Saturday, March 13, 2010

Mega Man 10


Mega Man 10 is a rather ironic release. Ironic in the sense that it’s the direct sequel to a game most known for abandoning every gameplay change, new plot direction and franchise reimagining done to the ever-stagnating Mega Man series in the last twenty years. And if Mega Man 9 is not only intended to be a nostalgic homage but the starting point of a new franchise, then it shouldn’t be long before the known world is fed up with the conservative direction of games like Mega Man 10. Soon people will begin to cry for a new revolution away from Mega Man 9’s revolution. A Mega Man X revival, perhaps? Mega Man Soccer 2?

(And if roman numerals are in effect, Wouldn’t Mega Man 10 be Mega Man X anyways?)

Fortunately, that time hasn’t come yet and Mega Man 10 is a solid little poster child in favour of providing “more of the same.” It’s still Mega Man 2-redux. You still choose one of 8 stages themed after a diabolical robot master. You still run, jump, shoot and climb your way from one side of the screen to the other. You still get super weapons of varying usefulness for figuring out a robot master’s attack pattern and toppling them with their own predictability. One of those weapons is the obligatory shield of balls that circle Mega Man that only make sense on a two-dimensional plane. You can still score easier wins over robot bosses by using their “weakness” weapon against them. What those weaknesses are is determined either through good old trial and error or Google. (And while you can probably guess, through bizarre video game element logic, what weapon to use against the fire boss or ice boss, determining which robot master succumbs to a baseball attack is another matter.)

And yes, Mega Man 10 is still nut-crackingly difficult. You will die many, many times over on your first playthrough. The obscene difficulty of Mega Man games has always been off put by the ability to just try another robot master’s stage if one particular level is giving you migraines, or at least until after all the levels gave you migraines. The gameplay is still trial-and-error oriented, and once you grasp how to handle certain obstacles, you’ll laugh in the face of the sandstorm of death.

Okay, there are some welcome new tweaks to Mega Man 10. For example, if Mega Man 9 humbled you, the option of an Easy mode exists, that modifies the levels in the name of making them more pro-life. You now have the option to play as Proto Man from the onset instead of paying some $2 for the privilege. Proto Man has the slidy-chargeshoty-powers of later Mega Man games but with the trade off in that he is more susceptible to damage. Certain levels have branching paths to let players choose how they wish to die. And a new challenge mode contains a series of obstacle courses to test your 8-bit-gaming wits and ability to jump off a platform you’ve tip-toed to the complete end of. And unlike Mega Man 9, none of the upcoming DLC comes across as features that should’ve been in the main game to begin with. Who really cares to play as Bass, anyways?

And Mega Man 10’s best attribute is arguably how self-aware it is of the era it is paying homage to. NES-era games, with their walking turtles and flying Medusa heads, went in the direction of simple, easily identifiable characters of radical distinction in an era where realism was a fool’s goal. And now, in the days of Uncharted and Modern Warfare, Mega Man 10’s love of bizarre characters and scenarios seems shockingly fresh. Mega Man will match wits against giant mouse cursors with eye balls, American Gladiators-style ball racks with eye balls, runaway trucks with eye balls…and then my personal favorite. A giant, projectile-flinging fortress that raises a white flag after being defeated… with three pairs or eyeballs. How long before this series truly indulges itself by pitting you against a giant eyeball with eyeballs?

That oddball ideas carries itself out into the gameplay in more ways than you think. Even if you’ve seen variations before in other games, level ideas like swooping sandstorms and convoys of fireballs (with eyeballs) make for some rather creative scenarios. Considering how there are more Mega Man games than citizens of Vatican City, it’s downright amazing that Inti Creations can keep conceiving so many danged ideas for a run-and-jump platformer.

Even the plot reeks of NES-ticity. All of the robots of the world succumb to a plague called “Roboenza.” Mega Man must help Dr Light and Dr Wily research a cure the Leonardo Da Vinci way by murdering and dissecting the evil robots.

And my what 8 lovely robots we have. It may seem like Inti Creations had hepped a few magic mushrooms during development of Mega Man 10 upon witnessing a certain mammal-based robot. But as someone who’s reviewed the previous nine official Mega Man games made, I see nothing abnormal in a series that brought us Wood Man, Toad Man and Charge Man. Besides, these robots make perfect sense in a futuristic society.

Blade Man: Designed to compete in the Olympic sport of fencing as a gut response to Canada’s sheer domination of the Winter Games. But the IOC deemed mechanical devices to be performance-enhancers. Thus, Blade Man sulks in his private castle, dreaming of what could’ve been.
Chill Man: Master of icy attacks and a chilled, laid back attitude. Presumed stoner, despite the irony of needing fire to light up.
Nitro Man: Designed to cash in on the popularity of street racing after the recent Fast and Furious movie revival. But robot development cycles being as long as they are, the fad has passed some XX number of years and Nitro Man spends his days cruising the streets, obeying speed limits alone.
Pump Man: He has a giant pump on his head. He pumps it and water comes out. Great at parties. May also come in handy for other oral activities.
Commando Man: Besides having a very redundant name, Commando Man is notable for having thick armour and rocket launchers for arms. What was he designed for? What else but a fireworks technician.
Sheep Man: His coat of wool generates electrical attacks. Presumably designed to educate children about static electricity. For all I know, he was probably designed as a rib on Nintendo fans.
Strike Man: I don’t feel like I need to explain why Strike Man was made. What kid wouldn’t want his own life-sized baseball-playing robot? The downfall in his design is that he can potentially kill basemen, and with child safety laws the way they are...
Solar Man: Finally, Solar Man was designed to promote alternative energy sources. For you see, pollution and energy conservation will continue to be a problem in the year 20XX. And solar energy will continue to be openly mocked as a viable energy source in the year 20XX.

After Mega Man cuts open the last robot master, the plot twist happens. If you’ve played these games before, you know what the plot twist is. You then proceed to the final series of levels and defeat a series of bosses, culminating in the one final boss you already know about. Tradition has its place, but even I feel that certain old standbys of this series can be revamped in the name of freshness. Bowser gets creative at the end of each Mario game, you know.

Mega Man 10 is a game that you may or may not already have an opinion on, based on your experience with the franchise. The new difficulty mode at least makes it more humane to the uninitiated. Your opinion ultimately depends on your thoughts of the NES era of games, both in difficulty and perverse spectacle. Eventually, this series will grow stale again if it stays in this direction. Fortunately, that day hasn’t come yet. People that liked Mega Man 9? Buy it.

4 stars

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Dante's Inferno


First and foremost, if you are an avid fan of The Divine Comedy, you are going to hate what EA has done to their Dante’s Inferno game. It is as blistered and altered and transformed from the original poem as you feared. I’ve joked before about video gamizing in the past, but Dante’s Inferno really raises the bar to downright sacrilegious levels. But if you avoid taking personal offense to how Dante’s Inferno butchers the legendary work that is The Divine Comedy (and for that matter, the legendary game that is God of War) then you’ll actually find a surprising bit of unintended, not very-divine comedy.

Dante’s Inferno is as much a homage to The Divine Comedy as The Insane Clown Posse is a homage to Muddy Waters, or any music in general. In The Divine Comedy, Dante was a poet whom traversed the circles of hell, purgatory and heaven like a tourist, having friendly conversations with the locals and soaking in the sights under the hope of seeking blessing from some Beatrice angel thingy. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is a jacked-to-the-gills Emo Crusader that laughs at death…literally. He takes the Grim Reaper’s scythe and slices him in half while the angel of death begs for mercy. He then returns home, only to find a bald-headed naked Satan taking the very naked soul of his wife Beatrice down to hell due to Dante’s (obviously) sordid past. Of course, the only way Dante knows how to make things right is to traverse the nine circles of hell and disrupt Lucifer’s operation of tormenting the damned. Taken on its own, the Dante’s Inferno plot is your typical video game plot of a crazy good guy trying to muck up everyone that the crazy bad guy works for.

And thus begins the merry romp into the underworld. When you think about it, Dante’s Inferno is all about two ideas; cloning God of War and giving concept artists a chance to unleash their darkest fantasies onto a piece of paper. Each circle of hell (well, 8 out of 9) are recreated with lovingly twisted imagery, and each populated with appropriately gory enemies. Babies with claws, prostitutes with AIDS-powered tentacles, fat dudes with mouths for hands… the concept artists for Dante’s Inferno had a real field day creating monsters for their vision of the beyond. Sure, it gets a bit silly to see certain enemies overlap in circles they don’t belong in; the Lust hooker monsters are probably a bit out of place in the swampish Anger circle, but whatever. You do kill Minos, the secretary of Hell, very early on in the game, so it is a bit understandable that the paperwork of hell is a bit mixed up as Dante progresses.

As for the former part, Dante’s Inferno recreates God of War with about as much mercy and understanding as Kratos recreates the pain and suffering on all of those who cross his path. You run and double jump like Kratos. You roll out of harm’s way like Kratos. You swing and shimmy across ropes like Kratos. You quick time event death-defying events like Kratos. You fail quick time events and start the cutscene over again like Kratos. You inject steroids into your buttcheeks like Kratos. I could only think of one original gameplay mechanic in the entire game, and it’s so unholy and yet so comedic that I’ll get to it in a bit. Back to Kratoizing.

The combat is very much GOWian. A bunch of enemies of various kinds swarm in, often in large, repeating waves, using light and heavy attacks from both your scythe and holy cross. There’s something ironically funny about attacking enemies with cross projectiles. I can’t explain why, but for some reason, I never grew sick and tired of the combat. Sure, I knew I was merely fighting the same ten to twelve different enemies en masse. Sure, it reeks of artificial game lengthening when you flip a switch to open a door, only for the door to shut back tight and a swarm of enemies to appear and mock your wasted energy before the switch can be flipped again. Sure, some of those waves of enemies just seem to go on and on like that song that never ends. But to my surprise, I never loathed the action. Maybe it’s the visceral satisfaction of dicing multiple enemies with your mighty cross. Maybe it’s the gradually unlocking of abilities that let you air combo and juggle an entire entourage of demons in the air simultaneously. But this is a game that is very much carried by the strengths of its combat system, and the ability to slay many, many, many of Satan’s homeboys by the dozen.

Speaking of which, that upgrade system is driven by a Holy and Unholy morality system. Though calling it a morality system seems dishonest; a morality system is what Bioware games have, or Infamous, or other games with branching story paths based on a pretense of your character being “good” or “bad”. In this game, you’re always good; there’s but one single linear story, and one single linear ending. Rather, you earn Holy or Unholy points based on whether you choose to Punish (i.e. slaughter) certain enemies or Absolve (i.e. slaughter with religion) them. Likewise, you will run into famous celebrities (well apparently famous for their time. I only recognized Pontius Pilate) and can choose to either send them to heaven or damn them for points. (And damn them to what, I wonder. More hell?) The salvation option is comedic in the sense that you are made to play a Simon-esque mini game where you have to time button presses to catch little orbs called “sins.” Ultimately, all of the cool Holy and Unholy attacks are early-level material, so you’ll probably have a variety of Holy and Unholy points, and the morality system feels like a wasted opportunity. Dante runs into many key figures into his life and I would’ve loved to be given the chance to punish or absolve them, with potential storyline repercussions. Same with bosses too; I would love to absolve Cerberus, see what the Lord thinks of that.

So despite the sheer combat overdose, despite the unabashed ways it rips off God of War, despite the missed opportunities, I really only have one true legitimate complaint with Dante’s Inferno. The second-to-last level, the circle of Fraud, which I think is a big deal in the Divine Comedy. (I think it’s a circle of hell that has its own 10 circles dedicated to it. Hell architects had strange priorities. Though it is funny that politicians get their own circle. Stephen Harper, your fate is sealed.) This level is transformed into ten arena challenges, where Dante stands on the exact same platform and smacks up respawning enemies, and always with a stupid stipulation attached. What do I prove to the Lord above by completing a 100-hit combo, or staying in the air for 8 seconds? Both challenges required either a deceptive manipulation of my equipped items or exploiting certain moves to cheat to advance. Both of which resorted in my Gamefaq-ing the solutions to the problem. This was the part of the game where I felt like I was indeed being damned and punished by Visceral Games for my previously hating Dead Space. Or maybe this was the part of the game where the budget ran dry, or the release date drawn dangerously close, and the developers were in a panic to finish their game and satisfy the dark overlords at EA.

In any event, the biggest surprise about Dante’s Inferno was just how little I hated the game. It’s not terrific, it’s far from perfect, but it’s easier to enjoy if you know what you’re getting yourself into. I can neither absolve nor damn the game, but rather send it to rental purgatory. It’s about 7 hours long, and I am already in the midst of a second playthrough, and that’s more than I can say for, oh I don’t know, God of War 2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is still the king of the God of War clones, and the actual next God of War is only a few weeks away from release as of this writing. But if the notion of slicing a giant purple Cleopatra’s cleavage off appeals to you, this is about the best and only socially acceptable way to go about it.

3 ½ stars