I’m not going to make any bold forecasts into the future and pass them off as prophecies, but if I had to guess? Mega Man 11 is going to end with either the Square button on my PS4 pad ruined, or my dried-out husk of a corpse balled into a heap on the floor.
Just thought I’d throw that out there, in case I suddenly disappear one day. That’ll be why.
Too soon?
Let me make something clear right off the bat: I have NO experience with the classic Mega Man games. The X games, sure; I still have the X Collection on the GameCube somewhere. The Battle Network games, of course -- and I’m of the opinion that its character redesigns are top-notch. I even watched my brother play through Legends 1, once upon a time. But the originals? Nah. Those are beyond me. I never had an NES, and I never went out of my way to play anything besides MM9 (briefly) and MM10 (even more briefly).
So I hope you’ll forgive me --
Oh, yeah, I played ZX, too. I knew I was forgetting one.
So I hope you’ll forgive me for not being so attached to Mega Man that we could pass as conjoined twins in a circus act. Because of that, I’m not one of the gamers so brutally hurt and wronged by Capcom’s refusal to do anything with him for years. It was just a “yeah, okay, whatever” fact of life. Luckily I have this little thing called empathy, so I understand the pain that fans have felt. And I’m happy that they’ve finally been given what they’ve clamored for with this new entry.
Now I’m going to preface this by saying “don’t take this the wrong way”, even though it sounds absolutely awful. Mega Man fans, is this the game you’ve been looking for? Is this what you wanted?
I say as much, because…cripes, this game. It’s not bad, let me make that clear right away. I don’t think it’s bad. But damned if it doesn’t feel like I’m being punished for the mere crime of pressing the start button, and daring to play the game. I know these games have a reputation for being hard; still, the challenge I’ve faced right off the bat is a few dozen notches above what I expected. I’m getting shades of I Wanna Be The Guy here, which I thought was an outlier to the point of parody.
Yet here I am regardless. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say MM11 is designed by a crack team of assholes and trolls. It’s bad enough that I have to go up against pitch black darkness, incoming walls of fire, unrelenting blizzards, a barrage of pile bunkers, and of course an army of robots. It’s worse when it seems like there are hazards put in the exact, perfect position to screw you over -- a way to either force you to take damage if you’re too careless, or just flat out knock you into a pit and score an instant kill.
It leads me to believe that all this time, die-hard MM fans have been closeted masochists who thrive on receiving and enduring punishment.
This game is devious, and it’s not an accident by any means. The dastardly tricks and traps at play here are so consistent and consistently frustrating that I actually have to hand it to the devs. They did a good job in making every stage a hellish struggle for survival. Well, I say as much, but (including the demo) I’ve only seen four levels and finished one. Still, enemy placement is such that, in a lot of cases, you’ll either be just out of reach/range for a good buster shot or need to finagle your way into resolving problems before they happen. That’s not exactly the easiest thing to do in a game that’s cavalier about bottomless pits and instant-killing spikes.
Somebody needs to have a talk with Dr. Light about upgrading Mega Man so he doesn’t pop like a balloon when he touches spikes. Or just slap the Shadow Armor on him.
There’s a part of me -- the salty part -- that makes me want to decry the game whenever I take damage, die, or lose all of my lives. Every so often, there are moments (between the incessant internal swearing) that make me want to decry the devs for the bevy of stage hazards. It’s not just a case of dealing with whatever traps are thrown your way. It’s a case of you having to learn stages to progress -- the problem with that approach being that the first run through can end disastrously because you’re encountering dangers you never would have expected.
The design philosophy -- from the perspective of an outsider looking in -- is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you’re supposed to go through these levels again and again, not to grind or farm cash, but just to be able to get through it in the first place. On the other hand? Unless you’re a mega-ace, I’d wager that you’ll have to bang your head against the wall over and over again until you finally get that perfect run.
Given that? It’s a bold move to release a game like this in the modern era, where difficulty curves are “gentle”, devs will bend like pretzels to appeal to newcomers/wider audiences, and the general hand-holding in more mainstream/AAA titles have worn gamer instincts down to a nub. Will it succeed in the end? It could, and not just because “FAMILIAR BRAND NAME! MUST HAVE!” Part of the fun comes from learning the stage so you can breeze through it, using pinpoint control and accuracy to blow away hazards.
With that said, I would blame no one on this planet for throwing down the controller in frustration and swearing off MM11 -- and all future MM games, assuming more are on the way -- until the universe collapses on itself. It’s both heartbreaking and maddening to make it within spitting distance of a checkpoint, only to get BTFO by an enemy attack or hazard configuration you’ve never seen before. That means that each level is, in part, an endurance run. If you can keep your health high -- which you can do with a mastery of each stage -- then you stand a better chance of making it through to the end.
The negative effect is twofold. First off? Like I said, it’s heartbreaking to have your progress erased and be forced to start over because you’re pitted against something you haven’t learned -- and when the learning process involves incoming enemy attacks, and you’re at 25% of your HP or less…well, get ready for a game over, forcing you to start all over again. But you know what might be even worse? It seems as if I can increase my probability of success many times over just by coming to a stage pre-loaded with E-Tanks I bought at the store. So the “endurance run” becomes less so as long as you’ve got items on tap.
Does that break the spirit of verisimilitude of the game? Not really; they’re tools to make sure you or other struggling players have a chance. Completely negligible by the die-hards, or those that want a challenge. On the other hand? For goofs like me -- neither a green-horned rookie or a virtual deity -- I have to wonder.
Whatever the case, I want to be absolutely clear: I don’t hate MM11. I don’t think it’s reinventing the wheel or anything, and it’s not going to be my GOTY 2018 even when all’s said and done. But in spite of its soul-crushing difficulty, I like it. It’s probably because of that soul-crushing difficulty. See, I’m the type of gamer who enjoys feeling a sense of progression, and forward momentum. That’s easy to do with narrative-driven stuff, which is why I skew towards those. So you would think that MM11’s “do it right, or die again and again until you can” philosophy would ward me off. You’d be half-right; I almost rage-quit it at one point. Almost.
But pride is as beautiful as it is awful. Having been dealt a defeat, either at the hands of a single boss or just one well-placed bed of spikes, I wanted to try again. I wanted to prove to the ghosts that live in my head that I could do it. That I wouldn’t let this one game beat me before I even tried. I could learn. I could adapt. I could react. I could shoot lemons. It wasn’t for anyone’s sake but my own -- not even to add a couple of piddling PS4 trophies to my collection. I wanted to win. I wanted to win for one simple reason: because I could win. And one day soon, I will.
…Or maybe I’m a closet masochist, I dunno lol.
That’s a sadist, I know, but just imagine me on the other end and it still works. Probably.
Mega Man 11 is either going to kill me, or I’ll kill it first. It’s been a while since I played a game that got me so worked up -- panicked, desperate, and struggling for survival. You don’t know how fast I hammered Square to pelt an enemy with lemons before an incoming death trap could whack me like a hockey puck. The need to escape and avoid danger has brought out survival instincts I thought died out with my ancient ancestors. But despite all that fear and nervous energy that consistently builds up, there’s a sense of catharsis when you manage to control it all -- to focus your thoughts and clear your mind for that perfect run.
I’m not going to pretend like I’m an expert at the game or the franchise at large, given that one of the few X games I beat was the easily-forgotten JRPG spinoff. But if there are any MM fans reading this? I’m starting to get it. I’m starting to get you. Your fandom and nostalgia are entirely justified (as if you need me to tell you that, but whatever). There’s a reason why the Blue Bomber is a gaming icon, and it’s not just because of market saturation. There’s something about it that sets it apart from all the rest. And even if it makes me want to cry, I don’t think I’d have it any other way.
Unless, of course, they decided to swap out all of the tracks for sick metal remixes. Not that the music here or anywhere else is bad, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut…come on, how can anyone say no to a sick metal remix of “Standby, Zero”?
Crap, now I’m getting nostalgic…
No comments:
Post a Comment