WhyGamesMatter

Summary

When I saw Mario 64 for the first time, I was very impressed. I began thinking of other games that would be great with a similar engine, and Megaman was at the top of my list. Low and behold, a few years later it hit the shelf.

While there were some aspects that I did not like, the game, taken as a whole, was solid. But it was WAY to short! It took me less than 9 hours to beat this game, and I am not a very strong player. Some of the opponents were too easy to kill, and the game was too “kiddy” oriented.

The biggest drawback, however, was the deviation from the original concept. In the old Megaman, you would travel through a boss’s world, jump and shoot to beat it, and then defeat the boss. Upon defeating the boss, YOU GOT HIS POWER. I was really looking forward to seeing what a whole array of powers would look like in a 3D environment. Instead, I got a little boy digging through garbage cans, treasure chests, and holes to get common things for Roll to put together. It’s like “home shoplifting network” meets “McGuyver.”

I know that it seems like I have a lot of gripes for someone who likes the game, but I was just expecting more. If you never played the old Megaman games, you will probably not be disappointed. If this game would have been called anything other than “Megaman”, I would have been happy with it.

Sound

Silly script. Not bad, just silly. On the whole, however, the sound was slightly better than mediocre.

Gameplay

FANTASTIC!!! This is the strongest game engine that I have ever played with. Not only do you have total control of the character, you have complete control of the camera (though indirectly, since rotating the camera will also rotate the direction Megaman’s movement if you don’t compensate). The only way that I can imagine someone not liking this system is if they don’t like to use the shoulder buttons. Often I would just hold the joystick forward and turn using the shoulder buttons. The aiming system was great, too.