The funny thing with nostalgia is that it can go one of two
ways, capture the essence of an age, style or theme correctly and everything
just works, Stranger Things is a prime example of this, set in the 80’s it
wears this proudly on its sleeve, from the opening titles to the hair-styles,
clothing, and soundtrack, if it wasn’t available to watch in HD you could
almost believe it was made in the 80’s.
However if a small component is off even slightly then the whole
thing can fall apart and what was an attempt to bring back or modernise
something from a bygone age can end up falling into the trap of being dated,
tired and not enjoyable, sadly this is the case with Mighty No. 9, Mega Man
designer Keiji Inafune’s latest creation.
In 2013 a Kickstarter project by Keiji and his studio Comcept raised
just short of four million dollars in funding for Mega Man spiritual successor
Mighty No. 9, this title was to bring the classic 2D gameplay and character
design to a new audience albeit without the Mega Man license due to that being
owned by Capcom.
Everything looked so promising, the development team were
talking to the community about ideas and designs, new funding targets kept
getting met meaning new stages, bosses, and game modes could be added, updates
were frequent, and even when we got to play it at EGX in September 2015 we
enjoyed what we saw.
Personally I’ve never been a big Mega Man fan, I have fond
memories of playing a couple of the NES originals but Mega Man X on the SNES
was more my favourite, I wasn’t very good at it but I did play a lot of it,
especially when I discovered you could unlock the ability to fire a Street
Fighter 2 style “Hadouken” that would kill enemies in one hit, so when Mighty
No. 9 was announced, my interest was piqued, old school gameplay with new and
updated visuals and sound, let’s have it.
Hilariously when I first loaded MN9 up, the studio logos
seemed weird, displaying in bright abstract colours and I thought wow that’s
different, but when the title screen failed to appear and the music and voices
were still present in the background I soon realised the game had glitched and
needed restarting, I should’ve seen this as a clue to how my experience with
this title was going to go.
From the outset we’re introduced to Beck, the hero of our
story, a combat robot of diminutive stature seemingly immune to a virus that is
infecting his fellow Mighty Number unit members as well as other machines throughout
America, aided by his creator Doctor White and female droid “Call” Beck hunts
down his eight malfunctioning siblings in order to put a stop to what’s
happening and get to the bottom of what went wrong.
The opening stage introduces you to the characters,
controls, and the basic mechanics, an addition over the Mega Man titles is Beck’s
“Dash” move, allowing the character to speed a short distance in either
direction or gliding over larger than normal breaks in the terrain where you
would usually plummet to your death with a normal jump, dashing also absorbs Xel
from stunned enemies, this Xel grants temporary power ups such as faster
movement, taking less damage, or even increasing your weapon damage.
This introduction level is set amidst much city-wide
destruction being caused by the errant droids, almost reminiscent of the
opening to Mega Man X, once cleared you’re then given the choice of eight
stages to take on, do you face Mighty No. 7 “Brandish” on the Highway first or Mighty
No. 3 “Dynatron” at the Power Plant? Players familiar to the Mega Man series
will recognise this concept straight away, the levels and bosses can be tackled
in any order you want, but on defeat of a particular boss you gain their weapon
and abilities, Brandish for example, gives you a “Zero” style blade for
close-range slicing and dicing, finishing off Dynatron allows you tag enemies
and electrocute them.
As well as aiding you to a degree as Beck traverses the
stages, these extra powers primarily help against the other bosses, Mighty No. 6
can only really be beaten by using the weapon given to you by defeating Mighty No.
8, who in turn is easier to beat by utilising No. 3’s ability, the game doesn’t
tell you this but on the stage select you are given a summary on what to expect
from the level and the boss, so with a little bit of deduction you can pick and
choose a route through the game that should give you the least amount of
trouble.
Saying that though, deduction and guesswork will be the two necessities
you’ll need whilst playing this game, sorry, those and a truck-load of
patience, not only does the game not tell you the majority of the mechanics of
the game, you’re only given the absolute gameplay basics through pop-up text or
action halting dialogue sequences and then left to fend for yourself, in fact I
only learnt about the Action Shift move through reading about it in the pause
menu.
The dash’s use is also under-explained too, they say “Dash
to absorb Xel”, why? There is literally no explanation as to why you’re
absorbing it and what it does when you do, again it’s up to you to either guess
or read the points in menu, but no amount of strength, defence or speed
increase can aid you when respawning enemies, instant-death stage-traps and
blind death-drops will kick you in the ass as soon as you feel you’re starting
to make good progress.
I get that this genre of games is meant to be hard, but
there’s got to be a level of enjoyment in there too, and this is the most
lacking thing in Mighty Number 9, in fact I originally started writing this
review within days of the games official release 18 months ago, but was so put
off playing it that I couldn’t face putting in enough game-time to come to a
solid opinion of it, with my backlog of reviews niggling at the back of my mind
I reluctantly gave it another go.
It’s not that it’s inherently a bad game, the overall
presentation is nice, bright and cheery, the music is inoffensive, it’s all
very Saturday morning cartoon visually and aurally, but the gameplay is so broken
and lacking of reward that it detracts from any fun that anyone could hope to
gain from the title, I honestly tried to like Mighty Number 9, but no amount of
patience I could muster would allow me to play for more than a half an hour at
a time for fear of bludgeoning myself to death with my PS4 controller in
frustration.
Mighty No. 9 is out now on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, PC, OSX, & Linux