Playing 30XX is like watching how the sausage is made.
The sausage in question is not this game, and while I don't mean the above statement as a reference to the game being in early access, the fact that it is in early access certainly makes this feeling of sausage-making spectatorship more apparent. The specific element of the further development process that enables this is the fact that like many games playable by the public which are still being worked on, exact technical information about the level is being displayed in the corner of the screen at all times; this is likely so that if a player runs into a technical issue, the developers can see where it happened, making reproducing and fixing the problem easier. A side effect of this is that the seams between chunks of level become as apparent as they would be if the game still used classic Mega Man screen scrolls.
I want to be clear that I don't mean this as a negative criticism of the game, but as high praise. The game controls very well, it looks great, it sounds great. On a technical and artistic level its every bit as good as "the real thing".
I've been playing a lot of Mega Man lately, probably too much. While playing Mega Man 5, I had the thought that Napalm Man's stage felt a lot like Wood Man's stage from Mega Man 2. Sure enough, a few google searches show me that Napalm Man's stage is in fact laid out more or less the same way, though about 25% bigger.
Mega Man's level design is so formulaic that you could literally give a computer a formula that spits new Mega Man levels out. From aesthetic, to terrain layouts, to boss design, weapon types, every new iteration in classic Mega Man is putting only slight variation on the same handful of archetypes. With a handful of additions, which I don't doubt will materialize by the time this game sees a 1.0 release, and perhaps revisions, 30XX would be able to effectively replace any retro throwback Mega Man. Arguably the only reason 20XX didn't already do this was because some people didn't find the art-style appealing.
There's a reason that there hasn't been a new 2D Mario game since Mario Maker came out. Fans have made the reason clear: if Nintendo is going to make a new 2D Mario game, they better make one a helluva lot more exciting than what they've been doing for the past 4 games, because with Mario Maker we can have a near infinite amount of classic style 2D Mario levels.
Between this and fan projects like Mega Man Maker, I'm hoping that the sheer amount of Classic/X style Mega Man content reaches a sort of critical mass whereat a greater need for new explorations in 2D action platformer mechanics manifests. Maybe now that we have so many variations for this gameplay style, the next Mega Man, or spiritual successor, or fan project, or anything else, can be something other than a decades-old template with a fresh coat of paint.
The sausage in question is not this game, and while I don't mean the above statement as a reference to the game being in early access, the fact that it is in early access certainly makes this feeling of sausage-making spectatorship more apparent. The specific element of the further development process that enables this is the fact that like many games playable by the public which are still being worked on, exact technical information about the level is being displayed in the corner of the screen at all times; this is likely so that if a player runs into a technical issue, the developers can see where it happened, making reproducing and fixing the problem easier. A side effect of this is that the seams between chunks of level become as apparent as they would be if the game still used classic Mega Man screen scrolls.
I want to be clear that I don't mean this as a negative criticism of the game, but as high praise. The game controls very well, it looks great, it sounds great. On a technical and artistic level its every bit as good as "the real thing".
I've been playing a lot of Mega Man lately, probably too much. While playing Mega Man 5, I had the thought that Napalm Man's stage felt a lot like Wood Man's stage from Mega Man 2. Sure enough, a few google searches show me that Napalm Man's stage is in fact laid out more or less the same way, though about 25% bigger.
Mega Man's level design is so formulaic that you could literally give a computer a formula that spits new Mega Man levels out. From aesthetic, to terrain layouts, to boss design, weapon types, every new iteration in classic Mega Man is putting only slight variation on the same handful of archetypes. With a handful of additions, which I don't doubt will materialize by the time this game sees a 1.0 release, and perhaps revisions, 30XX would be able to effectively replace any retro throwback Mega Man. Arguably the only reason 20XX didn't already do this was because some people didn't find the art-style appealing.
There's a reason that there hasn't been a new 2D Mario game since Mario Maker came out. Fans have made the reason clear: if Nintendo is going to make a new 2D Mario game, they better make one a helluva lot more exciting than what they've been doing for the past 4 games, because with Mario Maker we can have a near infinite amount of classic style 2D Mario levels.
Between this and fan projects like Mega Man Maker, I'm hoping that the sheer amount of Classic/X style Mega Man content reaches a sort of critical mass whereat a greater need for new explorations in 2D action platformer mechanics manifests. Maybe now that we have so many variations for this gameplay style, the next Mega Man, or spiritual successor, or fan project, or anything else, can be something other than a decades-old template with a fresh coat of paint.