rush through them to get back to the character scenes.

At the end of the day, this movie doesn't stand on it's own legs. It's made for Mega Man fans, and that's it. So absorbed is this movie in it's own franchise that it's really impossible to enjoy knowing nothing about Mega Man. Take that away and you've got a badly acted drama about robots with some fight scenes glossed over. The movie celebrates the franchise but brings nothing to it. This movie isn't going to bring new fans to the table, or bring back fans of the classics. While it's not the worst movie I've ever seen, at best, the enjoyment of the film comes at it's own expense (in the so bad it's good way) and at worst, it's a hero-worship title without any ambition to do the series any favors. Maybe worth watching if you're insatiability curios, but you won't miss anything by skipping it either.