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Now, as some may be
aware, I've been fond of the Mega Man series since the first game.
Heck, I still occasionally play my copy of the first game. But
naturally, game play must evolve over time, or else there would be
no point in releasing new games. Thus, I was rather thrilled with
the Game Boy Advance's action RPG take on Mega Man, the first two
Mega Man Battle Network games. Thus, I was a bit surprised when I
found that Mega Man.EXE would be coming to the Gamecube... as a pure
action game. How would this work?
Well, to begin, the story. The game takes place between the first
two Battle Network games, shortly after Lan and his internet
avatar/voice of reason Mega Man.EXE defeat the Life Virus, created
by Wily's World3 (or WWW) criminal organization. However, now there
is a new threat - something called the Zero Virus has been
unleashed, and people are losing control of their avatars, called
Navis. Lan and Mega Man, more bold than wise, decide to jump in and
deal with the situation.
While on the face of it, this has a similar plot to the Battle
Network games, the truth of the matter is that it's more simplified.
This time, Lan doesn't have to worry about side distractions to his
goal of ridding the internet of virii, he just goes forth and does
it, one crisis at a time. Thus, fans of the GBA games will be a bit
disappointed that Lan won't have to deal with levels of betrayal and
doubt - it's all very straightforward.
One side benefit that this does have, though, is that it does help
further develop the personalities of the various characters.
However, it does build mostly off of what you've previously seen of
Lan and his friends in the Game Boy Advance games, so newcomers to
this game might not quite catch some of the nuances in their
interactions.
For the gameplay itself, perhaps what marks this game the most for
me is what is missing - you never control Lan directly. You can tell
him to jack into the net from different terminals, but he doesn't
actually leave his house. Thus, you end up missing half of the joy
of the Battle Network games - interacting with situations in the
real world, which acted out well to balance the internet portions of
the game.
Since you only really control Mega Man.EXE, I really should describe
how that plays out more. Basically, it's a merging of a side
scroller with the elements that marked the Battle Network games,
like the custom meter and battle chips. In fact, you control it much
in the same way you control the Mega Man X games for the Super
Nintendo and Playstation 2, complete with using the shoulder buttons
to switch sub-weapons (or battle chips, in this case). Since Capcom
is using a control scheme that they've been tweaking since the 8-bit
era, it works rather well. After 15 years of making Mega Man and his
predecessors move, Capcom knows how to pull it off.
However, the way battle chips work really needs improvement. Like
the GBA games, you select up to 20 types of chip to put into an
active folder, which can be called up every time your custom gauge
fills up. However, instead of refreshing after a battle like in the
GBA games, your chip selection replenishes only when you leave and
re-enter the internet. You can get a single replacement of a chip if
you can destroy the enemy that gives them out, but that's not always
an option (especially with rare chips like the Navi chips and the
more powerful Recovery chips). If there were some items that allowed
more replenishing of battle chips, the game would play much more
smoothly.
One thing I did like, though, is how the game limits the overall
usage of battle chips. Mega Man has a "memory" bar, and using a
battle chip eats up a portion of this bar. Thus, if you try to blitz
with battle chips, you'll soon discover that you've run out of them.
Fortunately, the memory bar does refill over time (think of it as
using up some RAM and slowly clearing it out), so you can adequately
balance battle chip usage.
The biggest problem, though, lies in the game play. When you first
run into an area, you'll find it, more often than not, mind-bendingy
difficult. However, each area has a trick, as does each enemy. Once
you figure out that trick, the area becomes a cakewalk. It's not
like in previous games, where there were some tricky spots even if
you knew what you are doing. Here's it's nigh-impossible until you
know, and child's play when you do. Thus the challenge isn't in
skill, it's in finding the right tack to take on the area.
Graphically, the game is pretty solid, and is one of the few games
out there that efficiently uses cel shading. It works for this game
partly because the action is all in two dimensions, and cel shading
more often than not fails with a third dimension. The game does have
a look and feel of a side-scrolling cartoon, and it fits in
perfectly with the game. Moreover, this dovetails nicely with the
feel of both the Game Boy games as well as the new Mega Man Network
Transmission cartoon rolling out. It certainly fits together much
better than the original Mega Man did with his cartoon incarnation.
The game's sound, though, is slightly off. The music oddly sounds
tinny, like someone is trying to render the music on a Game Boy
Advance. Sometimes, it clears up and sounds decent, but more often
than not you're wondering why they couldn't have polished it more.
Also a bit throwing is that the game keeps using the original
Japanese voice tracks for the game, which are a bit high pitched.
Plus, I still find it throws me off when the on-screen text is one
language but the voice clips are another. Others might not have an
issue, but may still wonder about why Lan is being called Netto (his
name in Japanese).
Perhaps the game's biggest appeal, though, is in its nod to the
original series. I mean, Mega Man.EXE even jumps in the same manner
as the original. Plus, many of the character designs for the enemy
Navis, all named after characters from the original Mega Man games,
are updated versions of the original enemies - compare this FireMan
and this GutsMan to the versions from the original. Rather nice
work.
Sadly, though, Mega Man Network transmission is going to appeal to a
small audience - namely, people who enjoy both the original Mega Man
games and the Battle Network games for the Game Boy Advance.
Granted, I'm one of those folks, so I've been quite pleased with the
game. In the end, though, most of the game is made as a gift for
those fans. Anyone who isn't both types of fan will miss out quite a
bit on the game. So while only hardcore fans of the Blue bomber will
want to own this game, the casual fan may enjoy it as a rental, but
someone who ordinarily doesn't bother with other iterations of Mega
Man will just be left out in the cold.
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