Kickstarter games can be controversial. For new developers, it's great to resort to crowdfunding, hoping to get the necessary funds to make your game a reality. We've seen some successes before, but sometimes these success stories can spiral down quickly when diving into the meat of development issues and release, causing hype and anticipation that swiftly change to disappointment, and this was no more apparent than with Mighty No. 9. Keiji Inafune's spiritual successor to Mega Man after he departed from Capcom in 2010, and there was a reason to be hyped for it. Being a Mega Man in the early 2010s was bleak after witnessing a multitude of cancellations left to right and was laid dormant for a while, so this was a great opportunity to fill that void. I think most of us know about the Kickstarter debacle, so I'll spare you the details. If you want to learn more about the development history, I'll leave these two links down below.

https://youtu.be/snmGTtyELkQ?si=BPlDbvB084CCYrw3
https://youtu.be/kCIYMPfDQW4?si=jlGh05pE7r2LGI-u

The gameplay is your typical Mega Man fare, you jump and you shoot, and also has a dash, so there's a bit of Mega Man X in there too. What I want to touch on is the new absorption mechanic that was featured in that masterful trailer that Deep Silver squirted out onto YouTube. When an enemy is weakened, Beck can dash into a foe and absorb it, displaying a percentage number on the screen, and can utilize this ability to rack up combos. It is also obligatory to use it on bosses to ransack their health; some are more annoying than others without their proper weaknesses (specifically Mighty No. 1-8) but after some trial and error, they aren't too bad to take down.

The level design is... fine, but it's so boring and basic to traverse through that I don't find any stage in the game to be memorable. They're mostly just straight lines that you can just infinitely dash through (and sometimes break certain areas) to reach the boss room, there's just nothing to it. The stage environments look bland as hell and the same can be said with its presentation. There's something about it that feels cheap and lifeless, and you can probably see the budget cuts. The characters and cutscenes are also uneventful as they revolve around them standing around spewing dialogue and changing expressions without any lip flaps whatsoever or being devoid of personality like Call. That's pretty much all I can say about this game, so I'll wrap this up.

Mighty No. 9 isn't a bad game, it's just not a good spiritual successor to Mega Man, but I think it should be remembered as a cautionary tale to those looking into game development and crowdfunding. This is a prime example of a producer being overly ambitious with its goals and not being able to deliver on all of them. Inafune shot for the moon and instead went down and destroyed the Mighty No. 9 brand, which is a shame.

So, when Garten of BanBan 3 was releasing, I didn't think it was going to be good at all, I thought it was going to get worse, the low point was BanBan 2, and BanBan 1 was pretty mediocre. I was scared that BanBan 3 would become the worst, and as this series goes on, it'll get worse and worse.

I didn't even play this game on launch day, and when I finally bought it to play it, it took me a day to get through it, which is the longest a BanBan game has ever took. So, I was surprised when this was better than BanBan 2 and BanBan 1.

Doesn't mean that it is a good game, it's very generic as well. But, it does exceed above the previous 2 entries. It just, again, feels very generic. Very tropey. Very Mascot Horror. The gameplay is the fucking same. None of the games innovate and change their own gameplay. It's all the same shit about drones, and throwing them into buttons, so you can get through a door.

I don't really care for the story they are going for, it's almost non-existant. They just feed you tidbits of information, of what is going on here, just so people can make theories about it, and by not giving much, it creates more theories when you give just a tiny bit more story. And if you do that method, do 2 lines of story, a bunch of theories pop up. And you can continue that train, for however long these games go on for.

The villain, Stinger Flynn, who I don't even fucking know if he is the main villain, because I assumed BanBan would be the villain, but he ended up helping you. So, no fucking clue on Stinger Flynn. And Flynn's voice acting is just so plain and bad, you can hear the person voicing him, which is probably one of the 2 developers, just not giving a shit about this character, and not trying. Or maybe he is, but he's just not good.

A positive I will say, is the Jumbo Josh Lounge segment. Where you get placed there with Jumbo Josh, and you have to break yourself out of this lounge, but Josh does routine checks probably every minute and a half, so you have to place everything back the way it was. This is actually done decent, even if it does remind me of the RE7 Bedroom sequence, but nonetheless, it isn't terrible.

Overall: 5/10

Rhythm platforming is a great idea. There's none I've played that quite feels the same as this and having the dual standard movement plus rhythm controlled movement were a good combo.

If you can get in a good groove and properly anticipate your next actions, it feels like one of the most satisfying rhythm games I've played. It doesn't feel great at all times, I wish there was better telegraphing of tempo changes and the like since you have to pay attention to multiple parts of the screen with strong focus.

It's difficult in a way that's very fun, and it also is successfully forgiving in a way that doesn't cheapen it. It feels a bit budget in some of the presentation(and localization), but I think it's unevenness in polish feels refreshing a bit. This was left field game with a strong core and all the necessary bits to keep that core afloat. The story is pretty good overall too, even if the dialogue and localization can be a bit off at times. It also just had Game Story syndrome where there wasn't great justification for some of it, and a lot of depth that could have been was absent.

The animations are pretty basic but the art is very pretty. I love all the designs including the UI for the most part.

Wonderful little game, shame it isn't natively available on PC.