Mega Man ZX

"Finally, he is back!"

After creating a whole lot of "Mega Man Battle Network" games, appears that Capcom finally released a new Mega Man game. While this turns out being a not a so common execution for such product, it does the trick and will obviously please the fans of the classical action games featuring this blue hero.

Like it usually happened in the other games, here you usually just need to scroll to the right (or, in a limited number of times, left) of the scenario and continue defeating enemies until you find the final boss. This is where this game presents us with its first 2 surprises...

First, instead of facing several levels, the entire world is a single gigantic level, and in order to complete the game you have to perform several missions. These are acquired in certain rooms and usually put you to reach a particular place, where sometimes you will need to fight a boss before succeeding.

Second, not all missions feature a powerful boss at the end, and most not even include the usual middle level boss. OK, most of the missions indeed make you defeat one of those powerful enemies at the end, but others may simply put you to rescue people on a fiery building or activate a computer console. Apart from these important missions (which, usually, you need to perform in order to complete the game), there are some smaller ones, which are acquire by talking to people seen in the middle of the levels. Those generally include a slightly easier difficulty, putting you to recover missing animals or reaching a particular area.

By defeating bosses and completing missions, you'll be receiving key cards, which enable you to enter new rooms of the huge scenario, always accessible. Eventually, you will gain access to more than 30 levels to play with, all of which contain some secrets to unveil, like hidden rooms or enemy data to collect, which brings us to a slight problem in the game: with so many levels to unlock and different exits to pick from, an easily accessible map would surely be important for the player. However, you have to pause your game and scroll (with the shoulder keys) until you reach a certain place, where the map will be seen. Sounds simple, but when you're trying to reach a particular room, finding it may be harder than it seems, with the constant requiring to check the overall map.

Strangely, the elemental armors in this game seem to resemble characters from the other games, when equipped. Each of those armors (well, most of them, at least...) has a special power, always noticeable in the lower screen of this console, otherwise unused. A certain armor displays the positions of the enemies near you, other enables you to see the current life of the enemy you're hitting and there's even one where you can customize the trajectory of the shots. While these things are nice to have, sometimes they feel like a random thing they added, just to justify usage of the lower screen, and it may finish by heavily resembling a GBA game. I must also state that each armor also has their own game play bonus, with one of them enabling you to fly for a bit or, in other case, getting rid of huge blocks.

When it comes to replay value, while the game has quite a good amount of missions and there are even some extra ones after completing the game, the lack of more important things to keep you playing the game can probably disappoint those who aren't hardcore fans. There are also the usual enemy data disks to collect, and up to 4 mini-games to unlock, besides a secret room where fans of the "Zero" saga will find some interesting surprises.

The story turns out being slightly more interesting that in some previous games, but not being a fan of the series I am probably not the best person to talk about it. Basically, some friends were walking near a cliff, and after some unexpected events occur, one of them falls over the cliff and eventually reaches a strange live-metal thing, where he is granted the power to use a Mega Man-like armor. After quickly defeating your first (and easiest) boss, you are taken in some events that clearly explain your task, which will be divided in many missions. While their target is not always the same, the gaming sequences always seem to resemble each other, something that may upset a small group of players.

About the graphics, I consider them to be as good as the ones in "Mega Man Zero 4". Bearing in mind that they weren't exactly created for the same console, such detail turns out being strongly disappointing. OK, there are also a few anime sequences in the game, but besides being not very frequent across the adventure, they can't obviously make up for the lack of improvement in the graphical condition of the levels. Well, at least the explosion animation of the bosses is nice, in case you were wondering...

Concerning the sound quality, each area seems to feature their own themes and you'll probably enjoy them, as they seem to fit all the playable sequences and action you face in that very same level. An interesting improvement to the game is that you can now hear the characters speaking during the cut scenes, giving them a more fitting (and anime-like) environment. Hopefully, such awesome function won't be cut out of the English versions of the game.

So, who should get this game? Well, every fan of action games will probably like it, and that's all there is to it. Just don't expect a huge replay value...

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/06