Skylanders Swap Force is, in my personal opinion, the peak of the Skylanders franchise up to this point. Offering a unique twist on the figures with swappable bodys, that does substantially more to the game play and intrigue then the simply bigger characters seen with giants. As well, the overall experience has simple been upgraded in everyway gameplay wise. The addition of a jump button being a core addition that works to completely reinvent the complexity of the levels, combined with next gen graphics making the game look quite good. Overall Swap Force is quite good, being still, at the end of the day, a children beat it up. It can really only be as good as it can be, but it is quite well made for what it is.

Played as part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Nintendo GameCube.

I know I've made the "this is the most Mega Man" joke before, but damn, Mega Man 5 really is the most Mega Man a Mega Man has been. There's almost nothing new here, even the bait-and-switch with Proto Man is expected, and following his tower with Wily's is by this point a little tired. Mega Man 5 feels strained by a lack of creative ambition, its development largely guided by the principal that every good idea for a Mega Man game has already been used, but hey, gotta crank out another one of these because they sell.

I'm not saying Mega Man 5 is bad, but it is hard to talk about what makes it good without regurgitating talking points from past reviews. It's competent and it looks sharp, as you'd expect from a series five games deep and launching this late in the NES' lifespan. Everything plays smoothly, and the difficulty has been toned down overall outside of a few poorly balanced areas. 5's only real innovation is the inclusion of Beat, a robotic bird that homes in on enemies, which can only be unlocked by collecting hidden letters that spell out MEGAMAN5. Compared to the likes of Rush, the slide, or the charge shot, Beat feels a bit underwhelming, but at least the effort it takes to unlock him is rather minimal outside of two particularly tricky letters.

Speaking of the charge shot, it's now more powerful and larger than before. This has the unfortunate side effect of trivializing most of the weapon powers. When I started this journey, I set the expectation for myself that I would use different powers more often while playing through levels, but in Mega Man 5 I felt straight up disincentivized in doing so. This is especially apparent when fighting bosses, who - similar to the Robot Masters in Mega Man 4 - require a bit more effort to defeat than simply spamming their weaknesses. That is unless you use the charge shot, which is so effective that exploiting boss weaknesses becomes wholly unnecessary. Using weapon powers actually feels like giving yourself a handicap, which is the opposite of how it should be.

But hey, it's fine. It's fine! Mega Man is a good boy, I still want to give Rush a treat and a few scratches behind his ears, and I'd like to take Beat home with me and teach him swear words. Mega Man 5 just feels like a reheated meal. It's not as good as when you pulled it out of the oven but it's still fulfilling. Yeah, that's a very dull analogy, I put about as much thought into it as Capcom did making Mega Man 5.

GOTTEM!

I am struggling to think of another game so bereft of passion that turned out to be otherwise fine. It is so uninspired yet inoffensive, the video game version of that hanger-on in your friend group who the rest of you barely recognize, who has done nothing wrong yet does so little to make their presence known that they are practically a living ghost. Apparently they had to bring back the guy who invented the charge shot (Hayato Kaji) because the project was rudderless, adrift with zero idea of where to go and what to do. Inafune even had trouble conceptualizing how to color the game. And despite being so creatively bottomed out it's... good? What even are you, Mega Man 5?

protoman is certainly not the only character with nothing to him who became extremely popular only by looking cool but he might be the funniest? dude is just not in these games but we all love him. and rightfully so! look at him! he rules! i love protoman!

and i love mega man 5? this one is sick idk what everybody else is talking about??? i mean sure idk that anything here is series high outside of the visuals (this is easily one of the best looking NES games i've ever seen), but it's really consistent, which i think is fffffffine.

people say the mega buster is too powerful in this game and this is true but i would prefer that to weapons being underpowered and bad-feeling, which has been the case in previous games. i think the boss weapons are pretty good too, another consistent spread, maybe my favorite in the series so far. we're definitely at a point in this series where it's hard to come up with new stuff, and there's a mix of old standbys and fresh shit that uhhhh, well, some are better than others, but a valiant effort for this deep in the series.

anyway this game is unfairly maligned i think, i had a great time. it's got fuckin charge man dude! charge man rules. you see that guy? get outta town. love charge man.