X-PLOSIVE GAMEPLAY.
X-TREME GRAPHICS.
MEGA MAN X4!
Fucking sick back of the box copy. Nintendo hire this man. Etc. It’s true though, X4 has a lot going for it, X-ADJECTIVES being mostly attributable to the X-THIRTY-TWO BIT PROCESSING POWER of the series’ new primary home at the Sony Playstation, which can handle the ambitions of the X series’ level design a lot more ably than the SNES. I’m not IN LOVE with the 32 aesthetic these games have adopted. I feel that there is a degree of homogenization in capcom’s 32-bit sprite work in the 90s and this art style, while beautifully rendered and artfully executed, is generally a downgrade from the look of the SNES trilogy.
HOWEVER. However. I’ve been. Pretty hard. On the stories of these games. Because they are awful and stupid and not really in a funny way. That all changes here. X4 is just as stupid as all of these but it has two HUGE things going for it: first, this is the first one of these that seems like it’s even REMOTELY aware of the social dynamics of the world they’ve created and while they don’t do much of anything with that and is some increasing toe-dipping into the “all the violence in the world is due to an evil computer virus and not the violent injustice baked into our social order” but for most of it this is on the back burner to this is I think the most successful outing for one of these so far, plot-wise. The other thing is the thing this game is most memetically famous for which is that it’s inherited Mega Man 8’s anime cutscenes and completely UNHINGED voice acting, something which would be funny enough on its own but is WAY BETTER given how incredibly poe-faced and self-serious this game is. The X games have always tickled me for having the exact same ending every time, with a closing narration where Mega Man ruminates on some empty philosophy re: his place in the social order and the killing he will surely be forced to visit upon his peers in the future, but X4 extends this sophomore-in-highschool existentialism to boss dialogue, between-stage cutscenes, and of course its infamous anime segments. It’s not just those, though, they’re funny all the way around. The sheer ineptitude of the production never stops tickling no matter how many times they try to cram a very long sentence into a very short lip flap. It’s basically all gold. I love it.
This stuff is all secondary to the actual play of the game, though, right, we like to play Mega Man around here, and I think this is a really good one of those. Like this game’s immediate follow-up, Mega Man & Bass, there’s a split campaign here, but unlike that game these levels feel designed pretty well around both playable characters. There’s more immediate deviation between them too, with X playing as he always have and Zero being pretty much the same but with a sword instead of a gun. They diverge more as they collect boss upgrades, Zero evolving into the same flavor of simple action game character that a lot of the robot masters in this one feel like. The characters share largely the same navigational verbs, and only branch out from each other in combat, which makes getting around the levels easier for both of them than it was & Bass, which I think clearly has Bass in mind in its main design and Man in mind for its secrets. Here both characters fair equally well, and only the order you might tackle levels and acquire upgrades affects your path and the frequency with which you may need to revisit levels.
The levels themselves are the most coherently designed since the first game, too, and I think they take a lot of design cues from that one as well. There are really discretely designed chunks to these levels and even though they stick to familiar themes (OVERLY familiar, perhaps – just a volcano or just a forest seem more at home in the classic series than X) there’s a LOT of cool shit packed into each level. You’ll get collapsing platforms, disappearing platforms, gimmicky slide segments and more packed into the ice level alongside segments where you have to be careful to only destroy enough of the terrain to progress without also destroying the path you need to walk on. Most of the levels have a lot going on like this, and even the ones that don’t usually don’t in service of more variation on the typical Mega Man formulas – a cyberspace-themed stage is comprised of three speedrunning challenges populated by enemies that only impair your movement rather than pose a serious threat to your character, and while there may seem at first blush to be two vaguely water-themed levels, one of them is entirely a side scrolling vehicle segment after years of flirting with the concept in prior installments.
Some might say that these inclusions dilute the length and challenge of the game, especially given that this is the shortest and limpest set of final levels and bosses in the entire series so far (typically a meaty portion of these games, almost as much as half the length in a lot of them, and barely a footnote here), but I don’t mind it; I’ve played eleven Mega Man games and I welcome the variety on display. It’s fun to try new things this deep into it and have them feel so successful. The challenge in general is definitely diluted here but I don’t mind that either when that means that the difficulty has gone down from Mega Man’s standard of Very Demanding to Reasonably Smooth. There’s room for a more relaxed Mega Man Experience in my book and the four hours or so I spent across my two playthroughs were just that, without much pressure to find all the upgrades or make sure I was always fully stocked on lives and e-tanks just to scrape my way through the endgame. Call me casual but I welcome these vibes.
I don’t know what these games look like moving forward, I’ve literally never heard a single peep about X5, and all I know about 6-8 is that they are generally disliked-to-hated? I THINK? But this is about as rock-solid a reintroduction as you could as for, especially for a series as tumultuous as Mega Man X. Really nothing more to say one it, sometimes games' reputations are just spot-on.
X-TREME GRAPHICS.
MEGA MAN X4!
Fucking sick back of the box copy. Nintendo hire this man. Etc. It’s true though, X4 has a lot going for it, X-ADJECTIVES being mostly attributable to the X-THIRTY-TWO BIT PROCESSING POWER of the series’ new primary home at the Sony Playstation, which can handle the ambitions of the X series’ level design a lot more ably than the SNES. I’m not IN LOVE with the 32 aesthetic these games have adopted. I feel that there is a degree of homogenization in capcom’s 32-bit sprite work in the 90s and this art style, while beautifully rendered and artfully executed, is generally a downgrade from the look of the SNES trilogy.
HOWEVER. However. I’ve been. Pretty hard. On the stories of these games. Because they are awful and stupid and not really in a funny way. That all changes here. X4 is just as stupid as all of these but it has two HUGE things going for it: first, this is the first one of these that seems like it’s even REMOTELY aware of the social dynamics of the world they’ve created and while they don’t do much of anything with that and is some increasing toe-dipping into the “all the violence in the world is due to an evil computer virus and not the violent injustice baked into our social order” but for most of it this is on the back burner to this is I think the most successful outing for one of these so far, plot-wise. The other thing is the thing this game is most memetically famous for which is that it’s inherited Mega Man 8’s anime cutscenes and completely UNHINGED voice acting, something which would be funny enough on its own but is WAY BETTER given how incredibly poe-faced and self-serious this game is. The X games have always tickled me for having the exact same ending every time, with a closing narration where Mega Man ruminates on some empty philosophy re: his place in the social order and the killing he will surely be forced to visit upon his peers in the future, but X4 extends this sophomore-in-highschool existentialism to boss dialogue, between-stage cutscenes, and of course its infamous anime segments. It’s not just those, though, they’re funny all the way around. The sheer ineptitude of the production never stops tickling no matter how many times they try to cram a very long sentence into a very short lip flap. It’s basically all gold. I love it.
This stuff is all secondary to the actual play of the game, though, right, we like to play Mega Man around here, and I think this is a really good one of those. Like this game’s immediate follow-up, Mega Man & Bass, there’s a split campaign here, but unlike that game these levels feel designed pretty well around both playable characters. There’s more immediate deviation between them too, with X playing as he always have and Zero being pretty much the same but with a sword instead of a gun. They diverge more as they collect boss upgrades, Zero evolving into the same flavor of simple action game character that a lot of the robot masters in this one feel like. The characters share largely the same navigational verbs, and only branch out from each other in combat, which makes getting around the levels easier for both of them than it was & Bass, which I think clearly has Bass in mind in its main design and Man in mind for its secrets. Here both characters fair equally well, and only the order you might tackle levels and acquire upgrades affects your path and the frequency with which you may need to revisit levels.
The levels themselves are the most coherently designed since the first game, too, and I think they take a lot of design cues from that one as well. There are really discretely designed chunks to these levels and even though they stick to familiar themes (OVERLY familiar, perhaps – just a volcano or just a forest seem more at home in the classic series than X) there’s a LOT of cool shit packed into each level. You’ll get collapsing platforms, disappearing platforms, gimmicky slide segments and more packed into the ice level alongside segments where you have to be careful to only destroy enough of the terrain to progress without also destroying the path you need to walk on. Most of the levels have a lot going on like this, and even the ones that don’t usually don’t in service of more variation on the typical Mega Man formulas – a cyberspace-themed stage is comprised of three speedrunning challenges populated by enemies that only impair your movement rather than pose a serious threat to your character, and while there may seem at first blush to be two vaguely water-themed levels, one of them is entirely a side scrolling vehicle segment after years of flirting with the concept in prior installments.
Some might say that these inclusions dilute the length and challenge of the game, especially given that this is the shortest and limpest set of final levels and bosses in the entire series so far (typically a meaty portion of these games, almost as much as half the length in a lot of them, and barely a footnote here), but I don’t mind it; I’ve played eleven Mega Man games and I welcome the variety on display. It’s fun to try new things this deep into it and have them feel so successful. The challenge in general is definitely diluted here but I don’t mind that either when that means that the difficulty has gone down from Mega Man’s standard of Very Demanding to Reasonably Smooth. There’s room for a more relaxed Mega Man Experience in my book and the four hours or so I spent across my two playthroughs were just that, without much pressure to find all the upgrades or make sure I was always fully stocked on lives and e-tanks just to scrape my way through the endgame. Call me casual but I welcome these vibes.
I don’t know what these games look like moving forward, I’ve literally never heard a single peep about X5, and all I know about 6-8 is that they are generally disliked-to-hated? I THINK? But this is about as rock-solid a reintroduction as you could as for, especially for a series as tumultuous as Mega Man X. Really nothing more to say one it, sometimes games' reputations are just spot-on.