Mega Man 8 Anniversary Edition

"The central Mega Man series goes out on a sour note."

So you've decided to purchase a Playstation for games like Final Fantasy 7, right? It's understandable. But one day, you decide to go out and take a look at Mega Man 8 for whatever reason, be it the fact that you had been a fan of the series in the past or simply because you had nothing better to do. This is also understandable, but unfortunately, the first five minutes of the game set a new standard for how lame a video game can be. You see Mega Man and Bass battling in the opening cutscene, which would be interesting to watch under most circumstances; however, the folks at Capcom decided to give the characters some of the single worst voice acting ever conceived. Mega Man sounds like a little girl, Bass sounds like a complete stoner, and Dr. Wily sounds like Bass's supplier. It is that bad, and it doesn't get any better in later cutscenes in the game. All of them are presented in this manner, which will eventually have you looking for sharp objects to stab your inner ear with.

The bad parts of the game don't stop with just the voice acting, either. After getting past the exposition level of the game in which you do nothing but go in a straight line and defeat a few weak enemies before getting in a fight with a giant crab, you're put in the same position as in Mega Man 7. There are a mere four robot masters to choose from in the beginning of the game, which not only strays from the formula seen early in the series, but also makes it far too easy to figure out that the weaknesses of the various bosses are. The general idea of picking a boos and going through its level remains in tact, but the game becomes far too easy thanks to you only having to take down four robot masters at a time. The robot masters themselves are also far too easy to kill. Even if you don't have access to the weakness of any set boss, Capcom decided to extend the atrocious voice acting to said bosses themselves. The bosses all call out their attacks before executing them, which makes virtually every boss in the game a complete joke to fight against, special weapons or not. And even in cases where a boss would otherwise present a decent challenge by keeping its mouth shut, you have access to multiple abilities able to be purchased via Bolts from Roll. This makes an easy game even easier.

But sadly, it gets even worse. Aside from the horrible voice acting and near-useless bosses, this game also refuses to have any difficult level designs whatsoever. There aren't a terribly large amount of instant death traps through the game, and even those that exist are avoided easily. Most, if not all, of the levels in the game involve moving past simple puzzles and weak enemies en route to battling simple bosses. The game's design as a whole is very disappointing and comes off as being very rushed. The only parts of the game that come off with any difficult whatsoever are the final battle with Wily, and the snowboarding within Frost Man and Wily's stages. Aside from those two exceptions, this entire game is far too easy to keep anyone's interest, and far too boring and/or annoying to bother finishing.

The music is bad, the bosses are bad, the level design is bad, the voice acting is horrible, and the experience of playing this game is nothing short of vomit-inducing. To put it bluntly, the only reason to play through this game would be in the rare case of masochists looking for something to punish themselves with. In this case, and in this case only, Mega Man 8 is flawless.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/04