Mega Man X8

"MMX8 is great!"

Okay, let me make one thing clear. My review for X7 is based off of the fact that two years ago, we would have taken any MMX game that came our way. The last X game we had just seemed so different and confusing. I liked X7 when it came out, but once X8 came out, it blew X7 away.

You see, Capcom finally decided to take fan's thoughts into consideration. What did we like about X7? What did we hate about it? What did we like about the earlier games? Capcom listened to all of this, and mixed it all together to make the ultimate X game.

X, Zero, and Axl are all back after the events of X7. Next-Gen reploids are being used to build a huge elevator to space, called the Jakob Project. Head of the project, Lumine, has been kidnapped by the fan favorite character Vile, and X, zero, and Axl are called to rescue him. Yeah, it isn't Metal Gear Solid, but the story is told through some animated cutscenes which look very nice. And not just an opening and closing one, but some littered throughout the whole game. Plus, the fact that Vile came back really shows tha Capcom listened to the fans.

The gameplay has finally returned to the glory days of X1-X3. Lots of enemies to blow up, cool bosses, and useful powerups. the powerups that you get from defeating bosses finally have a use again. For example, if you use the electricity weapon in the Dark Mantis's stage, you can light it up and uncover some secret rooms. Ride armor is back, with three different vehicles. You get a snowmobile type machine, some kind of flying hoverbike, and the classic rock-em-sock-em robot puncher machine. They all move smoothly and have a variety of features. The only one that seems off is the hoverbike, as the stage is reasonably confusing the first few times around.

The game is back to it's classic 2-D roots, with only 2 3-D stages, which are the ride-armor levels. The 2-D stages are all great, and feel just like the great SNES X games. The two 3-D stages are different obviously, but play better than the ride armor stage in X7. The snowmobile level is nice, and plays like the X7 ride-armor stage, but with a better camera, and without the annoying controls. The hoverbike stage is what most people who played the game complained about. The camera moves so fast that you can't really see where you're going, and since it's on rails you can't exactly dodge that easily. Once you get used to it though, you can go through the stage in a matter of minutes.

All of the character shave received overhauls too. X now has two armors to get, along with his classic "Default" armor. These allow him to have special abilities, and you can even combine parts of the armors together for special features from both of them. Zero now plays like his X4-X6 style. He can use directional attacks by holding a direction the controller and then using the triangle button, after you receive the powers from defeated bosses. Axl has received the best improvement. He now plays like Bass from "Mega Man and Bass". He comes equipped with a rapid-fire shot, a more controlled hover than in X7, and a more refined transforming ability. His copy shot doesn't take as many hits to copy a power as it did in X7, and the enemies he copies give him more abilities this time. Each character also has a special way of destroying shield enemies. X can break them with a fully-charged X-Buster shot. Zero can bust them up with a full Z-Sabre combo. Axl will destroy them with a 8-hit rapid shot. This makes your decision a bit easier on which two characters you bring into battle, since they all have such varied powers.

One more new gameplay bit to mention, is the combo attack. When your combo meter gets full (By attacking enemies constantly), you will be able to perform a team attack with the second character you brought along. This is pretty helpful for certain bosses, and it can help people having a hard time out, by destroying every enemy on the screen.

The music and sound improved as well. The electric guitars are back, and the game uses them a lot. Burn Rooster's stage is an excellent example, and reminds me of the great guitar themes from X3. The boss battle theme is one of my personal favorites in the series, and the final boss battle theme is amazing. Other ish techno- beats and some orchestra-sounding tunes are played in other levels and cutscenes, which sound equally excellent. The sound is decent mostly, except when you constantly attack enemies with shields, as that tends to make a lot of metal-clashing sounds. But that's bound to happen anyway, since.. Well, you're attacking shields.

The graphics are just decent. They're nothing too amazing, but it's a step up from X7. Stages are pretty nice looking, and all look different enough from eachother. Character models are simple, but animate smoothly. Bosses look amazing though, have tons of animations, and some of them have some pretty good looking attacks. The best part about the graphics though, lie within the lighting effects. While the game looks simple, the lighting brings the stages to life, and gives you some eye-candy to look at while everything is moving by you. If that isn't enough for you, there are plenty of animated cutscenes for you to watch. Similar to the opening and ending scenes from X7 and Command Mission. There are more than two in this game though, and they look amazing.

So overall, MMX8 is the X game we were all waiting for. Old favorite characters return, the difficulty is just right, cool bosses, useful powers, great music and sound, and lots of unlockable weapons, characters, and powerups. If you've lost interest in the X series, this might be the game that will make you come back. For everybody else, it's a decent rental game, so try it out, you might find out why the MMX games were popular back in the SNES days. This game does a good job of combining the best of the old, with the best of the new. Basically, it's the ultimate X game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/06/05