So how about that new Mega Man game? Everyone’s getting excited for it. There’s even a demo available. It’s great to see Capcom pulling their heads out of their asses with Mega Man and actually addressing their audience for once. We could use that with a lot more of their other franchises. But for now, I’m glad to see Mega Man fans getting a bone for once.
That said, I still don’t like legacy Mega Man.
I’ve expressed my distain for NES-hard sidescrollers before. I’m not denying how influential some of these games have been. Unfortunately, a lot of these “classics” haven’t really aged that well in my eyes. And games like Mega Man represent some of the worst aspects of that era. IE, pixel-precise movements being required almost all the damn time, levels and attack patterns that require future vision to predict on the first try (if they even have patterns), the overly-punishing lives systems, and just generally being obnoxiously difficult to pad out the microscopic runtime. In other words, a Mega Man game.
But hey, I played the Mega Man 11 demo to give it another shot…and then immediately blew it off after I ran out of lives. While the Double Gear system is interesting, this is still just another Mega Man game for me. IE, not fun.
I went back and played Mega Man 2 on my 3DS for comparison, another game I blew off out of frustration. To its credit, the level design is pretty intuitive and the equipment you get all have great uses. The movement controls are a hell of a lot better than Super Mario Bros, that’s for sure. But it’s still a Mega Man game, so there will always be a bit of obnoxious difficulty here and there. Thank fuck for save states, or I never would’ve had the patience to get past any of it.
Still, I’m glad that the franchise is coming back. I’ve long since accepted that these games just aren’t for me in the same way that Metal Gear Solid, most first-person shooters, and all horror games aren’t for me.
The Battle Network games were pretty fun, though.
Here’s what you guys wrote this week.
And remember: the early bird may get the worm, but the early worm gets the bird. With a bazooka.
-Zalno