The tenth time around, it’s still more of Mega Man, rather than more from Mega Man. I like Mega Man, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

If Mega Man 9 was a cautious return to form, then Mega Man 10 is a comfortable product made to capitalize on the positive reception to its careful predecessor. It’s a slightly more enjoyable time, despite including the hang ups I had for the previous one.

There’s less annoying mini bosses eating your attempts on your way to each Robot Master. The new Bolt economy lets the shop be useful earlier on. Bosses have shorter i-frame duration, making Mega Man’s lack of a charge shot not seem so bad.

They still coulda given my man Mega Man that slide and charged shot though. Proto Man coulda been the Hard Mode.

They also coulda given us a real movement-enhancing weapon like the Mega Ball or even the Concrete Shot but all we got is the wall-climbing Wheel Cutter. Its usefulness isn’t in as nearly as many instances as the Concrete Shot or god forbid the Mega Ball.

The Bass DLC is a fun addition that rounds out the character variety, but I feel like his dash could have just been a separate button instead of the down+jump combo we’ve been using for the slide for years now. Bass moves too fast for it to be comfortable to do it with that combo input. Classic Mega Man by and large completely ignores any steps forward that the X series took, but this is one time they should have paid attention to it. Just give Bass a dash button.

I have beaten Mega Man 10 twice and it’s pretty alright. It’s tricky at times, and I would have liked a more unique presentation, but it’s a fun enough experience that Mega Man Enjoyers can snack on.

I like that you can finally swap weapons with the shoulder buttons again : )

Expectations can grow very high if they’re given enough time to themselves, and eight years is a very long time.

After the halcyon days of the NES, and the X series’ golden era of the SNES and PS1, the Mega Man franchise has had a hard life. I’ve lost count of the canceled projects that were to star my beautiful Blue Bomber. Even the Archie-produced Mega Man comic got canned. Nothing was safe. Being a Mega Man enjoyer then (and still now) meant dealing with constant disappointment. Why do you think Mega Man being in Super Smash Bros. was such a big deal? Why do you think Mighty No. 9 got the funding it did?

That last paragraph was written because I need you to understand that any problem I may have with Mega Man 11 is minuscule compared to the sheer amount of gratitude I have towards fate for allowing this game to be made at all.

This may be cynical to say considering how at the time of writing this, Capcom has been on a serious roll with no signs of stopping, but i see the release of a no-nonsense, microtransaction-free Mega Man game in the modern age, as nothing less than a miracle.

Speaking of miracles, I am also very thankful that they chose to make Mega Man 11 so visually distinct. It looks like a great animated cartoon, and the backgrounds are just stellar. The first area of Torch Man’s stage is a particularly beautiful sight to see.

While being beautiful, the levels in this game are equally tricky. I’m a seasoned Mega Man veteran but I had a hard time early on during both of my playthroughs. But maybe that’s because I wasn’t making much use of the game’s new mechanic: The Double Gear System, the Speed Gear in particular. The Power Gear’s good for bosses but slowing down time with the Speed Gear made everything a lot more simple. At a certain point in the game you can take out Sniper Joes without them even noticing you’re there.

Speaking of not noticing things that are there, the music in Mega Man 11 is a shocking disappointment. With decades of games with numerous incredible bangers each, it's such a shame to get a Mega Man game where the level themes feel more like wallpaper in the room than the furniture. The sound mixing in Mega Man 11 is already so obnoxious that you can't hear the tunes as it is, but when you turn the music up, there's no strong identity. Bounce Man has a pretty nice song though. Not catchy enough to remember it by heart, but it's good.

Lackluster music is a small price to pay for another Mega Man game to be made, i suppose.

But that's just it, Mega Man 11 IS just another Mega Man game. Besides the Double Gear System, there's nothing so earthshakingly new that it paves the way for a new future of Mega Man titles. You DO get weapon that's a Mega Man X-style dash that can even be used in the air, which has the potential to be a huge game changer, if you're clever enough. But this isn't really doing anything that the Mega Man franchise hasn't seen before.....

It's just, more Mega Man, and at the end of the day, that's something i'm okay with.

I've beaten Mega Man 11 twice and had a decent time each time.

I recommend it to see Mega Man at its flashiest and most fully featured. There are better games in the series, though.

All Hail The Mega Ball

Mega Man 8 is a game with many faces. And i don't just mean the Playstation/Sega Saturn differences. Mega Man 8, being the first mainline sidescrolling Classic Mega Man game to use voice acting, is one of the funniest and most cringeworthy games of all time ("Doctah Wahwee" is a cornerstone of the western Mega Man fanbase). Mega Man 8, introducing a weapon that drops a platform in front of you to quickly jump off of while you're in the air, is one of the most mechanically deep Classic Mega Man games. Mega Man 8 is a game that follows in its predecessor's footsteps and adds more ability-based puzzles and secrets in each level, emphasizing the adventure that games can bring. Mega Man 8 is a game that sets a new cosmic status quo, which is promptly ignored by the series. It's a game with many faces, and i only find a few of them ugly.

When you're not listening to the lazy, grating, embarrassing, and above all funny voice acting, Mega Man 8 is treating your ears to some of my favorite video game music of all time. Mega Man 8 takes the chiptunes of the classic series and expertly translates that 8-bit style to synthesized techno music. 8's soundtrack is a lot more laid back and subdued compared to its high octane brothers, but i think that just makes it unique. The Stage Select, Tengu Man, Aqua Man, and Wily Tower 1 themes in this game are the best and you should totally listen to them for several hours straight while you draw comic pages, like i have done many times.

Speaking of which, your mileage may vary on this but as a visual person, the backgrounds in Mega Man 8 are supremely inspiring. The rolling verdant hills of Tengu Man's stage, cleaved with city-filled valleys, the flashing metropolis of Frost Man's stage, and the sugarsweet toyland of Clown Man's stage are all beautifully and lovingly rendered and make me want to spend a day there. Tengu Man's especially. I really like Tengu Man's stage.

I have beaten Mega Man 8 three times in my life, despite trying my hardest to get past Wily Tower 1 as a child who hadn't grasped the concept of Being Good at video games just yet.

Mega Man 8 is a fairly easy time with gorgeous anime cutscenes that you might find yourself having to Endure rather than Enjoy. (just find a way to play the Japanese version if you don't want to deal with the voice acting). If you can get over the minor hurdle of annoying and funny voices (or you just skip them), i recommend this game to you. It's an excellent time and i love it. Play Mega Man 8. the Saturn version has some more bosses but the Playstation one is still a fine time.

One more thing, the English voice acting for Roll has her say "Good luck, Mega Man!" in the cutest sweetest voice ever and i hope i can one day get in touch with the voice actress Michelle Gazepis and thank her for doing a line read that has stuck with me my entire life.

A fun adventure full of secrets that sadly doesn't stick the landing.

Mega Man 7 is an interesting game. i like it. it takes the secrets and upgrades from Mega Man 6 and runs wild with it. Each stage in 7 has a secret in it that you might have to come back for later, and it adds a level of intrigue that was not present in earlier Mega Man games. They might not have needed that intrigue, but i gladly welcome it here.

One of those secrets involves an overarching side quest with Proto Man, that ends in a really cool reward, i'm a big fan of it.

Even though Mega Man 7 doesn't follow the gameplay of the newly started sequel series, Mega Man X, it does heavily emphasize using the Super Adaptor Armor, a very Mega Man X powerup. Sure, don't give Mega Man the dash, but he can absolutely have the double jump. Thankfully, the double jump doesn't break the game like Mega Man 6's Jet Adaptor does.

The music of Mega Man 7 is odd to me. Up until this point, the musical identity of Mega Man was just 8bit chiptunes, so there was nothing specific to bass this identity off of. So Mega Man 7 goes in the interesting direction of being midi semi-orchestral songs. It sounds softer and slower than its predecessors. It's not bad by any means, but especially considering how Mega Man 8 and 11 would take the more Techno-inspired route, Mega Man 7 feels pretty out of place, musically.

The final boss of Mega Man 7 is a really rough time. It's a war of attrition that spits in your face if you get far enough and fail anyway. Unless you play perfectly, in which case i'm proud of you, you will be forced to use a health and/or weapon refill, and then when you die you will not have that refill next time.

I did not beat Mega Man 7 the first time i played it. Thankfully i pulled it off years later, but good lord. Here's a hint for you that i would have loved to know back then: you can mash buttons to get out of the burning animation sooner.

And then you beat the game and, if you're playing in english, you get a cringeworthy character assassination of everyone's favorite little blue guy Mega Man. it just can't stick that landing, man.

I recommend Mega Man 7 to anyone who likes Mega Man and anyone who wants a taste of everything Mega Man has to offer but doesn't want to wade through over 10 games. Consider Mega Man 7 as your second course after 2 or 3.

You don’t need to call up some friends to bring their Game Boy Advances and appropriate link cables to play this, but good lord would it help.

The second game to be released in the Four Swords Saga, but the last in the story of that saga’s timeline, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is a bizarre Frankenstein’s monster of a game. And I kind of love it.

Featuring the original four Link sprites from the Game Boy Advance Four Swords, certain enemy sprites and environments from A Link to the Past, sprites of varying quality made just for this game (the worst goron you will ever see is in this game), and special effects from Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures can look surreal at times. It feels like the most impressive fan game that could be made at the time. This feeling is only compounded further when the adventure is parsed out into easily digestible levels (or if you prefer, multiplayer challenges) organized on a Super Mario World-style map. It’s like your friend from another class that you only saw during recess said “what if Mario and Zelda combined?? And we could all play it!” and it was real.

2004’s Four Swords Adventures does what 2002’s Four Swords didn’t do, and made the levels have a linear flow to them. Gone are the long and drawn out open air dungeons of the past. Gone are the collectible charms that make your Link playable. This time you’re playing a game set up like a zelda game, that you can also play with 3 other people, and every Link can attack and zip around like never before.

Four Swords Adventures is the first released Zelda game using a top down point of view to give Link the ability to roll. There’s no i-frames but that burst of speed is such a delightful treat, and it feels so good to do with the satisfying click of a GameCube controller’s R button. Pressing B at the end of a roll executes an immediate spin attack, which is even more fun to do. I am not exaggerating when I say this roll is one of the reasons I like this lackluster game so much.

The game is lackluster for a few reasons, most of which stem from from its identity. Four Swords Adventures is first and foremost a classic single player Zelda experience. It is also a multiplayer experience. These two things could work beautifully together, with brain busting puzzles that really take advantage of having four Links on the screen, but the combination tends to just boil down to activating four switches at once or doing color-specific things as the matching Link. The multiplayer aspect is baked into the experience, but it the actual level and puzzle design was made for one player and then made to accommodate three others afterwards. This game is completely playable solo, which is interesting, but leaves you with a handful of stale moments meant for the full four player experience.

Another victim of the single player/multiplayer styles butting heads is every level being their own contained challenge. You can’t beat a level without getting 2,000 Force Gems (there’s no rupees in this game, just triangles), and each level makes sure you can easily get that many. They’re not carried over between levels, so unless you’re doing multiplayer and want to win, there’s no real in-game reason to grind for Force Gems.

The lack of Force Gems being carried over, means they’re not a currency (except for specific and ultimately useless situations), means that the occasional village level has none of the quiet charm of visiting a village in a regular Zelda game. There’s no shopping or side quests to do, it’s just another level. But at the same time, The Village of the Blue Maiden level is a pretty fun time! I would absolutely prefer to experience that village’s puzzle if it was a village in a Zelda game and not a village-shaped dungeon in a multiplayer game, though.

Force Gems aren’t the only thing not carried over. Link, Link, Link, and Link don’t have the usual arsenal of tools here, and instead can carry only one item at a time. In multiplayer, this could in theory make each Link “specialized” for one item as needed. Maybe the red Link’s player insists on using only the fire rod because he’s red. It’s a bit of fun character theming that the game could allow, solely due to one player’s choice. At the end of the level he puts the fire rod away, to try something else next level. But that’s not the case. Most levels are built around using only a specific item or two at a time, and they’re also made with single player in mind, and gives you four pedestals with the same item needed for the level. It’s pretty rare that a level will ever accommodate four Links using a different item each.

There is a lot weighing the Four Swords experience down (I didn’t even mention how shallow the main villain is), and yet somehow I still find it enjoyable. The game feels fun to play, and the music is great as always. But maybe do a level or two a day, so the patterns don’t make themselves too apparent too quickly.

I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (at the time of writing this), ironically, four times. I’ve mostly soloed it but I have had friends over to play it and we had a great time griefing each other.

I’m not sure if I should recommend it though. I personally really like it, but I can still see the flaws. Still a really fun time though. But I’ll tell you what, Zelda Freaks should play this game just to see that strange collection of sprites it has.

Sometimes it takes a pebble to start an avalanche, and this is quite a pebble.

I wish I could have played Metal Gear when it was first released, in a world where every other major video game release was focused on combat. I wish I could have played Metal Gear when it was something other than the quaint beginnings of a mega franchise that you play for historical purposes.

Playing Metal Gear in a post-Metal Gear Solid world is kind of rough. I’m a certified Metal Gear Solid Freak so on my first playthrough, I went through it with reverent awe, taking in the humble beginnings of my favorite tactical espionage hero, Solid Snake. And having beaten it that one time, I’m good. There's some really obtuse things in this game, particularly towards the end. Sometimes it's purposeful, but when it isn't, it's rough. Really rough. I trudged through it for the academic history of the series i love, as well as the lore.

And if you’re considering getting into the Metal Gear series, you absolutely need to play this game. The MSX one. It’s required reading.

The fact that you can sneak around and get spotted in this game, and you’re encouraged to not get spotted, is so great. This game’s peers were mindless arcade shooters, it really stands out. Mechanically, at least. You’re still a soldier guy and the enemies are also still soldier guys. The slick, iconic, beautiful Shinkawa designs wouldn’t be around for a bit longer.

The charm of the clever ideas on display pale in comparison to its legendary progeny. And this is why I wish I could have played it when it first came out.

I recommend this game to Metal Gear fans, Kojima fans, and people who are interested in what you can do with the simple systems of an old console.

I wish the intro to the Theme of Tara was longer, it's the best part of the song.

If your friends are fun enough people, even the worst multiplayer game could be a good time. Better hope your friends are fun, then.

As a bonus game paired with the Game Boy Advance port of A Link to the Past, the Legend of Zelda: Four Swords is the stumbling, fumbling, humble beginnings of what I call the Four Sword Saga. On paper, it’s the first on screen appearance of the lovable and expressive Toon Link, coming out a whole year before his most well known outing, Wind Waker. Not only that, but there’s four of him, one for each possible player. These players would of course need their own Game Boy Advances, their own copies of the game, and their own link cables. As someone who struggled to find more than one person at a time to play this game with wirelessly on my 3DS, I can pretty easily see why Wind Waker is the one everyone knows Toon Link for, and not Four Swords.

To make matters worse, you can’t even start Four Swords without at least one other GBA, so even though I had the cart and my pre-owned GBA I got at GameStop for $25 of chores money, I couldn’t play it. I mean, sure I still had A Link to the Past to play for hours on end, but I really loved Wind Waker and Four Swords Adventures, I wanted to see what Four Swords was all about. It doesn’t help that this version of A Link to the Past has an extra dungeon that only lets you enter if you’ve played Four Swords. Four Swords taunted me for years.

Until one day, Nintendo rereleased a single-player capable version of Four Swords as a free digital download for the 3DS, in celebration of Zelda’s 25th anniversary (at the time of writing this, that was over a decade ago, the ceaseless march of time will trample us all).

After downloading the game as soon as I could, I eagerly began the Zelda game that eluded me.

And it turns out it’s basically if Zelda gameplay and a drawn out Mario Party minigame had a baby.

Like a Mario Party minigame, the conceit of Four Swords’ gameplay is a chaotic and greedy mad dash to the end of a randomly generated, excessively sprawling “dungeon”, while gathering as many rupees as you can get your grubby little hands on. The winner is the Link with the most cash, so even though everyone is more or less working together to get through the “dungeon”, they gotta do what they can to screw each other out of rupees.

Conceptually, it’s a cool and fun idea to have a Zelda party game, and the idea of turning the classic zelda gameplay into a party game is even cooler.

In execution, Four Swords has a critical flaw that makes the foundation shaky. And it’s not the simplistic puzzles or the spongey enemies. The flaw is the upgrade charms you can randomly find. There’s a green, blue, and red charm and collecting up to three of each gradually increases your Link’s walking speed, defense, and damage output, respectively. Now this would be a great idea…if you didn’t start every match slow, frail, and weak. Collecting the charms doesn’t make you better, it makes you good. Three red charms doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you strong. Movement is a big thing for me in games, so my Link’s speed being a steady crawl right at the start is infuriating.

But I pressed on, determined to experience the story of the game, and how it connects to the rest of the Four Sword Saga.

Imagine my shock when the party game that introduces the newest (at the time) non-Ganon villain (to keep the stakes low), has very little of interest to say about him.

Vaati the Wind Sorcerer wreaked havoc in the past, and then he was sealed by some unnamed hero kid with The Four Sword. The seal that trapped him weakened and he is once again terrorizing the countryside, capturing young girls. Your mission, should you, and you, and you, and you choose to accept it, is to get three keys to access his palace and stop him. Pretty simple stuff. No time travel, no cross-dressing disguised princesses, no towns. Just Zelda action with up to four players. And it’s alright.

I have completed this game one time, and 90% of it was done solo. It was not all that fun. The other 10% was (stupidly) during senior year French class with a friend who also miraculously had the game. It was Pretty Fun.

I don’t know if I could recommend Four Swords to anyone who isn’t a die hard Zelda Freak who wants to experience everything the series has to offer. Even then I’m not sure you’d be missing much. There are at least two games that use the same assets and ideas that are far and away more accessible, and do a better job at being a fun time.

More of the same, and the same is the best around.

1994’s Mega Man X 2 is a fine game. The character designs, music, and settings all live up to the standard that 1993’s Mega Man X pushed the limits to set.

X2 pushes things further by adding new armor parts abilities and three roaming bosses to defeat in exchange for story-related items that slightly changes how the endgame goes. If you don’t beat them, you’re out of luck, so the game demands some pretty slick gameplay.

Unfortunately, you might find that gameplay a little less than slick. Finding the buster parts to upgrade your charged shot gives you a double shot that ignores i-frames and melts through bosses without resetting their ai (this makes Wheel Gator’s fight a breeze compared to using his weakness). The Double Shot is very cool and X does a cool punch animation when he fires the blasts. However, you can’t dash while his charge shot is going, it forces you to stand still. The most iconic thing about the Mega Man X series and X2 denies us constant usage of it. Such a shame.

This doesn’t ruin the game by any means, I’ve played and beaten it multiple times with only a smirk of frustration out of it. It’s just that after X1, my standards are staggeringly high.

Mega Man X 2 is a great time and you should play it just to hear Bubble Crab’s theme.

If you squeeze this lemon hard enough, you will find the razor blades within it.

In the scope of a single playthrough, 2000’s Mega Man X 5 is a Fine game. It’s Fine. It doesn’t live up to the game that came right before it (and it definitely doesn’t live up to the first Mega Man X), but it is Fine. It’s playable and feels decent in the hands and there’s some good music, and there’s things to collect and you can switch between X and Zero whenever you want, it’s Fine. These are all things that would entice me if I read them on the back of the game’s box. It’s Fine.

Something interesting (or irritating) about the game is the “time limit” it gives you. In the story, there’s a space colony that’s about to collide with the earth, and the world’s only hope is a massive cannon that hasn’t been used in years. You have 16 in-game “hours” to make the upgrade the Enigma Cannon and increase its chances of destroying the space colony. Four of the eight bosses in the game have those upgrades, and an “hour” will pass when you leave Maverick Hunter HQ and return from the level, so you have to be deliberate with where you go. The other four Mavericks have parts to upgrade a space shuttle to collide with the colony in the event the cannon fails. Actually, I should take back what I said, not all of the bosses are technically Mavericks. They just have the item and X or Zero asks nicely for it and a lot of the time the boss challenges them to a fight because it’ll be fun, or it’s the way the world works. It’s a funny way to wedge conflict into the situation, but it makes X especially look all to eager to get in a fight, when if you have played any other Mega Man X game, you’d know he wants the fighting to end. Regardless, the time limit is a novelty that I personally find interesting.

The mild character assassination of X could be due to a lot of things, but a lot of fingers point to the localization team. It happened with Mega Man 7, why not Mega Man X 5? I won’t spend too much time complaining about it though, because I feel like there’s too many unsavory people using bad localization as fuel for their grifts, and they might see this and think I’m a mark or something. All I’ll say is if my girlfriend changed the names of a bunch of video game characters to names of the members of my favorite band, and it shipped nationwide, I’d make sure her feet never touched the ground lmao. What a flex. Need me a freak like that.

But anyway.

So you beat the game, and it was Fine, but you only beat it as one of the two playable characters. So you start a new file and now things are different. Instead of a portion of the colony being destroyed, the Enigma Cannon only grazes it. And then the space shuttle does minimal damage, the space colony crashes into Earth and Zero becomes a Maverick. Now you can no longer play as him. Hopefully this wasn’t your playthrough where you invested hearts and upgrades into him.

Despite how it feels to me, Mega Man X 5 only has three endings. A good ending for X and Zero (assuming everything went well and Zero did not go Maverick) and a bad ending for X (assuming Zero went Maverick). The amount of variables in the middle of the game makes it feel like it’s twice as big and involved as it really is. The cannon could fail but the shuttle succeeds, and vice versa. It becomes intimidating and annoying.

Well, if you just play it once it isn’t so bad. It’s a regular Mega Man X game with a slight twist. It’s Fine.

But you might be like me and you like Mega Man X. As simple as they are, you care about the characters and want to know the few lines of text that happens to them. And in order to do that, you have to play the game at least three times. And playing this game three times is where the pain sets in.

The Pain in question:

-Volt Kraken’s stage is excessively long and can kill you in the first few seconds if you blink at the wrong time.
-Tidal Whale’s autoscroller stage takes forever, and lining up the Goo Shaver shot to get the Falcon Armor body program is really tedious and one mistake could have you resetting, to prevent using up an hour of in-game time.
-You have to beat Tidal Whale and come back again to use Goo Shaver to get the Falcon Armor body program, which uses up an extra hour of in-game time.
-It’s called Goo Shaver.
-The Falcon Armor doesn’t charge Special Weapons.
-The Gaea Armor doesn’t even let you use Special Weapons.
-The Gaea Armor is terrible.
-There are life upgrades that can only be gotten with the useless Gaea Armor, which means Zero can’t get those upgrades.
-Shadow Devil is a stupefyingly hard challenge out of no where and then the game does not match that difficulty anywhere afterwards.
-The final boss alludes to Dr. Wily from the Classic series still being alive, but the game provides no concrete proof of this.

I know this pain all too well, because in order to get every medal in the Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2, I had to play this game countless times. I forgot how many times I’ve beaten it. I just remember how painful and annoying the game can be. I remember the razor blades in the lemon.

I don’t think you should play Mega Man X 5, but as one in a series that depressingly, gradually gets worse, it’s not the worst one in the bunch. A Mega Man X fan should play this the one time and then look up the other endings online. Save yourself the trouble.

The boys are back in town, one last time.

Mega Man X 8 could not exist without the front flip into the dirt that was Mega Man X 7. X8 feels in every way like what X7 should have been. I don’t want to say that it was an apology for X7, but the amount of things they got right here is like they’re overcompensating.

The most important lesson learned from X7 is keeping it 2D. I don’t necessarily think that Mega Man X NEEDS to be a strictly 2D game series, but the way X7 botched it means they weren’t ready for it yet. With X8, they played it safe and stuck with what they knew and for whatever that’s worth, it’s a better game for it.

The biggest reason for this is there is no targeting system to accommodate three dimensional play. You shoot right in front of you, simple as that. This gives Axl, a character I loathed to play as in X7, a more interesting playstyle. To set him apart from X, his weapons have analogue aiming. Due to his stop-and-pop combat and lack of heavy damage, I still don’t find him to be nearly as viable or fun as X or Zero. I find that stop-and-pop style to be pretty antithetical to Mega Man as a whole but hey, he’s got something besides “X but way worse” so I’m happy for him I guess. He’s still a Scrappy Doo ass character though.

X is as reliable and fun to play as ever, and his new Neutral Armor brings back the toyetic nature of the X series in full force. The Neutral Armor is a blank slate (looks pretty cool too, I like the “collar” that comes up high enough to cover his mouth) that you can mix and match parts from the attack-focused Icarus set (the red one) and the mobility-focused Hermes set (the blue one). The customizability of the Neutral Armor is one of my favorite things about this game. The gunpla-ness of the X Armors has reached its endgame, you can literally kitbash the Neutral Armor into something that fits your playstyle. This is of course made pointless by the secret Ultimate Armor having the best of both armors, but if you’re not using a code, you can’t get that armor without beating the game first.

To round up the cast of playable characters, X8’s treatment of Zero is proof of the Mega Man X’s series’ head over heels love for that guy. It’s not misplaced love, he’s a cool guy. This is also the best Zero has been handled in any of the Mega Man X games. Every skill you learn from a boss is naturally incorporated into his moveset, and it isn’t something like adding an air dash or a double jump (Zero starts the game with those things). They sat down and looked at Zero’s kit and asked what could be added to it, rather than taken away and given back. Furthermore, nothing feels clumsily added either, like taking one of X’s weapons and just giving it to Zero. He’s always been a solid character to play as, but X8 gives us the most polished Zero in any game he shows up in. Except maybe Marvel vs. Capcom 3…

Anyways

The toy box nature of Mega Man X does not stop with X’s kitbash armor, no. Not by a long shot. Zero gets himself a whole arsenal of weapons to play with. From a hammer to battle fans, each weapon has a signature move tied to one of the boss skills. The brass knuckles turning most of the skills into a Street Fighter move is very fun and I like it. But the D Glaive. Oh, the D Glaive. What a weapon. Named from the Hindu goddess of motherhood and war, the Durga Glaive is Zero’s best non-New Game+ weapon for its sheer range alone. This weapon turns Zero into a long range fighter. Spamming the jump slash is enough to take out entire rooms of enemies. There are certain parts of the game where optimal play is needed to get a reward and the D Glaive is the tool for the job. Its so satisfying to swing this thing around. It’s too good. I’m glad the D Glaive is there because the hammer is kinda dumb.

The weapons and armor are just a fraction of things to find in the levels of this game, there is a buffet of upgrades and goodies to get your hands on and then buy in the in-game shop. You’ll be backtracking, you’ll be resetting because you missed something, you’ll be farming for cash at Earthrock Trilobite's level. It’s maybe an artificial extension on the game, but it’s a good enough game that I’ll take any excuse to spend more time with it. Doing Avalanche Yeti’s stage more than once is pretty stupid though! It’s not a great level!

To save yourself a bit of time, I recommend getting the D Glaive from Dark Mantis’ stage as soon as you can (you’ll need to beat Gigavolt Man-O-War first, another not great level) and then clear Optic Sunflower’s stage as best as you can to get the Metal Generator for a steady flow of cash as you go through the game.

Alright I’ve waited long enough, I’ve said enough good things about this game. It’s time for my biggest gripe about Mega Man X 8.

I don’t like the visual style. Everyone looks weird. Axl comes out relatively unscathed but good lord X and Zero look extruded and maligned. The classic bell-bottom boots that Mega Man founded are gone. X’s buster is too busy, he has gray on his boots where it wasn’t needed. The “ear” parts of his helmet have the letter “X” incorporated into it, a design move I really don’t agree with. He looks more cylindrical, I hate it. And Zero? Oh, the massacred my boy. You look at him for a second and everything looks fine, but then he turns around and his beautiful flowing hair has been reduced to a thin dangling rat tail. What where they thinking???

It should be said though that this game is solid enough to make me forget about my misgivings with the visual style. The game is rendered well, I just wish there was a mod that made the boys look more Classic.

Speaking of the boys, I think it’s nice that you can eventually play as the girls, your navigators that have been yapping in your ear the whole game. Layer is very good and I like her and it’s insane that they got away with her body-stocking-underboob design.

I have beaten Mega Man X 8 three times and 100%ed it at least one of those times. I thoroughly enjoyed latest playthrough, though I’m willing to admit that was because I had just come off of Mega Man X 7. I’m also willing to admit that X8 has enough merit to be enjoyable without having to put yourself through torture beforehand.

I recommend Mega Man X 8. Take your time with it, because lord knows we won’t get another one any time soon.

a beautiful, unintentionally unsettling, and inspiring experience.

the simple and exploitable gameplay is a vehicle for the unique visuals and world and characters that Mason Lindroth created. it is not an exaggeration to say that the visuals and world and characters of this game changed my life, solely from how i approach illustrating. the music's really fitting too, i love Somsnosa's theme and the Graveyard theme, great stuff.

play this game.

one sin two sin red sin blue sin.

Blasphemous is a game that aims to be pure, to reject indulgence and to stay on the path of righteousness despite the slings and arrows that the pious must face. And by that i mean there isn't a double jump or a grappling hook or anything like that. Yeah the beautifully sickening setting and haunting lore is the endgame of religious fanaticism but baby i'm a sinner and i wanna double jump.

Blasphemous is a gorgeously rendered game with a steadfast difficulty and a perfectly designed main character. I had a good time with it, but not enough of a good time to 100% it.