Mega Man ZX

"Six different forms equals six times the fun!"

I've never really been into the Megaman series, having only played Zero 4 prior to this one, but it piqued my interest. Here's my take on things.

Graphics
The graphics are very good. Sadly, 2D side scrollers are in short supply these days, and we tend to forget just how good they can look. Well this game looks good. The sprites are well done and the backgrounds are superb. A pleasure to look at. The cutscenes are excellent.

Sound
Nothing all that exciting, but nice. It really blended in with the background, and was used to good effect. I particularly liked the music in the city. The cutscenes are all in Japanese with subtitles, but that didn't really bother me.

Story
Standard save the world plot. Madman gets powerful weapon, you find other weapons and destroy him. A few little twists, not that exciting. Not bad by any means, just not a major focus.

Controls
You can customize the controls. I used primary weapon on Y, secondary on A, jump on B, and it worked well for me.

Gameplay
Ah yes, the meat of the game. I liked this one. Firstly, it is hard. Even on easy difficulty I found it hard. On normal I could barely do anything. That might just be me, but I can definitely say that if you don't like a challenge don't buy this.

The premise of the game, that you can transform into different biometals and gain their powers, worked quite well. The biometals all have different strengths and weaknesses, so you'll switch often. The different powers are well thought out, although I fond Model LX's charge shot completely useless. It was sometimes annoying to have to switch back and forth to crawl through holes (this can only be done in human form), but other than that it was fine.

The large, Metroid style world is nice, but it was very annoying trying to find the entrance to the needed sector. And saving can only be done in certain places, which got really annoying when you die only rooms away from the boss.

Overall
Overall this was a very good game, and I would strongly suggest buying it if you aren't afraid of a tough fight.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/20/06