I wanted to talk a little bit about Mega Man 9. This game was a revelation to me. I had played Mega Man X, but no other Mega Man games, and i was curious about how they could do a new one and use the old 8-bit style with it. This was what made me look into the game. I got past that aesthetic side pretty quickly. There are two things i want to talk about: Difficulty and Level design.
The hook was, maybe surprisingly, the gameplay. It's so simple, and yet its very complex at the same time. Moreso than earlier Mega Man games for what I am able to see, having now played some of the earlier ones. The levels and challenges are designed so every different weapon (or device) can help you with a little something else than shooting bad guys.
I guess in that regard, Mega Man is not really innovative. The levels are, though. From the no-gravity sections from the 3rd Wily castle to the columns of lava you have to solidify or die in the 1st one, or even the twisting capsules in Tornado Man stage. All levels had a twist to them.
About those weapons, they all have a very specific role in the gameplay in tandem with the level design. The Concrete Shot, for example, solidifies lava, but also makes a hard place for you to walk for a second before they vanish. Take Mega Man X for example, all guns had a different patterns, yes, but none of them were more useful in any other situation than the Mega Blaster. If I recall correctly, there was one place where the charged ice shotgun was useful to get a power up. That's it. Maybe the developers' mistake at that point was that the main blaster was stronger and more useful than all other weapons, because apart from the usual weakness (Acid shot kills eagle boss, so on) the weapons stayed unused for the most time.
The developers had to make up for the lack in graphics and gameplay with the inventive levels. That's something that is crucial to the success of this game.
Second thing that interests me is the difficulty level for this game. I think that games nowadays are cakewalks. I would say my level at games is average high. I'm good at pretty much all games. Except in pc shooters, I'm almost never the best player in a game. But games aren't really hard anymore, and I know it's not me being good. It's the game makers making it easy because they don't want people to be angry at their games. Or something. The example I have in mind right now is Uncharted, which was excellent, but so easy. No challenge at all there. Just walking, shooting the dudes, and climbing around. If you stay put for too long, the game tells you where to go.
In that sense, Mega Man 9 was fresh to me.
Now this game is really hard. Really hard. I had to trial and error alot of the screens. Learn from mistakes, and learn patterns, and small tricks to get better. Of course I can say in retrospect, that I sucked at the game, but the thing is, its only hard before you actually get what does what, and how it does it. Apart from the occasionnal kneejerk (instadeath that you can't predict the fist time, without knowing it's there) all of the challenges were learnable and logial with their solutions.
Yet, even though the game has no respect for the player, you get to know everything about it, continue after continue, and by the time you finish all 8 stages, you can't help but have an incredible sense of accomplishment...
But then, the Wily stages are there waiting for you to break down completly or finally perfect your grip over the game mechanics... and complete the game.
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What I didn,t like about Megaman was the lack of interface at the beginning. I just didn't know what to do. There's a bunch of faces.... Who are these people? Am I supposed to select them? Why? To talk to them? These questions are easily answered, but after this, you start to wonder if the order make a difference. Are they in order of difficulty? Do I have to do this one before I can do that one? It might not sound necessarily important, but in a game where which weapon you use can make a very big difference in the difficulty, I think that the player should be given some idea on how to proceed. Then again, I'm the kind of player that, when presented with two ways, will take one, go forward a bit, go back, try the other one, and then decide which one I want.
I was told that it was like that in the old games, and they just wanted to reflect that. But I still consider it a bad design decision. Probably one they had made due to lack of place. It got me thinking that probably the only reason why I ever found that acceptable was because I was young when I played thoses kind of games, and couldn't read English anyway, so I didn't need instructions..
Else than that, I thought the game was excessivingly hard, which made me give up easily. But I'm not a Megaman fan, and I've never played any of the games, so it was definitively not addressed to me. Nothing wrong with an hard game...
Good point Sofi. The first Megamans were pretty obvious - Fire was good against Ice, Rock was good against Scissors, etc. - but recent Megamans are cryptic as it's impossible to know the Robot Masters' weaknesses from looking at the level select screen.
I guess the point is to generate internet buzz about how to complete a level, how to beat a boss, etc., as Étienne will attest since I'm always asking him how to get past certain areas in MM9.
As to level design in MM9, I've noticed a shift as Megaman games were coming out. The first couple ones - at least in Megaman 1 through 3 - were relatively easy, as each Robot Master had an extreme weakness. For instance, you could kill Woodman with a single charged Heatman cannon shot. But later on - I guess from Megaman 4 and up - the weaknesses decreased and weapons couldn't inflict more than 4 or 6 points of damage.
So yes, I think MM9 is definitely a niche market, destined for nostalgic and experienced Megaman gamers; those who can typically beat any of the past Megamans and seeking for new challenges.
As a side note, MM10 will have an Easy mode.
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