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.
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| 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.
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