Mega Man Zero 3

"For everyone who's ever wanted their games to play them..."

The Mega Man Z series is a perfect example of Capcom's sadistic tendencies, and of certain gamer's not-so-secret masochistic desires. This series is a hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners, no-room-for-error goodness. It is the quintessential ultimate challenge of your reflexes and your thumb's ability to resist blisters, not to mention your own ability to resist the many urges to take your GBA/SP and SMASH IT AGAINST THE ****ING WALL!!! Er...right.

Now, I'd like to get the small stuff out of the way. I don't like Zero's new look. Never have. Ever since the first MMZ game I thought it looked crappy. I've sort of gotten used to it, but I still don't like it. What can I say, I prefer the old Zero, from the Mega Man X series. Personal preference.

The Z series of Mega Man games is Capcom's attempt to bring old-school difficulty back to our generation of gaming, and hot damn, do they ever succeed! The game as a whole is challenging, but Capcom adds to it by grading you. In each level, you're judged on the level of skill demonstrated. Take a minimum of damage, kill a lot of enemies, use a minimum of cyber elves (I'll get to those later) and you get a high grade. Maintain a high grade, and you'll receive a nice reward.

As I said, the cyber elves make their return from previous games. These little buggers are picked up in secret disks dropped randomly by enemies (and found scattered around stages). The cyber elves have a myriad of uses, including defending you from enemy shots, increasing your vitality, permanently doubling your health bar, giving you an extra life, all sorts of beneficial things. You can set two as Satellite types and interchange them, or change them to Fusion types and use them in that manner. They also degrade and die over time, so strategic use of these elves is key. However, the more of these elves you use, the more points you lose at the end of a stage, and the worse your grade will be.

Another addition to this game is the cyber world, which is represented by a glowing blue door sometimes found in stages. Upon entering said cyber world, the screen will be tinted green (notice how your mind immediately goes to The Matrix?) and all your currently-collected elves will become activated, making you very, very strong. Not only that, but the elves won't die over time (since it is a computerized world, after all). Unfortunately, since all your elves are activated, you automatically lose points at the end of the stage. Going into cyber-space can make the game easier, but also hurts your grade. The reward for good skills are new items, EX attacks, and skills at the end of a level. Always useful. So, you have to decide if you want to take the easy way, or the hard way. Shouldn't be a difficult decision.

The game starts out as per normal for a Mega Man game, tossing you into an intro level to get used to the controls and how you move. You still have Zero's beam saber and the arm blaster, and these can either be set to the primary or secondary fire slot. The boomerang makes a return, and the 'rod' weapon from the previous two games has yet again been renovated, this time transformed into sort of a pressurized baton.

Okay, that's a poor description. Its main use is to be charged up and shot out to push around blocks, shatter crumbling rubble, or even smash up a path through the ground in order to open up a secret passage. My favorite use for it, though, is aiming it downward while on the ground. The force of the thrust will send you flying into the air. Great for getting to hard-to-reach areas.

Like in the previous titles of the series, you can either go straight into selecting your next mission, or wander around the Resistance base and talk to the folks there. However, you must eventually choose a mission if you want to proceed with the game. As I said earlier, this game is fairly unforgiving. While it's not quite as sadistic as the first of the series, it'll still beat you upon the brow if you're not prepared to replay a good deal of the levels. As with games of yore, it's all about reflexes, quick attacks, memorization of enemy attack patterns, and good (often godlike) platforming skills. One slip, one misstep, and you'll end up in a spike pit, a pool of lava, or the ever-popular bottomless pit. Groovy.

And that's not even mentioning the bosses. Oh, there be the bastards of this series! They come in all shapes and sizes, and they're all programmed for one thing: kicking your scrawny ass. Here's where you really want to pull out all your abilities as a gamer, as the combination of powerful attacks and fast movement from the bosses will end with you dying before you can blink twice. So, don't blink. Ever.

A word on new additions. Your weapons no longer 'level up,' which I like. Nothing worse than trying to get an unwieldy weapon like the Boomerang to level up. You also have the option of new head, body and leg chips to equip. Only one of each can be equipped at a time, and the elemental body chips are often quite useful to beating bosses that have an elemental weakness. The other chips can be won if you beat a level and its respective boss with a high grade at the end. They include such bonuses as automatic healing when standing still (if you've played other MMZ titles, you'll know this is a HUGE advantage!) increased running speed, a double jump, and more. The fact that only one chip of each type (out of about three for the head, six for the body, and eight for the legs) can be equipped at a time adds another layer of strategy to what is otherwise a straight shoot-and-slash fest.

I'm sure I mentioned the secret disks somewhere in this review...well, anyway, these are a bunch of disks you can find either dropped by enemies or littered around levels in odd places. Many levels have them in out-of-the-way spots, so exploration is encouraged if you want to find them all. These disks contain cyber elves, energy crystals (the food of cyber elves, used to power them up) cool sprite portraits of regular enemies and bosses, and even a portion of the game's history. There's 180 disks, all of which aren't easy to get at all. A good deal of exploring and assaulting of enemies will be necessary to find all the disks. The point of it all? Well...

Mini-games! There's mini-games this time around, unlocked through various means, such as only using the beam saber throughout the game, or just the arm cannon, collecting all the disks, getting all the cyber elves, a whole load of stuff Capcom dreamed up to keep you playing over and over. These games consist of even more challenges, like destroying enemies with the rod in a certain amount of time, pattern-matching colored balls, and leaping from platform to platform without falling. It sounds simple, but given the nature of the main game, you would be wise not to think lightly of these mini-games.

Overall, I like a challenge. To a point. Maybe a point below what Capcom's set this game to...okay, two points. Hopefully I haven't scared you too badly with this tale of horrors, because behind all the bullets to dodge and the near-immortal bosses and the many, many instant-death pits, there lies a great action-platformer that really gives you an honest challenge - something rare in this day and age. Think of this game as army boot camp. It's hard, it's painful, and at times you may feel like you want to pack up and go home, but at the end you'll be tougher, stronger, and a better person for it.

At no point is it difficult because of cheap enemy tricks or an instant of bad control. Zero moves fluidly, rapidly, respondent to your every whim. The course of this game is entirely dependent upon you, the navigator, to maneuver this great hero through the perils set before him. This is a game that requires real skill, true ability as a gamer. This series hearkens back to a time when the majority of titles were like that, and when you could spot a real gamer by the number of blisters he had on his thumbs.

Fortunately, Capcom's seen fit to unleash this hell-bred tough bit of software on the gamers of the present. Maybe it'll toughen you pansies up a bit.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/04