![]() Elec Man's kind of a bully, though despite the exploit where you can lock him into an easy-to-beat pattern, his damage values are completely out of balance. ![]() Attack patterns are varied, the projectiles they fire are pretty neat-lookin', and their animations really give a sense of personality-Guts Man's burly chuckle, Ice Man's "let's DO this!" air punch, Elec Man's emotive arms channeling and releasing electricity, and so on. Robot masters tend to share similar color schemes, and most of their designs boil down to "regular dude with something funny on his head," but the simplicity is endearing. +2 Bosses: No need to go crazy in the first installment-straightforward Robot Master concepts make it that much easier to grasp the rock-paper-scissors style of combat: rock (Guts Man) beats scissors (Cut Man) scissors cut wires (Elec Man) etc. The challenges are elegantly simple and wholly deliberate, and that is a beautiful thing. I'm normally critical of games with a lack of variety in the challenges, but the repetition in MM1 provides a learning curve that facilitates pattern recognition-you can't bumble your way through waves of Watchers or platoons of Pengs you have to earn the right to reach the next screen by learning how to outwit and outgun your foes. The game is demanding, but fair-checkpoints are well placed, power-ups are sparse but sufficient, and there's always at least one weapon or technique that makes each challenge easier to surmount (hence why I'm not knocking off a whole point for those dastardly Foot Holders). Pattern recognition plays a large role in survival (the moving platforms in Guts Man's stage, those sneaky disappearing bricks, etc.), but even after cracking a pattern, there's still some serious skill required. A vertical level (Elec Man) and an autoscrolling level (Wily 3) add more creativity to the mix. +2 Stages: There's a great balance of enemy-based challenges, environmental hazards, tricky platforms, and even a puzzle or two. Otherwise, the precision in this game is downright impressive compared with its contemporaries (and, indeed, compared to most any other platformer since). +0 Control: Mega Man's a little slippery when coming to a complete stop, and it's a little obnoxious that you can't pause while one of your projectiles is still on the screen. +2 Sound Effects: Mega Man introduces a host of distinctive sound effects that will become staples of the series, and the sounds the special weapons make are particularly fun and satisfying. +1 Music: These tunes set the standard of hummable, high-energy music with a good beat, but the relatively rough sound quality and short loops on some of the tracks serve as a reminder that this is still an early NES game. +0 Graphics: While certainly above average as far as games of the time period go, simple backgrounds and enemy designs with a basic amount of detail make for less of a visual feast than later installments. Either way, do you really need an excuse to go blow up robots? +0 Story: There's no story to speak of, if you're just going by what's presented in the game, but the instruction manual's "stop mad scientist from taking over the world" plot is perfectly adequate for a platformer from this era.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |