Mega Man 11 Review

 

Blockman

If you read my last post I purchased a copy of Mega Man 11 for the PS4.  I haven’t played it extensively yet, but rather have only managed to beat one stage… Blockman.  I had no idea where to start so I went with the first choice in the stage select menu.  It was fairly challenging for a novice player… but it wasn’t long before my Mega Man skills of times past kicked in and I was able to beat the stage! I can’t wait to try the level on difficult once I master this!  There is a lot that I like about this game, and very little that I have issue with.  Now, this isn’t really an big deal, but this game (so far anyway) isn’t really a sequel, but rather a series reboot.  Not that there was much of a continuum in past Mega Man games (aside from a few common enemies) but this one completely rewrites the series…

… It ignores my good buddies Gutsman, Iceman, Cutman, and the rest of the robot master fellas from the original game.   While it keeps the same premise in that you beat a robot master, acquire his weapon, and use it as a weakness of another robot master… there is no rhyme or reason to it.  I mean in the original Mega Man, it made sense to start with Bombman, then use his acquired weapon against Gutsman (the strong man miner), then use this weapon against Cutman… it had a rock/paper/scissors feel to it.  This game makes no sense at all, but then I shouldn’t complain too much as there wasn’t much reasoning to the order of robot masters in the original Mega Man sequels.

As I said, this is a minor complaint, and overall I’m really pleased with the game as it brings me back to a better time where as a kid I had no actual responsibilities except B.S. my way through school and have fun!  Go Lancers!

The graphics in Mega Man 11 are great, but then I would expect no less from a PS4 game!  The music has a good beat/rhythm to it, but honestly I thought the 8-bit music was more technical and fun from a musical standpoint.

The controls are pretty tight as would be expected from a Mega Man game and if you die it feels as though you made a mistake as opposed to other games where there is delays, etc..

I like that the robot master battles are more complex than in the original games.  While I’ve only beaten Blockman,  I liked how there were three stages in the fight so it wasn’t as simple as memorizing one pattern and kicking ass.  The enemy became huge; even rivaling the dragon in the first Wily stage of Mega Man 2!  I think this is great, however another complaint that I have is that you can’t shoot diagonally or up… I thought this would have been a nice touch.

So far however the game is really fun, and I look forward to playing it for a bit each day!

We’ve been making good progress on Alien Isolation, but unfortunately the wives ruined our sausage party this Friday and we weren’t able to continue.  The game is different, but a lot of fun… and I hear there is a sequel coming out!

We (the Sega Dude and I) are off to the Durham game swap this Sunday October 21st.  I’m really hoping for some great deals on hard to find games!  I think my soul is about the right price for LittleSampson, and if the devil is at the show we just might have a deal!

Joe’s Grievances:  I’m quite upset about the demise of the VGCC game swap in Waterloo.  From what I hear, the organizers of the show got drunk one night, insulted each other like teenage girls often do, then cancelled the event?!  Has anyone heard differently?  This really sucks as I always looked forward to going to Waterloo twice a year for this event:(  Come on Pete… make amends with Andrew and lets get this great show up and running once again!  You are partly why I regained interest in the retro gaming community!

Joe’s Plugs:  It appears that some people from Norway have been checking out mynintendodimension.com lately which is fantastic!  In fact I’m hoping that my man Leo Moracchioli is going to be preforming near Oslo this winter break so I can come to your awesome country and watch!  I’m a huge fan!  Check out his metal covers at Frog Leap Studios.

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty answers media questions after appearing before the Special Committee on Justice Policy at the Ontario Legislature in Toronto on Tuesday May 7, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

I had a thought the other day… if Dalton McGuinty (Ontario’s former Premiere) married Andy Dalton (the quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals) and took his name… he would be Dalton Dalton!  Awesome!

Until next time,

Nintendo Joe

Video Game Collector Community

The Video Game Collector Community (VGCC) puts on a twice annual video game swap event in Waterloo Ontario.  You can check out a video link of the event here.  My first time there was last September where the Sega Dude and I had a vendors table.  I thought we did quite well… so much so that i didn’t have enough inventory to justify getting another dealer table.  Instead, we both went with a back pack and a list of what we had to trade.  Of course I lost my list at a dealer table within the first 5 minutes of arriving:(  This is what happens when I get REALLY excited… i get stupid.  This is also what cut my Street Fighting career short: I just got too excited at the prospect of becoming world champion that i would forget my own name.  This brings up something else.  The Sega Dude told me that I need a name for myself in this blog.  He suggested Nintendo Dude, but really, there can be only one Dude and he has claim to that.  I was thinking of going generic with something like “Nintendo Joe”, but that isn’t really very creative and a million other people probably already have that name.  Oh well, for now anyways the name is Joe.

So I was able to come back from the Waterloo swap meet with a pretty good score:

Now settle down.  Please let me explain the bottom photo.  Yes I did spend $15 on a mint copy of Thunderforce II for the Sega Genesis but I had no choice!  I used to have it way back in the day when Genesis first came out and I was really good at it… admittedly not as good as some of the people i’ve seen on youtube finish it with one life:(  It might have been the only thing that I was ever really good at, so it has a bit of sentimental value to me.  Plus, even though it’s a Sega game, it’s really kick ass!  They have made several sequels to a game (Thunderforce) of which no one seems to remember the original.  I did a little looking around and found out that the original game was released by Technosoft in 1983 for the Sharp X1 computer.  Basically the story is about the struggles of the Galactic Federation agains the Orn empire.  The first game was an overhead shooter and was pretty brutal compared to it’s sequels, but considering the year it came out it’s not that bad.  Thunderforce III was one of the first games that I bought, and if i remember correctly I spent $90 for the Mega Drive version of the game before it was released here in north America.  I look back on that and am astounded how much the games used to cost, and more importantly where a 14 year old kid gets that kind of money.  I must have delivered hundreds of newspapers to save up for this game.  What’s scary is that I had several games…. though once i hit 16 and got my first real job as a janitor on the weekends, not only were the games cheaper, but i also had the money to buy them.  That’s how i afforded my SNES back in the day.  So while Genesis may not be Nintendo, they did make some pretty kick ass games including the Phantasy Star series which is probably my favourite thing Sega ever produced.  Thunder Spirits on the SNES is basically just Thunderforce III with a few added levels.  The good news is that the cart sells for only around $9 so it should be in my collection before long.

The other titles that I picked up I either bought or traded for.  I ordered 200 universal game cases to store my NES and SNES games in.  I was told last night that I’m out of my mind if i print the covers out myself… i think i told you in an earlier post on where to find them, but so you don’t have to go routing around in my old blogs, i’ll give you the link again.  It is a site called thecoverproject.net and has the covers of most systems (including handheld systems such as the Game Boy Advance, or DS.  In fact I found that the old DS cases have a slot on the inside that Fits GBA games.  At the swap i bought a few of those to put my GBA games in.  I’ve printed some of the covers and they turned out great.  I don’t know why Nintendo didn’t release their games in clam cases like Sega did?!  Like it or not, Sega had this right, and it amazes me how many Sega games I see loose.  Where did the hard box go?  It’s what made keeping Sega games in good condition easy… and it looks nice.  So now I’m buying universal game cases, and printing out my own covers, or rather pay staples $0.40 per page to do it for me.  My goal is to have my collection all cased up by the end of the summer.  It might be a pipe dream, but it is something to strive for:)

 

Nintendo Joe (for now)