RockMan & Forte

"One of my favorites in the series......"

This is one of the best Mega Man games ever. It uses a wide variety of bosses, interesting secrets and original ideas. The graphics are great and the sound is decent. And best of all you get to play as Forte (Bass). This is the only game where you can play as him with the exception of the hard to find arcade game Rockman:The Power Battle.

Story: Most Mega Man games have the same story. Dr. Wily has sent robot masters after you and you must stop them. This game, however, is very different. You must instead stop King, an evil and extremely powerful robot and a series of robot masters working for him. Also while not a playable character Protoman will play a major role in this game, and unlike in MM7 his goal is clear. Score:10

Game Play: The layout of the screen is very nice. The game works like your basic shooter with a few changes. First of all there are various puzzles, although they aren't too hard they still are a nice twist. Another addition is you can use various enemies weapons to affect the whole level you're playing, much like in MM7. Also the previously mentioned upgrades in the game can make things interesting as well.Score:9

Controls: The controls for this game are pretty good, although they could be better. Jumping can be somewhat hard on occasion and when playing as Forte you can only shoot right and up but not left and up. Also Forte's upgrade that lets him use Bass(Treble) as an improved armor
can be a bit hard to control, but not too much trouble.
Score:8

Graphics: The graphics are pretty good and very well detailed, especially on Forte. The animations on various effects such as the enemies weapons when you use them is pretty good too. However it could be a lot better.
Score:8

Challenge: This game is one of the easier however a few puzzles and many tricky jumps still make it a challenge. Also if you want to completely beat it (collect every disk, get every item, etc.) you're going to have a hard time. The bosses are for the most part easy, you might not even need to find many of their weaknesses and just use the basic buster on them to beat them, however there are also many that are very difficult to beat, so it pretty much balances out. Score:7

Replay Value: With two very different games depending on who you choose and lots of various upgrades to buy you should have fun. Also there are hidden computer disks that allow you to view various Mega Man characters of the past and present, and apparently some that never made the cut. You also can get the disks for humans such as Dr. Light. On top of all this the game is pretty fun so you'll probably come back to play it again.
Score: 9

So in conclusion if you're a fan of Mega Man games at all this is definitely worth checking out, and if you're not you still might want to check this out, because it's a great game OVERALL SCORE:8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/01, Updated 04/27/01