Backlog Beatdown: Old School Platforming with Mega Man X

Mega Man X is a game that I first played when I was about 10 or 11, my friend Matt had a Super Nintendo and borrowed it off someone. I remember enjoying it at the time; it made enough of an impression for me to download it onto my Wii U 20 years later.

While I wouldn’t have consciously thought this when I first played it, I guess Mega Man X is a “gamer’s game,” and as standard as they come. A side-scrolling platform game with colourful characters, bosses and upgrades, easy enough for me to get more or less all the way through the game without me discovering many of its secrets, but challenging enough on the right level for it to be fun. Also there were plenty of optional upgrades to discover for those people who wanted to look for them.

Watch for the attack patters, or just
shoot it until it dies - game's fine either way.

I haven’t played many Mega Man games, but as far as I know the pattern scarcely varies between each game – you go through a number of levels, fight a boss at the end and take his weapon if you beat him, and then go on to the final level where you get a boss rush (fight all the bosses again) and defeat the game’s final boss for the win. It’s a simple enough concept, and is solid enough for it to still be popular even to this very day, with new games in the series being released as little as a few years ago.

The gimmicks of the ‘X’ series – and what sets it apart from the other games – is that you can upgrade Mega Man himself. In the main series, your upgrades were limited to the weapons you received from the bosses you defeated. In Mega Man X you get that too, but you also get upgrades to his legs, chest, helmet and gun, allowing him to dash, take more damage, break certain ceilings with his helmet and charge more powerful shots, respectively. You can also pick up items to increase your maximum health, and even ‘sub-tanks’ that allowed you to store health pick-ups to re-fill your health bar when you were ready. Finding and using all of these upgrades is the real challenge and reward of the game.

The levels are well-designed and challenging. Very few of your enemies put up much of a fight and will die if you hit them a few times, but some of them exist to get in your way and force you to come up with strategies to either avoid or kill them quickly. You die far more often to traps and pitfalls than you do from taking damage! You can access the levels after you’ve beaten them to search for the secrets, and brilliantly, areas hidden areas of some levels are only accessible once you’ve beaten others. This is a classic example of good design – you’re not forced to discover these secrets in order to beat the levels, but it is a rewarding challenge for those who do.

Most of the bosses can be beaten by analysing their attack patterns and reacting accordingly, but you can make things a lot easier for yourself by finding out which boss is vulnerable to which weapon. The classic example is Spark Mandrill – once you have the Shotgun Ice weapon, he freezes as soon as you hit him with it. Boomer Kuwanger is almost impossible to hit, but is particularly vulnerable to the homing missiles you get from Launch Octopus. The final bosses of the game are also weak to certain weapons.

I’ll admit that I used a wiki to help me to discover some of the game’s more obscure secrets – the last few health tanks, and the final bosses’ vulnerabilities. Some may call it cheating, but these were tricky enough moves to make and did not detract from the challenge of the game. I’ve had a lot of fun with Mega Man X; it’s a splendid platformer from a strong development team at the very top of their game. I’ll keep it on my Wii U in case I fancy another go, but I can’t see that happening any time soon as I’ve seen most of what there is to see.

Backlog Beatdown: Being alone with Thomas in Thomas Was Alone

What a delightful game this turned out to be! I can’t remember where I first heard about it; most likely TotalBiscuit, but I remember the idea of moving coloured blocks with some amusing narration was intriguing, if nothing else. I didn’t play it for the longest time because I was trying not to buy more games than I could beat, or at all, but then when I bought a Wii U and found it available on its virtual console, I thought I had to give it a go.

So this game shouldn’t be news to anyone really but what Mike Bithell managed to do was create a game with very simple puzzle-based mechanics and use a fantastic musical score (David Housden) and an incredible performance from Danny Wallace as the narrator to maintain engagement. It follows the story of Thomas, a little red rectangle, as he tries to escape the world he is in. On the way, he meets some different coloured rectangles, each with their own shapes, sizes and personalities – which are never heard, only narrated, in a manner similar to a children’s TV show circa 1980s/90s – and they have to use their various shapes and capabilities to help each other through the world. It takes what could have been an abstract and not-very-interesting concept and breathes life into a gaming world which at the time (2010-2012) was sorely missing some colour and wit. And it works. The music offers a sense of peace and calm, and you can’t help but be invested in the story of Thomas and his friends, as it continues to unfold in a manner which leaves just the right amount open to imagination. The game does have a rather convoluted plot, but it’s not pretending to be sensible – and you’re far more interested in the relationships between each of the characters anyway.

Easy to figure out what needs to happen here -
but how do you get them all up there?

With all the gushing people tend to do over the production, it would be easy enough to assume the score and narration carry the whole game. Thankfully, this is not the case: Thomas Was Alone is a very competently-designed game which has a good learning curve that gently introduces the player to the various different mechanics, and moves on when it is ready. The puzzles are rarely complicated, and require but a moment or two of thought. Some of the more challenging levels require some precision over their execution, but this is nothing a little patience doesn’t solve and there is a sense of achievement in completing them.  Sadly the controls weren’t quite as responsive as they needed to be, I don’t know whether that was to do with the Wii U or the game’s design but it hindered me few times.

The game isn’t very long, but it doesn’t need to be: If you blitz through it as a speed run it’ll take no more than a couple of hours, and even though I took my time I don’t think it took me more than four. I was happy just to pick this one up and have a play from time to time; it was a refreshing change to be able to do a bit at a time without having to level up, or follow a contrived plot, or even take it remotely seriously. It knows what it is – a game about moving coloured blocks – and even though the score and narration do a lot to keep the player engaged, the game is not so long that it outstays its welcome. When it ends, you feel it could conceivably keep going for another few levels, and any game that leaves you wanting more is a great game by any stretch of the imagination.

There is longevity there if you look for it. You can time-attack the levels and there is an online ranking system. The Wii U version – and presumably whatever platform you now buy the game on – comes with an option to play the game with a DVD-style commentary; I haven’t looked in to that yet but it’s great that Bithell managed to squeeze even more life out of such a game. I might look into his other game, Volume, in the future. Until then, we’ll see what comes next…