Got my hard drive replaced after a gigantic pain in the ass, but I lost all of the screenshots I was going to use for the next few games which sucks big dicks and worst yet I lost a lot of my PC games saves. Luckily though the only games I had left to review are ones I don't plan on playing through right away just because of how long they are, (Star Force 2 and 3) and Mega Man 9 I can't capture screenshots for anyway.
I've already lost a couple of articles I had written up, but enough time has passed to take away the frustration of all that. I'm having some major problems with my stupid network adapter now however, so I'm going to try to get that replaced here tomorrow or so before I post up a new article. I've still got a bunch of data to replace and re-download too. At the latest expect an update after Halloween.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
On Temporary Hold
My hard drive is dying at the moment and I'm having to get it replaced soon, hopefully this weekend. Until then, it keeps freezing too often for me to work out a decent article at the moment. It shouldn't take to long and I expect to be done with this project close to Halloween. I've only got a few articles left to go anyway. Coming up, The Future of ZX, Mega Man 9, Star Force 3 and more.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Mega Man ZX Advent
I don't know about this one. It's a good game and 
all but, it's quite a decline from ZX and to me, it's not one of my favorites. There's a lot of good design decisions in this game and most of it isn't a pain in the ass in difficulty compared to ZX. Mostly though it seems this game has a lot of little things that bug me about it and very little of it has to do with gameplay. I'm going to try to not nitpick this game to death as best I can, but I will stress my points as to why it isn't as good as ZX.
New Features
Story
Mega Man ZX Advent has the big problem of talking way to fucking much. The whole game is blah blah blah blah blah on and on and on. You'd swear you were playing Battle Network or Star Force with how much these characters drone on.
So your first choice is between choosing Ashe, a human treasure hunter searching for some missing Biometals for the government, or you can choose Grey, a reploid who wakes up in a mysterious laboratory and has no idea who or what he is. Now the majority of the games story is the same. Ashe or Grey meet up with Model A and end up on a quest to discover who they are.
Anyway if you play as Grey, Pandora from the first game shows up to wreck your shit and the bridge Grey is standing on collapses. The hunters (basically treasure hunters) want Grey to come with them to Legion (the world government) to get some shit sorted out. Tell you the truth I can't remember all that well as it's been a year or so since I last played as Grey. Anyway on the train to Legion HQ, Pandora shows up with Prometheus to fuck up Grey and the Hunters when a Biometal, Model A, jumps up out of a crate and Mega Merges with Grey. Pandora and Prometheus decide that Grey can go on living and keep Model A for now, but Grey still has to deal with a Psuedoroid on the train.
If you play as Ashe, you'll start in a much cooler level as Ashe is chasing down her... "booty"... in an air ship with a group of hunters. She's looking for the Biometals for the bounty Legion has placed on them, but Prometheus shows up and fucks her and her crew all up. She survives and they get the Biometal anyway somehow... they really don't explain how that happened... Anyway she gets on the train and tells about her life story how when she was young she was the only survivor of a maverick attack and has no idea about her family or home town or anything about her. Then Prometheus and Pandora show up and insert what happens to Grey but this time substitute Ashe.
Anyway Grey/Ashe get called to see the Sage Trinity (the world leaders) of Master Albert,
Thomas and Mikhail and if you've caught the reference good for you, this is the first of so many throw backs that even a huge Mega Man nerd like me gets sick of them. Anyway Albert turns out to be evil and has a bunch of Model W's through out the world collecting people's bad feelings and he's having a bunch of Mega Men kill each other in what he calls the "Game of Destiny" where basically the last man standing is king or something.
As the game progresses we find out that Albert has infused his DNA into reploids and the survivors of maverick raids (I guess through blood transfusions) to build his army of Mega Men which he will pit against each other. These are the ones who can use Biometal... which confuses me because I thought ZX said that Ceil made the biometals... I probably got lost in the 90,000 lines of dialog though so my bad.
Model A we find out was built by Albert as a means of storing the data for A-Trans or something, which is the ability to transform into just about anything, and looks a hell of a lot like Axl from X7 and X8, enough to not be a coincidence but the storylines of X and ZX aren't fleshed out enough to draw a real connection just yet, so for now this could just be another stupid throwback. On the other hand it could be Axl in a few given sequels but only time will tell.
Vent or Aile show up along the way as well depending on who you play and are there searching for the stolen Guardians biometals who are now in the hands of some other ass hole Mega Men playing that Game of Destiny mentioned earlier. We also find out Prometheus and Pandora are stuck working for Albert because they'll die if they don't and they plan to kill him, but Albert tricks them into wanting him dead and wanting revenge and stuff so the W-Cores can absorb all their hate and whatever and activate Albert's final form "Ouroboros" which will make him a god or something and bring about man's next step in evolution by killing everyone for some reason.
Grey turns out to be a reploid copy of Albert and Ashe turns out to be his daughter. They beat him and Model Z blows up on the air ship. Yeah, thought I'd just toss that one in there. Everyone's happy game over.
Then if you beat it on expert mode or a third time after completing it with both characters,
Master Thomas turns out to be a bad guy and calls back the evil Mega Men to presumably take over the world... that he already rules? Fuck this game is stupid. Honest to god this is my best guess as to what the story is trying to tell me because it's really complicated as fuck and incredibly stupid. ZX wasn't particularly great either but you'd be surprised how much voice acting can affect your opinion of a plot.
Aesthetics
Advent is a lot more dull and darker in color than the Vibrant and bright colors of ZX. The stages aren't quite as varied as they were in ZX but are adequate. The stages of ZX definitely had more personality though, going through burning buildings and amusements parks for example, but Advent has a lot of factory like places. There's a few decent looking stages such as the floating ruins and the highway stages but everything in this game is very drab looking.
This game probably houses the biggest collection of the stupidest looking bosses in the series. Sure, there's worse out there, like Tornado Tonion or Wire Sponge, but this game has a lot of really weird looking bosses. You've got a mohawk wearing fire dog thing, an time stopping ice crab fish thing, a giant queen bee, a flower, a electric hedgehog, a guitar playing... skull thing, an oversized frost crocodile and roller skating care bears. They all just look silly and half of this shit you can't even tell what its supposed to be. Quite a step backwards from the dangerous and sharp looking bosses from ZX and Zero. ZX conquers this game visually.
Sound
ZX has some of the best music in video game history and I'm not afraid to say it. It's so good I don't think it's fair to really hold Advent to the same standard that ZX set, that said, Advent has by far an inferior sound track. It's not terrible but there's hardly anything memorable in here besides the hand full of reused ZX soundtracks.
In addition to the music however, ZX Advent also features voice acting. Not only is the voice acting god awful, the sound quality is so bad it sounds like it's coming in through a CB radio. I have to say I'm not really sure why Capcom didn't contact the Ocean Group for this one. I'm sure Lucas Gilbertson would have done the 5 or six lines for Model Z if they asked him. I have no idea why Capcom would go from decent voice actors to incredibly bad ones, nor why they would make them read their lines in different tones through a single sentence.
Design
Enemy placement in this game is much better, allowing players to have some breathing room and more reaction time than ZX which pretty much littered hundreds of enemies on the screen and laughed at you as you tried to dodge them over hundreds of pits and spikes. For that alone this game is a million times easier. The stages themselves are alright but there are a few tricky platforming sections here and there, such as the waterfall stage which has retracting spikes that can fuck you up, but overall not quite as difficult as ZX.
Something that bothers me about this game is that you don't receive the model ZX form until about halfway through the game and unfortunately it is by far and away the pretty much only useful form in the game. Most forms are relegated to stupid gimmick uses, such as Queen Bee being used to pick up barrels or Buckfire's form being used to break blocks. There are very few reasons to switch away from Model A until you get to Model ZX and then you'll use that the rest of the game. The boss fights are especially easy with ZX as a rolling air slash attack will pretty much take out most bosses no problem.
The bosses still retain weakness in elements and certain areas of their body, but gone are the
level victories which power up your biometals. Instead this game you collect the upgrades like you would subtanks or life-ups. You still get E-crystals but now you just use them to buy teleporter areas, and you won't find yourself needing many E-Crystals for that even. On beginner mode, they aren't even used for this, making E-Crystals almost pointless to collect. Overall this game is a lot easier than ZX but I find the first game more satisfying to play.
Playability
There aren't many problems with this game control wise. Some of the forms can be confusing in how you're supposed to apply them but Model A tells you what to do when you get the form and there is a handy list of moves always available for you. If you've played any Mega Man game this one shouldn't be a problem.
Extras
Despite the flaws with Advent, most of them are superficial and some are just coming from the comparisons to ZX. ZX Advent is a solid game and worth adding to your DS library.
Playthroughs
N/A
all but, it's quite a decline from ZX and to me, it's not one of my favorites. There's a lot of good design decisions in this game and most of it isn't a pain in the ass in difficulty compared to ZX. Mostly though it seems this game has a lot of little things that bug me about it and very little of it has to do with gameplay. I'm going to try to not nitpick this game to death as best I can, but I will stress my points as to why it isn't as good as ZX.New Features
- Two New Characters: Grey and Ashe. They have different stats and attacks and slightly different stories.
- This game has a lot more forms in it. In addition to ZX and the Guardian forms you'll also be able to take the forms of the pseudoroids you defeat.
- The map has been designed to not be such a pain in the fucking ass this game. Thank god for that.
Story
Mega Man ZX Advent has the big problem of talking way to fucking much. The whole game is blah blah blah blah blah on and on and on. You'd swear you were playing Battle Network or Star Force with how much these characters drone on.So your first choice is between choosing Ashe, a human treasure hunter searching for some missing Biometals for the government, or you can choose Grey, a reploid who wakes up in a mysterious laboratory and has no idea who or what he is. Now the majority of the games story is the same. Ashe or Grey meet up with Model A and end up on a quest to discover who they are.
Anyway if you play as Grey, Pandora from the first game shows up to wreck your shit and the bridge Grey is standing on collapses. The hunters (basically treasure hunters) want Grey to come with them to Legion (the world government) to get some shit sorted out. Tell you the truth I can't remember all that well as it's been a year or so since I last played as Grey. Anyway on the train to Legion HQ, Pandora shows up with Prometheus to fuck up Grey and the Hunters when a Biometal, Model A, jumps up out of a crate and Mega Merges with Grey. Pandora and Prometheus decide that Grey can go on living and keep Model A for now, but Grey still has to deal with a Psuedoroid on the train.
If you play as Ashe, you'll start in a much cooler level as Ashe is chasing down her... "booty"... in an air ship with a group of hunters. She's looking for the Biometals for the bounty Legion has placed on them, but Prometheus shows up and fucks her and her crew all up. She survives and they get the Biometal anyway somehow... they really don't explain how that happened... Anyway she gets on the train and tells about her life story how when she was young she was the only survivor of a maverick attack and has no idea about her family or home town or anything about her. Then Prometheus and Pandora show up and insert what happens to Grey but this time substitute Ashe.
Anyway Grey/Ashe get called to see the Sage Trinity (the world leaders) of Master Albert,
Thomas and Mikhail and if you've caught the reference good for you, this is the first of so many throw backs that even a huge Mega Man nerd like me gets sick of them. Anyway Albert turns out to be evil and has a bunch of Model W's through out the world collecting people's bad feelings and he's having a bunch of Mega Men kill each other in what he calls the "Game of Destiny" where basically the last man standing is king or something.As the game progresses we find out that Albert has infused his DNA into reploids and the survivors of maverick raids (I guess through blood transfusions) to build his army of Mega Men which he will pit against each other. These are the ones who can use Biometal... which confuses me because I thought ZX said that Ceil made the biometals... I probably got lost in the 90,000 lines of dialog though so my bad.
Model A we find out was built by Albert as a means of storing the data for A-Trans or something, which is the ability to transform into just about anything, and looks a hell of a lot like Axl from X7 and X8, enough to not be a coincidence but the storylines of X and ZX aren't fleshed out enough to draw a real connection just yet, so for now this could just be another stupid throwback. On the other hand it could be Axl in a few given sequels but only time will tell.
Vent or Aile show up along the way as well depending on who you play and are there searching for the stolen Guardians biometals who are now in the hands of some other ass hole Mega Men playing that Game of Destiny mentioned earlier. We also find out Prometheus and Pandora are stuck working for Albert because they'll die if they don't and they plan to kill him, but Albert tricks them into wanting him dead and wanting revenge and stuff so the W-Cores can absorb all their hate and whatever and activate Albert's final form "Ouroboros" which will make him a god or something and bring about man's next step in evolution by killing everyone for some reason.Grey turns out to be a reploid copy of Albert and Ashe turns out to be his daughter. They beat him and Model Z blows up on the air ship. Yeah, thought I'd just toss that one in there. Everyone's happy game over.
Then if you beat it on expert mode or a third time after completing it with both characters,
Master Thomas turns out to be a bad guy and calls back the evil Mega Men to presumably take over the world... that he already rules? Fuck this game is stupid. Honest to god this is my best guess as to what the story is trying to tell me because it's really complicated as fuck and incredibly stupid. ZX wasn't particularly great either but you'd be surprised how much voice acting can affect your opinion of a plot.Aesthetics
Advent is a lot more dull and darker in color than the Vibrant and bright colors of ZX. The stages aren't quite as varied as they were in ZX but are adequate. The stages of ZX definitely had more personality though, going through burning buildings and amusements parks for example, but Advent has a lot of factory like places. There's a few decent looking stages such as the floating ruins and the highway stages but everything in this game is very drab looking.
This game probably houses the biggest collection of the stupidest looking bosses in the series. Sure, there's worse out there, like Tornado Tonion or Wire Sponge, but this game has a lot of really weird looking bosses. You've got a mohawk wearing fire dog thing, an time stopping ice crab fish thing, a giant queen bee, a flower, a electric hedgehog, a guitar playing... skull thing, an oversized frost crocodile and roller skating care bears. They all just look silly and half of this shit you can't even tell what its supposed to be. Quite a step backwards from the dangerous and sharp looking bosses from ZX and Zero. ZX conquers this game visually.Sound
ZX has some of the best music in video game history and I'm not afraid to say it. It's so good I don't think it's fair to really hold Advent to the same standard that ZX set, that said, Advent has by far an inferior sound track. It's not terrible but there's hardly anything memorable in here besides the hand full of reused ZX soundtracks.
In addition to the music however, ZX Advent also features voice acting. Not only is the voice acting god awful, the sound quality is so bad it sounds like it's coming in through a CB radio. I have to say I'm not really sure why Capcom didn't contact the Ocean Group for this one. I'm sure Lucas Gilbertson would have done the 5 or six lines for Model Z if they asked him. I have no idea why Capcom would go from decent voice actors to incredibly bad ones, nor why they would make them read their lines in different tones through a single sentence.
Design
Enemy placement in this game is much better, allowing players to have some breathing room and more reaction time than ZX which pretty much littered hundreds of enemies on the screen and laughed at you as you tried to dodge them over hundreds of pits and spikes. For that alone this game is a million times easier. The stages themselves are alright but there are a few tricky platforming sections here and there, such as the waterfall stage which has retracting spikes that can fuck you up, but overall not quite as difficult as ZX.
Something that bothers me about this game is that you don't receive the model ZX form until about halfway through the game and unfortunately it is by far and away the pretty much only useful form in the game. Most forms are relegated to stupid gimmick uses, such as Queen Bee being used to pick up barrels or Buckfire's form being used to break blocks. There are very few reasons to switch away from Model A until you get to Model ZX and then you'll use that the rest of the game. The boss fights are especially easy with ZX as a rolling air slash attack will pretty much take out most bosses no problem.The bosses still retain weakness in elements and certain areas of their body, but gone are the
level victories which power up your biometals. Instead this game you collect the upgrades like you would subtanks or life-ups. You still get E-crystals but now you just use them to buy teleporter areas, and you won't find yourself needing many E-Crystals for that even. On beginner mode, they aren't even used for this, making E-Crystals almost pointless to collect. Overall this game is a lot easier than ZX but I find the first game more satisfying to play.Playability
There aren't many problems with this game control wise. Some of the forms can be confusing in how you're supposed to apply them but Model A tells you what to do when you get the form and there is a handy list of moves always available for you. If you've played any Mega Man game this one shouldn't be a problem.
Extras
- Probably the best place to farm for extra lives is the Oil Fields. Once you have some ability to fly there are about 4 of them in the area.
- Keep giving the digger E-Crystals in Hunter Area 4 until you can get the sidequest to get the blue prints. After that, the guy you do the quest for will sell you E-tanks.
- Beat the game once to unlock a special 8-bit Mega Man bonus game. Silly Inti, a new 8-bit Mega Man game would never work!
Despite the flaws with Advent, most of them are superficial and some are just coming from the comparisons to ZX. ZX Advent is a solid game and worth adding to your DS library.
Playthroughs
N/A
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Tennis and Star Carriers
Almost done, it's 2007 and there are only 4 actual reviews left 
to cover. It's Mega Man's 20th anniversary and Capcom is in a celebratory mood! Of note, every NES game at this year was finally released to cell phones and the Wii Virtual console got Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2 giving gamers yet another chance to pick up these great games. Lets see what else came out.
Rockman Tennis
I don't own a lot of cell phone games... actually I just own the cell phone games that came with my phone. As someone who plays a lot of PSP and NDS... I can't say I see the appeal in playing cell phone games and this one isn't going to do anything to sway my opinion. It's Tennis... It's Mega Man... is there anything else to say?
Shooting Star Rockman: Wave Change! On Air! TV Game
You know those one shot tv console games that you occasionally see advertised for little kids, well this is one of those. Basically you get a Omega-Xis shaped buster you wear on your arm and using motion controls you wave it around and play various minigames based on Mega Man Star Force. I have to say, this would be an excellent collectors item and I really wish my sister had picked it up when she went to Japan. The game doesn't even look all that terrible and you can see a full playlist of videos of it on Youtube User VixyNyan's channel. I doubt we'll ever see this in the states, but the Wii could probably emulate it if Capcom ever decides to toss US customers a bone.
Shooting Star Rockman: Wave Transer LCD Game
Just like Battle Network PET's, Capcom wasn't quite done pushing out new LCD games to buy. You can insert battle cards into it and play a little game of which I don't know much about.
Shooting Star Rockman: Star Carrier LCD Game
Oh hey, Capcom is already up to their old tricks and they changed the Transers everyone had attached to their arms in Star Force 1 to the Star Carrier in Star Force 2. Woo hoo, guess we gotta make a new toy to promote the cartoon! Actually though, I don't think we'll see a Hunter-VG for the third game, so I guess this might be the end of a trend. Either of these LCD games are still available from importing online sources, but they're expensive and stock is running low.
Next up, Mega Man ZX Advent
to cover. It's Mega Man's 20th anniversary and Capcom is in a celebratory mood! Of note, every NES game at this year was finally released to cell phones and the Wii Virtual console got Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2 giving gamers yet another chance to pick up these great games. Lets see what else came out.Rockman Tennis
I don't own a lot of cell phone games... actually I just own the cell phone games that came with my phone. As someone who plays a lot of PSP and NDS... I can't say I see the appeal in playing cell phone games and this one isn't going to do anything to sway my opinion. It's Tennis... It's Mega Man... is there anything else to say?
Shooting Star Rockman: Wave Change! On Air! TV Game
You know those one shot tv console games that you occasionally see advertised for little kids, well this is one of those. Basically you get a Omega-Xis shaped buster you wear on your arm and using motion controls you wave it around and play various minigames based on Mega Man Star Force. I have to say, this would be an excellent collectors item and I really wish my sister had picked it up when she went to Japan. The game doesn't even look all that terrible and you can see a full playlist of videos of it on Youtube User VixyNyan's channel. I doubt we'll ever see this in the states, but the Wii could probably emulate it if Capcom ever decides to toss US customers a bone.
Shooting Star Rockman: Wave Transer LCD Game
Just like Battle Network PET's, Capcom wasn't quite done pushing out new LCD games to buy. You can insert battle cards into it and play a little game of which I don't know much about.
Shooting Star Rockman: Star Carrier LCD Game
Oh hey, Capcom is already up to their old tricks and they changed the Transers everyone had attached to their arms in Star Force 1 to the Star Carrier in Star Force 2. Woo hoo, guess we gotta make a new toy to promote the cartoon! Actually though, I don't think we'll see a Hunter-VG for the third game, so I guess this might be the end of a trend. Either of these LCD games are still available from importing online sources, but they're expensive and stock is running low.
Next up, Mega Man ZX Advent
Mega Man Star Force
You know, Star Force has a bit of a slow start. 
The first thing it wants to do right off the bat is introduce the new characters, the premise, and show off some of the new features the DS can do that the Game Boy Advance just can't. Then you get into the combat tutorial area and it talks about all the changes from Battle Network and it's ok but not radically different and innovative from the original series that you'll be really excited by it. I think I've said this before, but Battle Network's combat is ok, but too much of it wears really thin and the same thing can be said about Star Force, so early on there isn't a hell of a lot that'll just blow you away.
About an hour or so into the game I found myself wondering, "ok, so this is a slightly enhanced Battle Network... what's the point?" The only real difference between this game and Battle Network is that Battle Network is about Lan and MegaMan.exe and this game is about Geo Stelar and Omega-Xis. As I said, Lan is pretty charismatic, happy go lucky and well meaning. Geo isn't. He's a loner, depressed and maybe a bit selfish and early on you aren't completely sure where the story is going with this. Still, I couldn't quite put this one down. The characters were pushing Geo into real uncomfortable situations and trying to get him to open up some, even if it was for their own selfish reasons, and in my mind I had an innate curiosity to see where all this was headed. Finally about midway through the game, I was starting to see Geo taking a new responsibility with his power and developing into a stronger person and I started to find myself really interested in the characters and story, and that is what this game really has against Battle Network. This game has a story and a good one at that. That could be a tough sell to a very action oriented franchise like Mega Man, and really few games pay as much attention to their stories like this game, especially games made by Capcom. It is extremely rare for me to ever buy a game because I like the story and then fall back on the game play, but the game play in this game is good enough to keep you from leaving before an important plot point. Mega Man Star Force is a very well designed world with very well designed characters and most of it works off of novelty instead of nostalgia like Battle Network.
Geo and Omega-Xis are both living and breathing creatures. They aren't robots or computer programs, they aren't artificial at all. The supporting cast fills some of the roles of Battle Network, but each character takes a bigger part in it. The bosses, save maybe a couple, aren't throwbacks to other series and in the end this game resembles the storyline of a comic book super hero more than a Mega Man game. Geo as MegaMan himself looks very different, having a red visor, open helmet and an alien for a buster. This is really a Mega Man game in title only and some part of me almost wishes it was it's own franchise entirely, although I know I probably would have never found it if they had attached any other name to it. It is unfortunate that this series will probably never get the recognition it deserves piggy backing off a franchise so milked for cash it has almost become a laughing stock, and being a continuation to a spin-off from the original at that. Reviewers and players don't see a lot of innovation in this series and that affects it hard as a game, but if you're looking for a decent story with an alright combat system, Star Force does the job and does it well.
Story
200 years after the events of Battle Network the world has gone wireless! Yeah... that's kinda
the gimmick here I guess. Anyway the whole network works through electromagnetic waves in the sky that everyone has access to through their Transers, the Star Force equivalent to PETs. Kelvin Stelar is a scientist is working on establishing first contact with an alien race using this technology and hopes to form what is known as a Brother Band with them, a bit of a metaphorical and physical bond between friends and grants some very literal power. You thought the power of friendship was corny before, wait till you hear about the actual physical properties of friendship. Anyway while conducting his research in a space station the station has an explosion and loses contact with Earth. Kelvin has been missing for three years and we take on the role of his son Geo who hasn't been the same since.
Geo hasn't been in good shape since his father disappeared. He's quit going to school, become extremely reclusive, and worse yet, he hasn't formed a Brother Band with anyone! Geo is wracked with a serious case of depression and every night he goes to a secluded place to watch the stars, perhaps hoping he'll see some clue of his father. One day a family friend, Araon Boreal, shows up to give Geo a remnant of his father that was recovered, Kelvin's visualizer, a device that allows one to see Electromagnetic Waves. Geo takes the visualizer and heads to his star viewing place Vista Point. Along the way he is accosted by Luna Platz and he
r two goons Bud Bison and Zack Temple. Luna is class president at Geo's school Echo Ridge Elementary for Geo's class. Luna wants Geo to start going back to school to increase her approval rating as class president and increase her chances at winning the student body presidential elections. She gives Geo a big tutorial about Brother Bands and all that and Geo eventually tells her to buzz off. He then resumes heading to vista point.
There, he gazes into the night sky while mulling over his missing father when suddenly his Transer begins beeping and Geo says it's detecting his father's signal! Suddenly a beam of light comes shooting down from the sky and blasts Geo. Geo gets up blue alien monster in front of him. The alien introduces himself as Omega-Xis, an Electro-Magnetic Being from the planet FM. EM Beings are made out of EM Waves and the only reason Geo can see him is because of his Visualizer. He lets slip that he knows something about Geo's father and immediately grabs Geo's attention. Unfortunately some EM Viruses that are chasing after Omega-Xis take control of a nearby train...statue...thing, and are threatening the town! Omega-Xis says they can save the town and fight the Viruses if Geo will perform an EM-Wave Change with him, basically fusing the two together allowing Omega-Xis to have access to his powers. Geo agrees and the Wave Change fuses them together giving Geo a blue armor and red visor while attaching Omega-Xis as a buster to his arm. Omega-Xis gets Geo ready to fight but Geo is hesitant. Omega-Xis promises to tell Geo about his dad if he does fight so Geo reluctantly agrees. After the combat tutorial Omega-Xis is impressed and decides he wants to stick around with Geo for awhile and hang out in his transer.
From here on out Geo gets wrapped up with Omega-Xis in a quest to protect Earth from the invading FMians who wish to use a weapon called Andromeda that Omega-Xis has stolen the key to. The FMians are only able to utilize their full power while possessing a human and throughout the story Geo finds himself in situation after situation in which the FMians possess someone he knows and starts wreaking havoc and Geo's only option to save them is to Wave Change with Omega-Xis and take on the persona of MegaMan.
I'd give a point by point analysis of the story like the rest of the games I've done, but to be honest so many of the details in Star Force are extremely important to Geo's character development that listing them all would make this a much longer post than it needs to be already and as much as I hate to do it, for brevity sake, I need to gloss over much of it.
Geo at first doesn't want to fight and is scared of standing up for himself, but when someone other life is on the line he fights through his fear to protect them and Geo doesn't come into his full power until he realizes that he wants to protect the people in his life. Omega-Xis is the counter to Geo's timidness and pushes him to act, while Geo softens up the rough around the edges alien. Geo's quest is full of many interesting turns to develop his character including a bit of a love triangle Geo accidentally finds himself in between Luna and another character Sonia Strumm, both of whom adore MegaMan.
His personal life definitely begins to upturn as he begins to make friends and returns to school. It all comes to ahead when Geo has to answer the call to protect the Earth from the FMian king's weapon Andromeda and discover what happened to his father. The characters are extremely well developed throughout the story and that is what makes this game a pleasure to play more than anything.
The story isn't without its problems though, as it does get a bit wordy here and there and some
of the dialog is pretty cheesy, such as the scene where Taurus Fire is attempting to run Geo down with a truck and the characters literally go on and on about it for quite a while with Geo running full speed trying to get away. The Narrative as a whole works well though and each entry into this series builds a little bit more on the last. As far as the rest of the game goes, well that's going to come down to a lot of personal preference.
Aesthetics
Aside from a few new effects here and there and the really low poly 3D models in battle mode, not a hell of a lot has changed since Battle Network, and one gets the feeling that the NDS was seriously under utilized. There's interesting ideas worked in to be sure, as traveling the wave road above the towns which does look pretty cool and I personally like the new design on Mega Man himself even if it isn't a traditional look, but it's not so different to be unrecognizable. The character designs aren't bad either though you might have to go outside the game to actually see a better picture of them.
There's a reeeeeeally small touch in this game that you might not notice at first that is pretty cool. In this game Geo's character portrait is sad and depressing looking the majority of the game, but about midway through when Geo is starting to feel better, his portrait is just slightly changed to give him a bit of a smirk. I really wish the designers did more to make all the characters more expressive in their portraits as they could probably cut down on some of the dialog that way, but this is still kind of a nice touch to see Geo's character development taking shape. As a whole though this game won't do much in the way to impress you visually.
Sound
Are these the same sound effects from Battle Network? They do realize that the NDS has some more powerful sound hardware right? I suppose they do because the music in this game kicks ass, but I have to echo reviewer sentiments that the sound effects in this game suck and Capcom should have went out of their way to get some higher quality ones. On the music though, it's fantastic, not as good as ZX, but some of my favorite Mega Man soundtracks come from this game.
The main theme is really good, along the lines of the first Battle Network theme where it can really pump you up in the right situations. The song is apparently called "Shooting Star." I guess Capcom liked it too because in Star Force 3 they actually wrote lyrics to it, though I'm not sure if it's been sung anywhere but this is probably a good thing lest Star Force become a musical. A few more great tracks are "Happy Company", the track that accompanies Luna and friends and "Wave World" which plays... well in the wave world. Overall the track is very mellow which is a bit different from the typical hard rock of most Mega Man games, but this track is definitely one of my favorites of the franchise.
Design
The bulk of the game from Battle Network still exists with some major changes. Like Battle Network a custom gauge fills up giving you some battle chips every round, although this time they are called Battle Cards and you get 6 instead of 5. The cards don't have letter codes either and you can select them if they are in the same column, same name or have a white background. This is a big welcomed change in my mind as you won't have your hands tied trying to unicode a folder and for once picking up a brand new card and adding it to your folder without having several of them won't hinder you at all.
Next, like Battle Network you control MegaMan on a grid where you can dodge and fire your buster. This time the perspective is from behind MegaMan and you can only dodge left or right. Timing here is more essential than position and in addition to moving left or right you also get a shield that you can use to block attacks with. This time you charge your buster automatically and rapid fire by holding down the fire button. To use certain battle cards like swords and the like, you can press down on the D-Pad to lock on to a target and Geo will quickly jump over to them for the attack. I wouldn't say this new style is better or worse myself though some absolutely detest it. There's an adjustment to be made for sure, but I don't find it to be a huge hindrance and enjoy it for what it is. I do like the auto lock on and card system though which is what pushes this series into my preference over Battle Network.
Other than that the game isn't much different. You get an encounter with a boss, run through a dungeon with a different gimmick, then fight the boss. The dungeon stages in this game are pretty awful though, as Capcom decided to shoe-horn in as many horrible little stylus gimmicks as they could for each dungeon. They tone this down in the sequels, but easily the worst part of this game are the dungeons in this first one. There's also an assload of side quests you can do by jumping into people's Transers and finding out what they want. That said, the dungeons aren't as bad as some of the Battle Network ones and they are a lot less Maze like.
About half way through the game Geo will gain the Star Force from the satellite admins. This allows you to take a transformation in the guise of your chosen game (Dragon, Leo, Pegasus) and take an elemental bonus and weakness with it. It also changes your busters charged shot and allows you to take cards from the same row as well as column when in the star force form. You also gain access to the other forms through the DS' wireless link up capabilities by forming Brother Bands with your online friends who have the other versions of the game, meaning you have virtually no reason to buy more than one copy of this game.
Brother Bands have other functions as well. They'll provide you with an HP-Bonus as well as
access to your Brother's favorite cards chosen roulette style. Don't worry if you can't get an online brother though as the game has at least 4 NPC characters you can form up with, most of whom have some abilities you can make use of that are better than having an online brother anyway. I haven't made use of the online functionality of this game myself but I think you can only trade cards in this game if I remember correctly. Online battles would come in the next game, but don't quote me on that.
Playability
Overall easier than Battle Network, but more demanding of your reflexes. It's harder to make a folder that completely screws you in this game than it is in Battle Network, but you will need to think your strategies differently to be sure. There aren't any program advances in this game either so build a folder as strong as you can.
Extras
Battle Network is a simple story with a complex strategy system. Star Force is the opposite and I personally think it works better. It's problem comes from riding the heels of Battle Networks success and many people just don't what it takes to play another one of those games. Others will argue between which series is better overall, but it's a matter of tastes. Some like their porridge hot, some like it cold, but many don't care for it seven games old, and I think that more than anything is contributing to Star Force's lack of success. If you like a good story in a game, give this one a shot though.
Playthroughs
N/A
The first thing it wants to do right off the bat is introduce the new characters, the premise, and show off some of the new features the DS can do that the Game Boy Advance just can't. Then you get into the combat tutorial area and it talks about all the changes from Battle Network and it's ok but not radically different and innovative from the original series that you'll be really excited by it. I think I've said this before, but Battle Network's combat is ok, but too much of it wears really thin and the same thing can be said about Star Force, so early on there isn't a hell of a lot that'll just blow you away.About an hour or so into the game I found myself wondering, "ok, so this is a slightly enhanced Battle Network... what's the point?" The only real difference between this game and Battle Network is that Battle Network is about Lan and MegaMan.exe and this game is about Geo Stelar and Omega-Xis. As I said, Lan is pretty charismatic, happy go lucky and well meaning. Geo isn't. He's a loner, depressed and maybe a bit selfish and early on you aren't completely sure where the story is going with this. Still, I couldn't quite put this one down. The characters were pushing Geo into real uncomfortable situations and trying to get him to open up some, even if it was for their own selfish reasons, and in my mind I had an innate curiosity to see where all this was headed. Finally about midway through the game, I was starting to see Geo taking a new responsibility with his power and developing into a stronger person and I started to find myself really interested in the characters and story, and that is what this game really has against Battle Network. This game has a story and a good one at that. That could be a tough sell to a very action oriented franchise like Mega Man, and really few games pay as much attention to their stories like this game, especially games made by Capcom. It is extremely rare for me to ever buy a game because I like the story and then fall back on the game play, but the game play in this game is good enough to keep you from leaving before an important plot point. Mega Man Star Force is a very well designed world with very well designed characters and most of it works off of novelty instead of nostalgia like Battle Network.
Geo and Omega-Xis are both living and breathing creatures. They aren't robots or computer programs, they aren't artificial at all. The supporting cast fills some of the roles of Battle Network, but each character takes a bigger part in it. The bosses, save maybe a couple, aren't throwbacks to other series and in the end this game resembles the storyline of a comic book super hero more than a Mega Man game. Geo as MegaMan himself looks very different, having a red visor, open helmet and an alien for a buster. This is really a Mega Man game in title only and some part of me almost wishes it was it's own franchise entirely, although I know I probably would have never found it if they had attached any other name to it. It is unfortunate that this series will probably never get the recognition it deserves piggy backing off a franchise so milked for cash it has almost become a laughing stock, and being a continuation to a spin-off from the original at that. Reviewers and players don't see a lot of innovation in this series and that affects it hard as a game, but if you're looking for a decent story with an alright combat system, Star Force does the job and does it well.
Story
200 years after the events of Battle Network the world has gone wireless! Yeah... that's kinda
the gimmick here I guess. Anyway the whole network works through electromagnetic waves in the sky that everyone has access to through their Transers, the Star Force equivalent to PETs. Kelvin Stelar is a scientist is working on establishing first contact with an alien race using this technology and hopes to form what is known as a Brother Band with them, a bit of a metaphorical and physical bond between friends and grants some very literal power. You thought the power of friendship was corny before, wait till you hear about the actual physical properties of friendship. Anyway while conducting his research in a space station the station has an explosion and loses contact with Earth. Kelvin has been missing for three years and we take on the role of his son Geo who hasn't been the same since.Geo hasn't been in good shape since his father disappeared. He's quit going to school, become extremely reclusive, and worse yet, he hasn't formed a Brother Band with anyone! Geo is wracked with a serious case of depression and every night he goes to a secluded place to watch the stars, perhaps hoping he'll see some clue of his father. One day a family friend, Araon Boreal, shows up to give Geo a remnant of his father that was recovered, Kelvin's visualizer, a device that allows one to see Electromagnetic Waves. Geo takes the visualizer and heads to his star viewing place Vista Point. Along the way he is accosted by Luna Platz and he
r two goons Bud Bison and Zack Temple. Luna is class president at Geo's school Echo Ridge Elementary for Geo's class. Luna wants Geo to start going back to school to increase her approval rating as class president and increase her chances at winning the student body presidential elections. She gives Geo a big tutorial about Brother Bands and all that and Geo eventually tells her to buzz off. He then resumes heading to vista point.There, he gazes into the night sky while mulling over his missing father when suddenly his Transer begins beeping and Geo says it's detecting his father's signal! Suddenly a beam of light comes shooting down from the sky and blasts Geo. Geo gets up blue alien monster in front of him. The alien introduces himself as Omega-Xis, an Electro-Magnetic Being from the planet FM. EM Beings are made out of EM Waves and the only reason Geo can see him is because of his Visualizer. He lets slip that he knows something about Geo's father and immediately grabs Geo's attention. Unfortunately some EM Viruses that are chasing after Omega-Xis take control of a nearby train...statue...thing, and are threatening the town! Omega-Xis says they can save the town and fight the Viruses if Geo will perform an EM-Wave Change with him, basically fusing the two together allowing Omega-Xis to have access to his powers. Geo agrees and the Wave Change fuses them together giving Geo a blue armor and red visor while attaching Omega-Xis as a buster to his arm. Omega-Xis gets Geo ready to fight but Geo is hesitant. Omega-Xis promises to tell Geo about his dad if he does fight so Geo reluctantly agrees. After the combat tutorial Omega-Xis is impressed and decides he wants to stick around with Geo for awhile and hang out in his transer.
From here on out Geo gets wrapped up with Omega-Xis in a quest to protect Earth from the invading FMians who wish to use a weapon called Andromeda that Omega-Xis has stolen the key to. The FMians are only able to utilize their full power while possessing a human and throughout the story Geo finds himself in situation after situation in which the FMians possess someone he knows and starts wreaking havoc and Geo's only option to save them is to Wave Change with Omega-Xis and take on the persona of MegaMan.
I'd give a point by point analysis of the story like the rest of the games I've done, but to be honest so many of the details in Star Force are extremely important to Geo's character development that listing them all would make this a much longer post than it needs to be already and as much as I hate to do it, for brevity sake, I need to gloss over much of it.
Geo at first doesn't want to fight and is scared of standing up for himself, but when someone other life is on the line he fights through his fear to protect them and Geo doesn't come into his full power until he realizes that he wants to protect the people in his life. Omega-Xis is the counter to Geo's timidness and pushes him to act, while Geo softens up the rough around the edges alien. Geo's quest is full of many interesting turns to develop his character including a bit of a love triangle Geo accidentally finds himself in between Luna and another character Sonia Strumm, both of whom adore MegaMan.
His personal life definitely begins to upturn as he begins to make friends and returns to school. It all comes to ahead when Geo has to answer the call to protect the Earth from the FMian king's weapon Andromeda and discover what happened to his father. The characters are extremely well developed throughout the story and that is what makes this game a pleasure to play more than anything.The story isn't without its problems though, as it does get a bit wordy here and there and some
of the dialog is pretty cheesy, such as the scene where Taurus Fire is attempting to run Geo down with a truck and the characters literally go on and on about it for quite a while with Geo running full speed trying to get away. The Narrative as a whole works well though and each entry into this series builds a little bit more on the last. As far as the rest of the game goes, well that's going to come down to a lot of personal preference.Aesthetics
Aside from a few new effects here and there and the really low poly 3D models in battle mode, not a hell of a lot has changed since Battle Network, and one gets the feeling that the NDS was seriously under utilized. There's interesting ideas worked in to be sure, as traveling the wave road above the towns which does look pretty cool and I personally like the new design on Mega Man himself even if it isn't a traditional look, but it's not so different to be unrecognizable. The character designs aren't bad either though you might have to go outside the game to actually see a better picture of them.There's a reeeeeeally small touch in this game that you might not notice at first that is pretty cool. In this game Geo's character portrait is sad and depressing looking the majority of the game, but about midway through when Geo is starting to feel better, his portrait is just slightly changed to give him a bit of a smirk. I really wish the designers did more to make all the characters more expressive in their portraits as they could probably cut down on some of the dialog that way, but this is still kind of a nice touch to see Geo's character development taking shape. As a whole though this game won't do much in the way to impress you visually.
Sound
Are these the same sound effects from Battle Network? They do realize that the NDS has some more powerful sound hardware right? I suppose they do because the music in this game kicks ass, but I have to echo reviewer sentiments that the sound effects in this game suck and Capcom should have went out of their way to get some higher quality ones. On the music though, it's fantastic, not as good as ZX, but some of my favorite Mega Man soundtracks come from this game.
The main theme is really good, along the lines of the first Battle Network theme where it can really pump you up in the right situations. The song is apparently called "Shooting Star." I guess Capcom liked it too because in Star Force 3 they actually wrote lyrics to it, though I'm not sure if it's been sung anywhere but this is probably a good thing lest Star Force become a musical. A few more great tracks are "Happy Company", the track that accompanies Luna and friends and "Wave World" which plays... well in the wave world. Overall the track is very mellow which is a bit different from the typical hard rock of most Mega Man games, but this track is definitely one of my favorites of the franchise.Design
The bulk of the game from Battle Network still exists with some major changes. Like Battle Network a custom gauge fills up giving you some battle chips every round, although this time they are called Battle Cards and you get 6 instead of 5. The cards don't have letter codes either and you can select them if they are in the same column, same name or have a white background. This is a big welcomed change in my mind as you won't have your hands tied trying to unicode a folder and for once picking up a brand new card and adding it to your folder without having several of them won't hinder you at all.
Next, like Battle Network you control MegaMan on a grid where you can dodge and fire your buster. This time the perspective is from behind MegaMan and you can only dodge left or right. Timing here is more essential than position and in addition to moving left or right you also get a shield that you can use to block attacks with. This time you charge your buster automatically and rapid fire by holding down the fire button. To use certain battle cards like swords and the like, you can press down on the D-Pad to lock on to a target and Geo will quickly jump over to them for the attack. I wouldn't say this new style is better or worse myself though some absolutely detest it. There's an adjustment to be made for sure, but I don't find it to be a huge hindrance and enjoy it for what it is. I do like the auto lock on and card system though which is what pushes this series into my preference over Battle Network.Other than that the game isn't much different. You get an encounter with a boss, run through a dungeon with a different gimmick, then fight the boss. The dungeon stages in this game are pretty awful though, as Capcom decided to shoe-horn in as many horrible little stylus gimmicks as they could for each dungeon. They tone this down in the sequels, but easily the worst part of this game are the dungeons in this first one. There's also an assload of side quests you can do by jumping into people's Transers and finding out what they want. That said, the dungeons aren't as bad as some of the Battle Network ones and they are a lot less Maze like.
About half way through the game Geo will gain the Star Force from the satellite admins. This allows you to take a transformation in the guise of your chosen game (Dragon, Leo, Pegasus) and take an elemental bonus and weakness with it. It also changes your busters charged shot and allows you to take cards from the same row as well as column when in the star force form. You also gain access to the other forms through the DS' wireless link up capabilities by forming Brother Bands with your online friends who have the other versions of the game, meaning you have virtually no reason to buy more than one copy of this game.
Brother Bands have other functions as well. They'll provide you with an HP-Bonus as well as
access to your Brother's favorite cards chosen roulette style. Don't worry if you can't get an online brother though as the game has at least 4 NPC characters you can form up with, most of whom have some abilities you can make use of that are better than having an online brother anyway. I haven't made use of the online functionality of this game myself but I think you can only trade cards in this game if I remember correctly. Online battles would come in the next game, but don't quote me on that.Playability
Overall easier than Battle Network, but more demanding of your reflexes. It's harder to make a folder that completely screws you in this game than it is in Battle Network, but you will need to think your strategies differently to be sure. There aren't any program advances in this game either so build a folder as strong as you can.
Extras
- The version you buy is the form you'll receive, the Admin you'll fight, and the Giga cards you'll get. The game isn't hard to find right now in any of the versions so you really have the choice of any of the three. If you have access to a wireless connection you'll have access to the other forms as well so really it's up to you to decide if you care about what bosses or Giga cards you get. If you don't have a wireless connection, I'd say Pegasus is probably the easiest form to have because the Freeze effect of the buster is a great way to stun enemies, but it really doesn't make a huge difference one way or the other.
- If you are looking for Brothers, GameFaqs forums has tons of people still looking to form them up.
- A weird thing about this game is that you can rename Geo Stelar to whatever the hell you want, but in sequel games you can't, you just assign him a nick name for online purposes. I guess I just find it weird for the characters to call him anything other than Geo... or Subaru but that's a different story altogether.
- Break Sabers are a god send, especially against Andromeda. They'll attack through any shield and are a best friend in this game.
- I select defensive cards as my favorites, such as heals and barriers. This way if I'm in trouble I'll never have to give up doing damage for getting a quick heal off.
- Don't forget about the Invisible Cards. You get them early but there's almost never a reason to throw them away as you'll avoid so much damage with them.
Battle Network is a simple story with a complex strategy system. Star Force is the opposite and I personally think it works better. It's problem comes from riding the heels of Battle Networks success and many people just don't what it takes to play another one of those games. Others will argue between which series is better overall, but it's a matter of tastes. Some like their porridge hot, some like it cold, but many don't care for it seven games old, and I think that more than anything is contributing to Star Force's lack of success. If you like a good story in a game, give this one a shot though.
Playthroughs
N/A
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Star Force Series
Since I started doing this little project of mine, Star 
Force is probably the series I've wanted to write about the most. On the surface, it's a continuation of Battle Network, picking up where the series left off, but beneath it lies perhaps one of the first well written Mega Man series. Sure, it's not perfect and I can think of one section in particular that is just terribly written, but as a whole, the characters and story of Star Force are some of the best the franchise has ever had. I can almost prove that at least someone at Capcom has been studying up on some writing techniques as each game follows the Monomyth (or Hero's Journey) formula almost perfectly.
Unlike Battle Network where each scenario is very episodic and bar a few lines the scenarios could take place anywhere in the story, Star Force is very sequential and the stories only make sense in the order they are told because every motivation of the characters are carefully molded into the who narrative. Lan is a charismatic lead, but lacks any depth to him, where as Geo and his friends are constantly under development and throughout the series. We see Geo undergo a change from a scared and depressed child to the heroic personality of Mega Man in which he embodies. It's probably the only series worth playing for the story.
Gameplay wise Star Force takes what Battle Network had and refines it a bit. Star Force is a lot more flexible and open compared to Battle Network and this does make it easier for sure, but I think it makes it more fun as well and star force does a lot to cut down the grind that Battle Network has. That said if you didn't get any enjoyment out of Battle Networks basic formula, Star Force probably won't do much more to win you over. If you enjoyed Battle Network, but never tried this game, it might be worth it to you to check it out. Some people prefer Battle Network to this series as well, but it's all a matter of tastes more than anything.
The graphics are barely touch-ups on the original Battle Network and the sound effects aren't better. The music however is top notch in every entry so far. Star Force runs a lot more on new material than the nostalgia factor that Battle Network does, but like Battle Network I wonder if this series would have ever gotten off the ground without the name Mega Man. Considering this series isn't doing so hot sales wise right now though, I have to say I sincerely and sadly doubt it. Mega Man himself is a big departure from the norm as far as the franchise is concerned. He looks different, is actually a human, and there is very little in the way of robot master throw backs and the like. This might be a turn off to some fans, but I think the characters are likable overall to make up for this. Give it a whirl, I for one love this series enough to put up with its pitfalls.
One final thing of note, in Japan this game is called Ryuusei no Rockman which translates into Shooting Star Rockman. You may be curios as to where this title comes from.
Any questions?
Force is probably the series I've wanted to write about the most. On the surface, it's a continuation of Battle Network, picking up where the series left off, but beneath it lies perhaps one of the first well written Mega Man series. Sure, it's not perfect and I can think of one section in particular that is just terribly written, but as a whole, the characters and story of Star Force are some of the best the franchise has ever had. I can almost prove that at least someone at Capcom has been studying up on some writing techniques as each game follows the Monomyth (or Hero's Journey) formula almost perfectly.Unlike Battle Network where each scenario is very episodic and bar a few lines the scenarios could take place anywhere in the story, Star Force is very sequential and the stories only make sense in the order they are told because every motivation of the characters are carefully molded into the who narrative. Lan is a charismatic lead, but lacks any depth to him, where as Geo and his friends are constantly under development and throughout the series. We see Geo undergo a change from a scared and depressed child to the heroic personality of Mega Man in which he embodies. It's probably the only series worth playing for the story.
Gameplay wise Star Force takes what Battle Network had and refines it a bit. Star Force is a lot more flexible and open compared to Battle Network and this does make it easier for sure, but I think it makes it more fun as well and star force does a lot to cut down the grind that Battle Network has. That said if you didn't get any enjoyment out of Battle Networks basic formula, Star Force probably won't do much more to win you over. If you enjoyed Battle Network, but never tried this game, it might be worth it to you to check it out. Some people prefer Battle Network to this series as well, but it's all a matter of tastes more than anything.
The graphics are barely touch-ups on the original Battle Network and the sound effects aren't better. The music however is top notch in every entry so far. Star Force runs a lot more on new material than the nostalgia factor that Battle Network does, but like Battle Network I wonder if this series would have ever gotten off the ground without the name Mega Man. Considering this series isn't doing so hot sales wise right now though, I have to say I sincerely and sadly doubt it. Mega Man himself is a big departure from the norm as far as the franchise is concerned. He looks different, is actually a human, and there is very little in the way of robot master throw backs and the like. This might be a turn off to some fans, but I think the characters are likable overall to make up for this. Give it a whirl, I for one love this series enough to put up with its pitfalls.
One final thing of note, in Japan this game is called Ryuusei no Rockman which translates into Shooting Star Rockman. You may be curios as to where this title comes from.
Any questions?
Mega Man ZX
Jesus I forgot how much of a pain in the ass this 
game can be. I mean, it's a fantastic game, one of the best in the franchise, but holy fuck can it go from pleasantly challenging to stupidly frustrating real quick. 90% of this game is very solid, and 10% of it would make the designers of X6 blush with how stupid difficult it is, especially in the way of bullshit instant death traps.
ZX continues where Zero left off in terms of gameplay and story, but Inti Creates went back to a more traditional look graphically. We've got all new characters, all new powers and an all new um... even more futuristic setting, but at its heart, this one plays just like Mega Man Zero. Get your Z-saber and buster ready, but this time we'll be able to take advantage of X and his guardians abilities too. Let me tell you why this is one of those games all Mega Man fans should play.
Story
There are two characters you can choose from here, Vent and Aile, but for what it's worth their stories aren't any different from each other save a few choice dialogs. My last play through was with Aile since I had already played through with Vent and fuck if I can remember the tiny differences between them.
Anyway Vent/Aile is a package dealer for a company called Giro express, working for a man (Giro) who rescued him/her from a Maverick attack about 10 years ago in which he/she lost his/her mother. Side note: You play as one character or the other and can basically interchange Vent for Aile or Aile for Vent in any place in the story. To save my sanity from continually typing he/she, I'm going to assume you are playing as Aile.
Anyway it's about 100 years after Mega Man Zero, the planet has recovered and the difference between reploids and humans is very minuscule. Humans take robotic parts and reploids age and die. You can tell the difference by a red dot on reploids heads. Anyway, Mavericks are pretty much anyone who doesn't follow the truce between man and machine.
Anyway while delivering a package to a group called the Guardians (a maverick hunting force) Giro and Aile are attacked by mavericks. They get separated and a giant snake mechlaniod is attacking the people Aile has to give the package to. The package is something called a Biometal, Model X. The Biometal appears to be sentient and decides to help Aile by merging with her, producing an X-Buster on her arm and giving her dashing and wall hiking abilities and basically making her into Mega Man X. She takes down the snake Mechlanoid, but Giro is still under attack. She asks if she can continue to use the Biometal to go save him and the Guardians agree.
She runs off to save Giro who apparently has his own Biometal, Model Z, which resembles Zero. Anyway they head back to base, and the leader of the Guardians Prairie (who is played to be Alouette from the Zero series) talks about how they were looking into the recent Maverick raids and found a lab that used to belong to Ceil who apparently had disappeared. In her lab they found the Biometals which contain the consciousness of some legendary heroes (X, Zero, and the Guardians) and they were hoping that if they analyzed the data in them, it would explain the maverick attacks.
Well just then a Maverick raid happens on the highway... the one from Mega Man X that gets used in just about every game. Aile is determined to stop the attack because of what happened to her mother and runs off to stop them, Model X in tow. Giro follows her and tells her he's going to help. Well he runs off ahead and Aile comes up to him lying on the ground in front of some mysterious people. They appear to be controlling Giro and they have him fight Aile. They're both attacked after the fight by the three people. One man identifies himself as Serpent, the user of Model W, and head of Slither Inc, a security company that protects most of the city... yes, it's going to be one of THOSE stories...
The other two are Prometheus and Pandora, his underlings and they blab on about how only certain people can use the Biometals, and how those people are called Mega Men and how they will build a new world where Mega Men rule and how they are going to sacrifice everyone for Model W. They leave Aile and Giro who are to wounded to move to be killed by the Mavericks closing in on them. Giro tells Model Z to merge with Aile to protect her, even if it means it will end his own life to come out of the transformation. Giro dies and turns into a Cyber Elf and floats away. Model Z and Model X merge together as the Mavericks close in and merge up with Aile, forming Model ZX and now you know where the title comes from. Now that we have the premise of playing as X and Zero down, lets gloss over the rest of the game.
So basically Ceil discovered amongst the wreckage of Ragnarok
from Zero 4 part of Dr. Wiel's core. When examining it, some of her reploid companions would have head aches and start to go Maverick. Ceil was afraid of what this core would unleash and created the Biometals as a counter measure to destroy it. Serpent however took the Biometals and split them in two and gave them to his Pseudodroids (these are reploids that can regenerate thanks to the power of the W-Core). Ceil goes missing and many of her resistance members are killed by Serpent. Serpent goes on to form Slither Inc and people see him as a hero because they don't know this shit that he's doing.
Aile goes off to retrieve the rest of the Biometals so the guardians can get to the W-Core and eventually we find out Pandora and Pro
metheus are using Serpent to unleash the W-Core's true power by going maverick and the W-Core gains power through the suffering of reploids and humanoids and blah blah blah, and the reason that Aile survived the Maverick raids is that Serpent purposely wanted to use her rage against him to fuel his power or whatever. Listen, I got really lost somewhere here...
Anyway, Aile defeats Serpent and he starts going on about how the destiny of Aile is in her blood and blah blah blah they are setting up a sequel and talking about the main villain. Slither INC HQ blows the fuck up, and Aile sees Giro who says fight for justice, then she sees the Guardians and the game ends.
Well, I'm glad we're back to needlessly complicated and strange plots again. I was getting worried for a minute.
Aesthetics
The backgrounds and stages are very detailed and you'll always be seeing interesting things to look at. The environments are varied and you'll be traversing power plants, volcanoes, snowy plains and cities getting bombed to holy hell by your enemies. There's always something to catch your eye in this game.
It reminds me a great deal of the PSX X games, but a lot more detailed. The bosses are unique in design and attack patterns and resemble the Zero styled bosses in how sharp and dangerous they look which isn't surprising as this is by the same team. The other characters are a bit softer in their design and resemble more traditional Mega Man looking characters.
The game is accompanied with quite a few animated cutscenes and still images as well which
compliment the game quite well. While their are certainly more graphically superior games on the DS, this one looks good for what it's trying to accomplish.
Sound
Easily one of the best Mega Man tracks in a long time, in fact, one of the best video game sound tracks in a long time. ZX is one of those few games where just about every song kicks ass and it's the best sound track since X and it might be as good or better than Mega Man 2, and trust me this is coming from someone who isn't really a fan of techno in any way. I showed this soundtrack to a friend of mine who is mostly into rap and he thought it was good. The soundtrack is worth buying and the Gigamix track is great too.
There's a bit of voice acting in this game as well but it's in Japanese. It sounds ok I suppose, I'm not one much for judging foriegn acting, but I suppose it's better than having a really bad dub. Honestly though, this game is worth buying for the music alone.
Design
As I said in the introduction this game is tough and parts of it can be really tedious, but as a whole it's a fantastic game. So basically you have the controls of Zero making their way over as you have a Buster gun and a Z-Saber most of the game. Aile/Vent will collect new biometals throughout the course of the game which have different moves and abilities and are based on the four guardians of the Zero series. Model H has the ability to hover and analyzes enemy weaknesses, Model L is good for swimming and finding hidden items, Model F has directional aiming and Model P sticks to ceilings and has a radar. Some are more useless than others, but there are a lot of situations where you'll need one form or the other.
The stages are really though and there are tons of enemy placements in just the right spot to
send you flying off into a bottomless pit or bed of spikes if you get hit. Most of these levels are challenging enough that you'll need a few extra lives to get through, but the Volcano stage is just relentless in how frustrating and annoying it is. In that stage you race across the screen with a flood of lava chasing after you in one of the most frustrating instant death stages ever made. It's especially bad if you're trying to get the hidden Sub Tank in this stage as well.
A lot of the design is pretty redundant, although to be fair, mostly in the parts of the game that are optional. One set of missions sends you to the same stage 6 times in a row to get a Sub Tank and another mission has you transferring a letter between 2 people about 6 or 7 times and it can get exceptionally boring. Most of the game isn't like this though.
The boss fights are really interesting. Most boss fights have an elemental weakness which you can take advantage of by activating your Biometal's overdrive, but in addition to this, the boss also have a specific part of their body that is also a weakness. This spot is where they house the Biometal you have to take from them. If you take advantage of this weakness you'll beat the enemy faster but damage the Biometal which costs E-Crystals to repair. If you go out of your way to avoid damaging it the fight is harder but you'll be rewarded with a fully repaired Biometal.
There's other small touches here and there that are nice as well such as the side quests that sometimes award bonus items that boost your abilities or how the large power ups in the game can be slashed with your sword to break them up into other power ups, letting you choose what you need when they drop. This game can be stupidly hard so having all the help you can get is welcomed.
There is one giant problem with this game though and that's the map system which is confusing as fuck and unless you have a guide you'll spend too much of the game lost as all hell. Honestly, I wouldn't play this game without a different map because the in game one is pure shit. Once you know where everything is (you know, after you've done it before) it's not as bad, but games shouldn't be designed around you already knowing what to do.
Playability
Some of the special moves you can do with your Biometals are a bit confusing and I recommend reading some sort of write up on gamefaqs about just what all your abilities are as the game itself doesn't really tell you. Besides the difficulty which even on easy can be relentless the game is mostly no problem to pick up and get going. If you've played a Mega Man game, or more recently a Zero game, you won't have many problems.
Extras
Mega Man ZX is a tough fucking game but so satisfying to play. If you're a Mega Man fan don't miss out on this one. If you're new to the franchise you'll find this one might just be a harsh introduction but still worth a play through. Get yourself a map and enjoy the tunes. If the difficulty is a bit too much for you, there is ZX Advent which is much easier until the final stage, but I personally think this game is better.
Playthroughs
N/A
game can be. I mean, it's a fantastic game, one of the best in the franchise, but holy fuck can it go from pleasantly challenging to stupidly frustrating real quick. 90% of this game is very solid, and 10% of it would make the designers of X6 blush with how stupid difficult it is, especially in the way of bullshit instant death traps.ZX continues where Zero left off in terms of gameplay and story, but Inti Creates went back to a more traditional look graphically. We've got all new characters, all new powers and an all new um... even more futuristic setting, but at its heart, this one plays just like Mega Man Zero. Get your Z-saber and buster ready, but this time we'll be able to take advantage of X and his guardians abilities too. Let me tell you why this is one of those games all Mega Man fans should play.
Story
There are two characters you can choose from here, Vent and Aile, but for what it's worth their stories aren't any different from each other save a few choice dialogs. My last play through was with Aile since I had already played through with Vent and fuck if I can remember the tiny differences between them.
Anyway Vent/Aile is a package dealer for a company called Giro express, working for a man (Giro) who rescued him/her from a Maverick attack about 10 years ago in which he/she lost his/her mother. Side note: You play as one character or the other and can basically interchange Vent for Aile or Aile for Vent in any place in the story. To save my sanity from continually typing he/she, I'm going to assume you are playing as Aile.
Anyway it's about 100 years after Mega Man Zero, the planet has recovered and the difference between reploids and humans is very minuscule. Humans take robotic parts and reploids age and die. You can tell the difference by a red dot on reploids heads. Anyway, Mavericks are pretty much anyone who doesn't follow the truce between man and machine.
Anyway while delivering a package to a group called the Guardians (a maverick hunting force) Giro and Aile are attacked by mavericks. They get separated and a giant snake mechlaniod is attacking the people Aile has to give the package to. The package is something called a Biometal, Model X. The Biometal appears to be sentient and decides to help Aile by merging with her, producing an X-Buster on her arm and giving her dashing and wall hiking abilities and basically making her into Mega Man X. She takes down the snake Mechlanoid, but Giro is still under attack. She asks if she can continue to use the Biometal to go save him and the Guardians agree.
She runs off to save Giro who apparently has his own Biometal, Model Z, which resembles Zero. Anyway they head back to base, and the leader of the Guardians Prairie (who is played to be Alouette from the Zero series) talks about how they were looking into the recent Maverick raids and found a lab that used to belong to Ceil who apparently had disappeared. In her lab they found the Biometals which contain the consciousness of some legendary heroes (X, Zero, and the Guardians) and they were hoping that if they analyzed the data in them, it would explain the maverick attacks.
Well just then a Maverick raid happens on the highway... the one from Mega Man X that gets used in just about every game. Aile is determined to stop the attack because of what happened to her mother and runs off to stop them, Model X in tow. Giro follows her and tells her he's going to help. Well he runs off ahead and Aile comes up to him lying on the ground in front of some mysterious people. They appear to be controlling Giro and they have him fight Aile. They're both attacked after the fight by the three people. One man identifies himself as Serpent, the user of Model W, and head of Slither Inc, a security company that protects most of the city... yes, it's going to be one of THOSE stories...
The other two are Prometheus and Pandora, his underlings and they blab on about how only certain people can use the Biometals, and how those people are called Mega Men and how they will build a new world where Mega Men rule and how they are going to sacrifice everyone for Model W. They leave Aile and Giro who are to wounded to move to be killed by the Mavericks closing in on them. Giro tells Model Z to merge with Aile to protect her, even if it means it will end his own life to come out of the transformation. Giro dies and turns into a Cyber Elf and floats away. Model Z and Model X merge together as the Mavericks close in and merge up with Aile, forming Model ZX and now you know where the title comes from. Now that we have the premise of playing as X and Zero down, lets gloss over the rest of the game.So basically Ceil discovered amongst the wreckage of Ragnarok
from Zero 4 part of Dr. Wiel's core. When examining it, some of her reploid companions would have head aches and start to go Maverick. Ceil was afraid of what this core would unleash and created the Biometals as a counter measure to destroy it. Serpent however took the Biometals and split them in two and gave them to his Pseudodroids (these are reploids that can regenerate thanks to the power of the W-Core). Ceil goes missing and many of her resistance members are killed by Serpent. Serpent goes on to form Slither Inc and people see him as a hero because they don't know this shit that he's doing.Aile goes off to retrieve the rest of the Biometals so the guardians can get to the W-Core and eventually we find out Pandora and Pro
metheus are using Serpent to unleash the W-Core's true power by going maverick and the W-Core gains power through the suffering of reploids and humanoids and blah blah blah, and the reason that Aile survived the Maverick raids is that Serpent purposely wanted to use her rage against him to fuel his power or whatever. Listen, I got really lost somewhere here...Anyway, Aile defeats Serpent and he starts going on about how the destiny of Aile is in her blood and blah blah blah they are setting up a sequel and talking about the main villain. Slither INC HQ blows the fuck up, and Aile sees Giro who says fight for justice, then she sees the Guardians and the game ends.
Well, I'm glad we're back to needlessly complicated and strange plots again. I was getting worried for a minute.
Aesthetics
The backgrounds and stages are very detailed and you'll always be seeing interesting things to look at. The environments are varied and you'll be traversing power plants, volcanoes, snowy plains and cities getting bombed to holy hell by your enemies. There's always something to catch your eye in this game.It reminds me a great deal of the PSX X games, but a lot more detailed. The bosses are unique in design and attack patterns and resemble the Zero styled bosses in how sharp and dangerous they look which isn't surprising as this is by the same team. The other characters are a bit softer in their design and resemble more traditional Mega Man looking characters.
The game is accompanied with quite a few animated cutscenes and still images as well which
compliment the game quite well. While their are certainly more graphically superior games on the DS, this one looks good for what it's trying to accomplish.Sound
Easily one of the best Mega Man tracks in a long time, in fact, one of the best video game sound tracks in a long time. ZX is one of those few games where just about every song kicks ass and it's the best sound track since X and it might be as good or better than Mega Man 2, and trust me this is coming from someone who isn't really a fan of techno in any way. I showed this soundtrack to a friend of mine who is mostly into rap and he thought it was good. The soundtrack is worth buying and the Gigamix track is great too.
There's a bit of voice acting in this game as well but it's in Japanese. It sounds ok I suppose, I'm not one much for judging foriegn acting, but I suppose it's better than having a really bad dub. Honestly though, this game is worth buying for the music alone.
Design
As I said in the introduction this game is tough and parts of it can be really tedious, but as a whole it's a fantastic game. So basically you have the controls of Zero making their way over as you have a Buster gun and a Z-Saber most of the game. Aile/Vent will collect new biometals throughout the course of the game which have different moves and abilities and are based on the four guardians of the Zero series. Model H has the ability to hover and analyzes enemy weaknesses, Model L is good for swimming and finding hidden items, Model F has directional aiming and Model P sticks to ceilings and has a radar. Some are more useless than others, but there are a lot of situations where you'll need one form or the other.
The stages are really though and there are tons of enemy placements in just the right spot to
send you flying off into a bottomless pit or bed of spikes if you get hit. Most of these levels are challenging enough that you'll need a few extra lives to get through, but the Volcano stage is just relentless in how frustrating and annoying it is. In that stage you race across the screen with a flood of lava chasing after you in one of the most frustrating instant death stages ever made. It's especially bad if you're trying to get the hidden Sub Tank in this stage as well.A lot of the design is pretty redundant, although to be fair, mostly in the parts of the game that are optional. One set of missions sends you to the same stage 6 times in a row to get a Sub Tank and another mission has you transferring a letter between 2 people about 6 or 7 times and it can get exceptionally boring. Most of the game isn't like this though.
The boss fights are really interesting. Most boss fights have an elemental weakness which you can take advantage of by activating your Biometal's overdrive, but in addition to this, the boss also have a specific part of their body that is also a weakness. This spot is where they house the Biometal you have to take from them. If you take advantage of this weakness you'll beat the enemy faster but damage the Biometal which costs E-Crystals to repair. If you go out of your way to avoid damaging it the fight is harder but you'll be rewarded with a fully repaired Biometal.There's other small touches here and there that are nice as well such as the side quests that sometimes award bonus items that boost your abilities or how the large power ups in the game can be slashed with your sword to break them up into other power ups, letting you choose what you need when they drop. This game can be stupidly hard so having all the help you can get is welcomed.
There is one giant problem with this game though and that's the map system which is confusing as fuck and unless you have a guide you'll spend too much of the game lost as all hell. Honestly, I wouldn't play this game without a different map because the in game one is pure shit. Once you know where everything is (you know, after you've done it before) it's not as bad, but games shouldn't be designed around you already knowing what to do.
Playability
Some of the special moves you can do with your Biometals are a bit confusing and I recommend reading some sort of write up on gamefaqs about just what all your abilities are as the game itself doesn't really tell you. Besides the difficulty which even on easy can be relentless the game is mostly no problem to pick up and get going. If you've played a Mega Man game, or more recently a Zero game, you won't have many problems.
Extras
- Mission Order: I went straight from top to bottom each time I played and it works out well because the first stage has a Sub Tank in it. Trust me on this one, you'll need it.
- Talk to the towns people to get sub quests, sometimes they have nice rewards like the extender chip that increases your invincibility time after getting hit.
- On the bottom floor of the Guardians Base a reploid girl will sell you E-Tanks for 200 E-Crystals. There's no reason not to pick one of these up in case you need it for the tougher stages.
- Your spinning jump slash attack can rip enemies and bosses apart in a lot of situations. To execute it, hold up or down while attacking with the saber in mid air.
- After the game is over, you can go and fight Omega from Zero 3 and take a biometal from him for a new form. If you clear the game with both Vent and Aile you can keep Model X as well.
- If you own Zero 3 or Zero 4, stick it in the DS as well and you'll unlock the ability to fight those bosses in the game.
- There's a 1up in the Green door in town. This is a great place to stock up on lives before attempting a mission.
Mega Man ZX is a tough fucking game but so satisfying to play. If you're a Mega Man fan don't miss out on this one. If you're new to the franchise you'll find this one might just be a harsh introduction but still worth a play through. Get yourself a map and enjoy the tunes. If the difficulty is a bit too much for you, there is ZX Advent which is much easier until the final stage, but I personally think this game is better.
Playthroughs
N/A
Friday, October 16, 2009
The ZX Series
We've finally left the last generation of consoles 
behind for good and now are up to the current generation. Following up the Game Boy Advance's Mega Man Zero series is the Nintendo DS's Mega Man ZX series. 200 years or so into the future Reploids and humans have put together some ground rules. Reploids have to have life spans around 100 years or so, and humans are going to start integrating mechanical parts into their bodies so the distinguishing features between reploids and humans are going to start to blend a bit. You can still tell if a person is a reploid or not by a little mark on their forehead, but the difference between the to groups is virtually negligible.
Mega Man ZX is a very transitional series with the real intention behind it to tie Legends back to the main series. You have the seeds planted in Zero, and they are nurtured in ZX. We're going to find out where the Mega Men Units come from and we'll start to grasp how carbons came to be.
The series has had two antagonist per game, and all of them different people. The way the game goes is one of the characters will get a hold of a Biometal, which contains the soul data of the past heroes (X, Zero, the guardians). The biometals have the ability to merge with someone to take on the form of one of those heroes, as well as some unique ability they each possess. When merging with a Biometal, known as MEGA Merging, weapons will appear in the characters hands, they'll be able to dash and jump higher and the like.
As far as gameplay goes, it's very similar to the Zero series with a few extras mechanics and a more open world. Players have different forms to make use of at different times and they have their intended uses (although a lot of them aren't very good), and the series has some of the best music of the franchise hands down.
There's only two games in the series and so far no news on a third. I doubt the series is dead in the water, but Inti Creates got distracted with the new Mega Man 9 game and they're making some remix albums at the moment. I've said repeatedly that title for title Zero is the best series in the franchise, but that's only because this series is just starting. Hopefully we'll see a new game in this line very soon.
behind for good and now are up to the current generation. Following up the Game Boy Advance's Mega Man Zero series is the Nintendo DS's Mega Man ZX series. 200 years or so into the future Reploids and humans have put together some ground rules. Reploids have to have life spans around 100 years or so, and humans are going to start integrating mechanical parts into their bodies so the distinguishing features between reploids and humans are going to start to blend a bit. You can still tell if a person is a reploid or not by a little mark on their forehead, but the difference between the to groups is virtually negligible.Mega Man ZX is a very transitional series with the real intention behind it to tie Legends back to the main series. You have the seeds planted in Zero, and they are nurtured in ZX. We're going to find out where the Mega Men Units come from and we'll start to grasp how carbons came to be.
The series has had two antagonist per game, and all of them different people. The way the game goes is one of the characters will get a hold of a Biometal, which contains the soul data of the past heroes (X, Zero, the guardians). The biometals have the ability to merge with someone to take on the form of one of those heroes, as well as some unique ability they each possess. When merging with a Biometal, known as MEGA Merging, weapons will appear in the characters hands, they'll be able to dash and jump higher and the like.
As far as gameplay goes, it's very similar to the Zero series with a few extras mechanics and a more open world. Players have different forms to make use of at different times and they have their intended uses (although a lot of them aren't very good), and the series has some of the best music of the franchise hands down.
There's only two games in the series and so far no news on a third. I doubt the series is dead in the water, but Inti Creates got distracted with the new Mega Man 9 game and they're making some remix albums at the moment. I've said repeatedly that title for title Zero is the best series in the franchise, but that's only because this series is just starting. Hopefully we'll see a new game in this line very soon.
Mega Man Powered Up
It's undeniable that people have their prejudices against certain 
graphical styles or tones. Some people will never be caught dead playing Final Fantasy X2 because it's extremely feminine... others will buy it exclusively based on this. Others won't judge the game until they play it or hear a review and then will not buy it because it's a bad game... okay, if you like it more power to you, but I'm way off on a tangent here. Mega Man Powered Up is one of those games where the graphical style just very well might put off some gamers right away leaving them missing quite an enjoyable experience.
I don't hate these graphics myself, but I can easily see how a fan of the original NES games might be put off by them. I don't think the game looks as ridiculously cutesy once you get into the game as it does on the cover, but it still does to some degree. To those fans, all I can say is you will be missing out on a hell of a lot of content if you judge this solely on it's graphical style, but I don't think this will bother most of the more hardcore Mega Man fanbase, the ones who played Battle Network, Zero and the original classic and X games, pretty much anyone who bought Mega Man 8. For these fans, this game is a must own.
Story
Powered Up is a retelling of the original 1987 Mega Man game. Dr. Light built several robot masters to help with various functions of the world. One day the evil Dr. Wily kidnaps and reprograms some of Dr. Light's robots but leaves "Mega" and Roll behind because he considers them useless helper robots... Wait a minute? His name is "Mega?" Come on Capcom USA! His name is Rock even in the states! Even the god forsaken Ruby-Spears cartoon got that right! Oh well, why complain about something so minor?
Anyway "Rock" (I'm going to be bitter about it anyway) asks Dr. Light to make him into a Super Fighting Robot so he can stop Dr. Wily. Dr. Light reluctantly agrees and renames "Rock" Mega Man! Mega Man goes out and fights his brothers, Cut Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, Oil Man and Time Man... wait somethings not right there...
New to this remake, Capcom decided that 6 Robot Masters wasn't enough and gave us two more! Meet Time Man
, the precursor to Flash Man and Oil Man a big lipped... uh... black robot... hmmm... interesting that?
Anyway Mega Man tries to reason with each of his brothers but they've all been corrupted to much and he has to fight them. After beating them all Dr. Wily challenges Mega Man to settle this at Wily Castle! There, Mega Man is confronted with some of the first robots made specifically for war "The Yellow Devil" and a copy of himself. Finally he meets Wily in combat who regrets not reprogramming Mega Man when he had the chance. It was "The only mistake" he ever made in his life. I fucking love Dr. Wily in this game! Mega Man defeats Wily and he surren
ders and regrets everything he has done and has a change of heart and surely won't ever betray Dr. Light ever again and create 900 sequels!
Well that's the main story... but perhaps you were wondering what happened if say Elec Man was left behind instead... or if Proto Man came back and fought instead of Mega Man? Well consider this the "What If" episode of Mega Man 1 because those questions will be answered as you can play as the bosses and even Roll if you do certain things in the game. You'll even get to fight Mega Man? Pretty cool huh?
Aesthetics
As I said before obviously the style this game is going for could be a turn off to some gamers, but Capcom usually doesn't go out of it's way to widen it's demographics anyway, especially with the Mega Man series and I guess you have to admire that in a way. The graphics for what they are look pretty good with bright colors, good animation and interesting looking levels.
As this is a remake, most of the levels retain their original flavors and most of the enemies are the same guys we fought in the first game... although Capcom did decide to bring over the "Hot Heads" from Mega Man 2 and the Shield Attackers from Mega Man 4. The mettaurs themselves are more varied in appearance then they were in the original game as well.
The game features an "Old Style" mode which essentially copies the levels of the original game but keeps the new graphics.
Sound
These are all the original themes with updated quality on this sound track. Mega Man 1 had great music as it was some of these themes again. There's quite a few new tracks on here as well. After all, Mega Man 1 didn't have a title theme, and Time Man and Oil Man need their own tracks as well. I'm kind of sad this game didn't do so well financially because I would have killed to see Powered Up 2's take on Mega Man
2.
Every piece of dialog in this game is voice acted, and there's surprisingly a hell of a lot of it. First you have Mega Man talking to each boss, then you have the bosses response to Mega Man, then you have the bosses playing through the game speaking to Mega Man and the other bosses. There's a total of 11 playable characters (not counting variations on Roll and Mega Man), each with conversations with each other and the 4 other bosses in this game and each character has their own unique personalities and traits. Ice Man has personality disorder, Elec Man is conceited as all hell, Guts Man is a working He-Man and Fire Man is just fucking insane. You'll love all these characters, and once again the Ocean Group does a fantastic job of doing the voices for this game. No Mark Gatha or Lucas Gilbertson though for the X and Zero fans, but they weren't in this game anyway. Honestly, the sound is just about the best part of this game.
Design
The new levels keep the flavor of the originals without directly copying them. You'll get the annoying shooting platforms in Ice Man's stage, the flame jets in Fire Man's stage and the conveyor belt platforms in Guts Man's stage. They also feature alternate paths with hidden unlockable goodies you can pick up with the other boss characters that you can run through with. Of course if you don't like these levels you can always play the classics that are about 90% accurate to the originals.
On the bosses if you beat them with the Plasma Cannon only, Mega Man will take them home and have Dr. Light repair them and you'll be able to play them. Each boss has their own unique abilities ranging from extremely useful such as Elec Man and Fire Man, to harder but tolerable such as Cut Man or Guts Man, to fucking impossible such as Oil Man or Bomb Man. You can also use Roll if you download her from the games online database (she's a melee fighter) or Proto Man if you finish all the challenges.
And the challenges... oh the challenges. These are rom hack level designed dickhead
challenges that require the most pixel perfect precision in your controls you've ever had to master some of this shit. They're fun and challenging, but if you wanna save yourself some stress, just download Proto Man too.
Now on top of all this extra content, the game keeps track of everything. Each level has a hard/normal/easy difficulty and the stage and boss fights are affected to take into account what difficulty you are playing as. The game records if you have beaten a stage on every given difficulty, as every character and records your percentage. It literally says somewhere around 460 something levels to beat (every character, every difficulty) to get 100%. Not only that, but it keeps track of high scores and times, even giving you target times to beat. For the truly masochists, the game even keeps track on if you beat a level without getting hit and with each character as well. Fuck, this game could take forever if you truly wanted to complete it.
Even after you do all of that, and complete all the challenges... well, you can make your own levels or download other ones different players have made, and some of these tile sets aren't even used in the normal game. I'm talking Christmas and Halloween themes, a ghouls and ghost theme, a power stone theme! The level creator is pretty advanced, although you won't be able to make anything quite as elaborate as the normal game, but you can make levels that have a stage boss you select or allow for you to play as a certain boss.
As far as hand held games go, this is perfect in the sense that you can always keep this game on hand for your gaming needs for the PSP and always be making some progress with it and never quite finish it. The levels are great for taking a few minutes to bust out a level, then put your PSP away and get on with your life. Speaking as a college student myself, I never leave home without Powered Up anymore.
Playability
No problem with Mega Man. No charging and sliding at first, but you can unlock these abilities. The weapons work just like they do in the original game... and are about as useful meaning Elec Beam kicks ass and everything else sucks. They did go out of their way to make Super Arm slightly better, but not much.
Playing on bosses on the other hand is all over the place. As a general rule you can take down the guy whose weakness you have no problem, but the guy you are weak to is a fucking nightmare to take down. If you've got a character with an extremely weak weapon, such as Oil Man, whose weapon works by firing one shot on the ground and sliding (you can only have one shot on screen at a time and it takes forever to go away), you're going to have to learn how to dodge, there is no way around it.
Generally though when I'm playing as a boss, what I want to see is the dialog between the two bosses, so I don't pull my hair out I play on easy with the more pain in the ass bosses.
I don't want to complain to much about how tough playing as some of these bosses are because the truth of the matter is this is all bonus content and not required to beat the main game, and the truth is this is a fun game.
Extra
Powered Up is a fantastic game and while I don't own many PSP games, this is my favorite out of the library. You can't go wrong in getting this title even if Mega Man isn't your favorite game series like it is mine. Unfortunately though Powered Up wasn't a huge financial success for Capcom, and we probably won't see another one. You can get this one off of PSN very soon so keep a look out for it!
Playthroughs
Speed Run by Chris 'Satoryu' Kirk
graphical styles or tones. Some people will never be caught dead playing Final Fantasy X2 because it's extremely feminine... others will buy it exclusively based on this. Others won't judge the game until they play it or hear a review and then will not buy it because it's a bad game... okay, if you like it more power to you, but I'm way off on a tangent here. Mega Man Powered Up is one of those games where the graphical style just very well might put off some gamers right away leaving them missing quite an enjoyable experience.I don't hate these graphics myself, but I can easily see how a fan of the original NES games might be put off by them. I don't think the game looks as ridiculously cutesy once you get into the game as it does on the cover, but it still does to some degree. To those fans, all I can say is you will be missing out on a hell of a lot of content if you judge this solely on it's graphical style, but I don't think this will bother most of the more hardcore Mega Man fanbase, the ones who played Battle Network, Zero and the original classic and X games, pretty much anyone who bought Mega Man 8. For these fans, this game is a must own.
Story
Powered Up is a retelling of the original 1987 Mega Man game. Dr. Light built several robot masters to help with various functions of the world. One day the evil Dr. Wily kidnaps and reprograms some of Dr. Light's robots but leaves "Mega" and Roll behind because he considers them useless helper robots... Wait a minute? His name is "Mega?" Come on Capcom USA! His name is Rock even in the states! Even the god forsaken Ruby-Spears cartoon got that right! Oh well, why complain about something so minor?
Anyway "Rock" (I'm going to be bitter about it anyway) asks Dr. Light to make him into a Super Fighting Robot so he can stop Dr. Wily. Dr. Light reluctantly agrees and renames "Rock" Mega Man! Mega Man goes out and fights his brothers, Cut Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, Oil Man and Time Man... wait somethings not right there...
New to this remake, Capcom decided that 6 Robot Masters wasn't enough and gave us two more! Meet Time Man
, the precursor to Flash Man and Oil Man a big lipped... uh... black robot... hmmm... interesting that?Anyway Mega Man tries to reason with each of his brothers but they've all been corrupted to much and he has to fight them. After beating them all Dr. Wily challenges Mega Man to settle this at Wily Castle! There, Mega Man is confronted with some of the first robots made specifically for war "The Yellow Devil" and a copy of himself. Finally he meets Wily in combat who regrets not reprogramming Mega Man when he had the chance. It was "The only mistake" he ever made in his life. I fucking love Dr. Wily in this game! Mega Man defeats Wily and he surren
ders and regrets everything he has done and has a change of heart and surely won't ever betray Dr. Light ever again and create 900 sequels!Well that's the main story... but perhaps you were wondering what happened if say Elec Man was left behind instead... or if Proto Man came back and fought instead of Mega Man? Well consider this the "What If" episode of Mega Man 1 because those questions will be answered as you can play as the bosses and even Roll if you do certain things in the game. You'll even get to fight Mega Man? Pretty cool huh?
Aesthetics
As I said before obviously the style this game is going for could be a turn off to some gamers, but Capcom usually doesn't go out of it's way to widen it's demographics anyway, especially with the Mega Man series and I guess you have to admire that in a way. The graphics for what they are look pretty good with bright colors, good animation and interesting looking levels.
As this is a remake, most of the levels retain their original flavors and most of the enemies are the same guys we fought in the first game... although Capcom did decide to bring over the "Hot Heads" from Mega Man 2 and the Shield Attackers from Mega Man 4. The mettaurs themselves are more varied in appearance then they were in the original game as well.The game features an "Old Style" mode which essentially copies the levels of the original game but keeps the new graphics.
Sound
These are all the original themes with updated quality on this sound track. Mega Man 1 had great music as it was some of these themes again. There's quite a few new tracks on here as well. After all, Mega Man 1 didn't have a title theme, and Time Man and Oil Man need their own tracks as well. I'm kind of sad this game didn't do so well financially because I would have killed to see Powered Up 2's take on Mega Man
2.Every piece of dialog in this game is voice acted, and there's surprisingly a hell of a lot of it. First you have Mega Man talking to each boss, then you have the bosses response to Mega Man, then you have the bosses playing through the game speaking to Mega Man and the other bosses. There's a total of 11 playable characters (not counting variations on Roll and Mega Man), each with conversations with each other and the 4 other bosses in this game and each character has their own unique personalities and traits. Ice Man has personality disorder, Elec Man is conceited as all hell, Guts Man is a working He-Man and Fire Man is just fucking insane. You'll love all these characters, and once again the Ocean Group does a fantastic job of doing the voices for this game. No Mark Gatha or Lucas Gilbertson though for the X and Zero fans, but they weren't in this game anyway. Honestly, the sound is just about the best part of this game.
Design
The new levels keep the flavor of the originals without directly copying them. You'll get the annoying shooting platforms in Ice Man's stage, the flame jets in Fire Man's stage and the conveyor belt platforms in Guts Man's stage. They also feature alternate paths with hidden unlockable goodies you can pick up with the other boss characters that you can run through with. Of course if you don't like these levels you can always play the classics that are about 90% accurate to the originals.
On the bosses if you beat them with the Plasma Cannon only, Mega Man will take them home and have Dr. Light repair them and you'll be able to play them. Each boss has their own unique abilities ranging from extremely useful such as Elec Man and Fire Man, to harder but tolerable such as Cut Man or Guts Man, to fucking impossible such as Oil Man or Bomb Man. You can also use Roll if you download her from the games online database (she's a melee fighter) or Proto Man if you finish all the challenges.And the challenges... oh the challenges. These are rom hack level designed dickhead
challenges that require the most pixel perfect precision in your controls you've ever had to master some of this shit. They're fun and challenging, but if you wanna save yourself some stress, just download Proto Man too.Now on top of all this extra content, the game keeps track of everything. Each level has a hard/normal/easy difficulty and the stage and boss fights are affected to take into account what difficulty you are playing as. The game records if you have beaten a stage on every given difficulty, as every character and records your percentage. It literally says somewhere around 460 something levels to beat (every character, every difficulty) to get 100%. Not only that, but it keeps track of high scores and times, even giving you target times to beat. For the truly masochists, the game even keeps track on if you beat a level without getting hit and with each character as well. Fuck, this game could take forever if you truly wanted to complete it.
Even after you do all of that, and complete all the challenges... well, you can make your own levels or download other ones different players have made, and some of these tile sets aren't even used in the normal game. I'm talking Christmas and Halloween themes, a ghouls and ghost theme, a power stone theme! The level creator is pretty advanced, although you won't be able to make anything quite as elaborate as the normal game, but you can make levels that have a stage boss you select or allow for you to play as a certain boss.
As far as hand held games go, this is perfect in the sense that you can always keep this game on hand for your gaming needs for the PSP and always be making some progress with it and never quite finish it. The levels are great for taking a few minutes to bust out a level, then put your PSP away and get on with your life. Speaking as a college student myself, I never leave home without Powered Up anymore.
Playability
No problem with Mega Man. No charging and sliding at first, but you can unlock these abilities. The weapons work just like they do in the original game... and are about as useful meaning Elec Beam kicks ass and everything else sucks. They did go out of their way to make Super Arm slightly better, but not much.
Playing on bosses on the other hand is all over the place. As a general rule you can take down the guy whose weakness you have no problem, but the guy you are weak to is a fucking nightmare to take down. If you've got a character with an extremely weak weapon, such as Oil Man, whose weapon works by firing one shot on the ground and sliding (you can only have one shot on screen at a time and it takes forever to go away), you're going to have to learn how to dodge, there is no way around it.
Generally though when I'm playing as a boss, what I want to see is the dialog between the two bosses, so I don't pull my hair out I play on easy with the more pain in the ass bosses.
I don't want to complain to much about how tough playing as some of these bosses are because the truth of the matter is this is all bonus content and not required to beat the main game, and the truth is this is a fun game.
Extra
- Boss Order: Different this time from the first game unless you are playing on Old Style. I still start with Bomb Man myself but the weakness order is... Bomb Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, Oil Man, Elec Man, Time Man, Guts Man, Cut Man. The game changes a lot depending on who you are playing as though and you don't get different weapons as the boss characters so the boss order might not be so important.
- The boss rush can be really difficult your first time through. Here's a tip, don't take checkpoint flag by the bosses. There is a respawning extra life on the way to the boss rush and it keeps your progress if you die on one of them. Die and get an extra life back and you'll make it through this level just fine.
- Out of all the bosses, Fire Man is just about fucking stupid in how difficult he is and no where else is this more apparent than Old Style in the boss rush. Practice Practice Practice.
- You may be wondering where the Magnet Beam is. It's exclusive to Old style.
Powered Up is a fantastic game and while I don't own many PSP games, this is my favorite out of the library. You can't go wrong in getting this title even if Mega Man isn't your favorite game series like it is mine. Unfortunately though Powered Up wasn't a huge financial success for Capcom, and we probably won't see another one. You can get this one off of PSN very soon so keep a look out for it!
Playthroughs
Speed Run by Chris 'Satoryu' Kirk
Thursday, October 15, 2009
X Collections and Some Exe Games
Mega Man really has toned down the ridiculous amounts of fringe miscellaneous games and this year we only have two games I can't review and a collections game which I wouldn't really need to review. Let's get started.
Mega Man X Collections
Can you ask for a better deal than Mega Man X1 - X6? What? Mega Man X1 = X8? Hey, those games were still for sale at the time... hell you can still get them for like $10 for both of them and pick up collections for $15 or so I think and you're still paying way less than when these games came out. Considering how fantastic these games really are apart, getting them all together can only be that much better. In addition to this, you'll also get Mega Man Battle And Chase as a bonus... well it's the thought that counts really. If you don't already own all these games, pick this up. If you do own each individual game and they haven't shitted out on you by now, I wouldn't say all the bonus content of concept art and a few remixed songs are enough to buy them again, but the price is right.
Rockman.exe Battle Chip Stadium (Arcade)
Another exe arcade within a year? This thing links up with the Link PET toy and lets you insert battle chips you can buy into it. If you win some fights, it dispense more battle chips! It never came to the US, but it would be cool to get a nice collection of those chips as souvenirs. They were taken out of circulation this year, but if you go to Japan you might have a chance to play it still.
Rockman.exe Legend of the Network (Cell Phone)
Another pseudo Battle Network game for the phones and a bit of a sequel to Phantom of the Network. I suppose this is the actual last Battle Network game that ever came out until now, but once again it's Japanese only. The plot focuses around some dude named RaiderMan.exe and his operator unleashing a new virus on the public. I'm not sure when this game takes place in the time line if it does at all, but I don't think it takes place after 6. There isn't a lot of information on this game, not even on Mechanical Maniacs. Hopefully these games will one day be playable to a US audience.
And that's it for the miscellaneous games for 2006!
Mega Man X Collections
Can you ask for a better deal than Mega Man X1 - X6? What? Mega Man X1 = X8? Hey, those games were still for sale at the time... hell you can still get them for like $10 for both of them and pick up collections for $15 or so I think and you're still paying way less than when these games came out. Considering how fantastic these games really are apart, getting them all together can only be that much better. In addition to this, you'll also get Mega Man Battle And Chase as a bonus... well it's the thought that counts really. If you don't already own all these games, pick this up. If you do own each individual game and they haven't shitted out on you by now, I wouldn't say all the bonus content of concept art and a few remixed songs are enough to buy them again, but the price is right.
Rockman.exe Battle Chip Stadium (Arcade)
Another exe arcade within a year? This thing links up with the Link PET toy and lets you insert battle chips you can buy into it. If you win some fights, it dispense more battle chips! It never came to the US, but it would be cool to get a nice collection of those chips as souvenirs. They were taken out of circulation this year, but if you go to Japan you might have a chance to play it still.
Rockman.exe Legend of the Network (Cell Phone)
Another pseudo Battle Network game for the phones and a bit of a sequel to Phantom of the Network. I suppose this is the actual last Battle Network game that ever came out until now, but once again it's Japanese only. The plot focuses around some dude named RaiderMan.exe and his operator unleashing a new virus on the public. I'm not sure when this game takes place in the time line if it does at all, but I don't think it takes place after 6. There isn't a lot of information on this game, not even on Mechanical Maniacs. Hopefully these games will one day be playable to a US audience.
And that's it for the miscellaneous games for 2006!
The Future of Mega Man Zero
The future of the Zero series lies with the ZX series which is 
the furthest along in the Mega Man time-line of the current running series. With Zero's presumed death and ZX running right now, it doesn't seem very likely we'll see another game in this series.
Zero and ZX have the distinctions of only having games related directly to the time-line. There's no cell phone mini games, no misadventures of Fighting Fenrir, no ZX History Quiz Adventure. It's been 4 years since we had a new Zero game, and not a single Zero game made a transition to a new platform so I really doubt we'll ever see this series continue.
That said, years down the line we could see remakes, re-release package deals for new systems, maybe a Mega Man Zero Anniversary collection some time down the line? It should be noted that no where has it been officially stated that Zero had died from the Ragnarok crash, not even in the ZX series. I think the reason for this is to give the developers an out if they do decide to make another Zero game. You never know, the game could get re-released, do really well, and Capcom could flat out demand another one. Battle Network has been out of commission just as long as Zero and it could be on the verge of a come back in a series of DS games, so it's really hard to just write off this series for good. I wouldn't get my hopes up though, and frankly I think the ending of Zero 4 is just a bit more heroic if Zero sacrificed himself in it. If you do want one last memento of the series, pick up the Mega Man Zero Complete Works book, an excellent look into the artwork of the series.
the furthest along in the Mega Man time-line of the current running series. With Zero's presumed death and ZX running right now, it doesn't seem very likely we'll see another game in this series.Zero and ZX have the distinctions of only having games related directly to the time-line. There's no cell phone mini games, no misadventures of Fighting Fenrir, no ZX History Quiz Adventure. It's been 4 years since we had a new Zero game, and not a single Zero game made a transition to a new platform so I really doubt we'll ever see this series continue.
That said, years down the line we could see remakes, re-release package deals for new systems, maybe a Mega Man Zero Anniversary collection some time down the line? It should be noted that no where has it been officially stated that Zero had died from the Ragnarok crash, not even in the ZX series. I think the reason for this is to give the developers an out if they do decide to make another Zero game. You never know, the game could get re-released, do really well, and Capcom could flat out demand another one. Battle Network has been out of commission just as long as Zero and it could be on the verge of a come back in a series of DS games, so it's really hard to just write off this series for good. I wouldn't get my hopes up though, and frankly I think the ending of Zero 4 is just a bit more heroic if Zero sacrificed himself in it. If you do want one last memento of the series, pick up the Mega Man Zero Complete Works book, an excellent look into the artwork of the series.
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