Reviews

Review – Mega Man Powered Up (PSP)

It really disappoints me that this game never came out for anything aside from the PSP. I kind of loathe the PSP. I’ve looked into getting a PSP several times over many years, but the system relies on lots of Proprietary Sony extras, like the over priced Memory Stick Duo cards, and so I just, never bothered because by the time I got one and a decent sized memory card, I was looking at enough to buy a regular console.

I had actually kind of forgotten this game even existed for a while, despite being pretty excited about the idea when it was initially released. Mega man Powered Up is a ground up remake of the original Mega Man title. The claim is that it’s also faithful in every way, despite the visual updates, though that’s not really quite the case. There are quite a few changes to how the controls handle and enemies work, so it’s actually a bit awkward to play if you’re familiar with the mechanics of the Mega Man series.

There are two ways to play this game as well, “Classic” and “Powered Up”. Classic is essentially just the original game, using the updated visual style, though there are some slight adjustments here and there.

Powered Up is much more different. The field of view is a bit tighter, and thus the stages have been slightly redesigned. They do keep the spirit of the old levels though and many of the scenes are the same as the regular game, only a bight tighter. Also, Robot Master weaknesses have been shuffled a but to account for the two NEW bosses.

Right, two brand new bosses have been added. Unlike every other game in the Mega Man series, the original only had 6 Robot Masters to fight, all of the others have 8. This game adds Time Man and Oil Man. Both add a little bit of spice to how things work, though, not really in a useful way. Time Man is essentially just a remix of Flash Man and his power is just the Flash Stopper, though you can toggle your weapon while the world is frozen in time around you. Oil Man’s power drop is these little blobs of oil that can be used to directly shoot enemies, or dropped on the ground and used as a little sliding surf attack. The problem is, this surfing attack pretty much guarantees taking damage yourself, which makes it almost completely useless.

Also, Oil man has an extremely questionable design choice that really kind of looks like a racist blackface design. In fact in the NA version of this game he is recolored to be more dark navy blue colored and less black colored for this very reason.

Aside from the new bosses, the game itself has gone through a 3D facelift. It still retains it’s 2 dimensional game play, but everything is rendered in nice super deformed style 3D models now. It’s a really neat style that still manages to capture the core style of the Mega Man design aesthetic. This also means the levels themselves are much more visually interesting as well, with more lush styling and full background designs to make things richer.

There is also a neat new mechanic where you can play as the enemy Robot Masters themselves. If an enemy is defeated using only the Mega Buster, you “save” them instead of destroying them, which unlocks the ability to start a fresh game using that character. This can really change the dynamic of how the levels work as well, since it means having access to the different special abilities only. For the boss you are playing as, the end boss gets replaced with Mega Man himself, though he is wearing Proto Man’s gear.

Throughout the stages there are several collectibles to find, primary of which are additional unlocks for the game’s added Creative Mode. If you ever wanted “Mario Maker but its Mega Man”, this is it. You have to unlock the different enemy and tile sets, but you can design and play your own levels.

Overall, the game is a lot of fun and has a lot to offer. Maybe a little too much to offer if you’re an obsessive completionist. After beating the game once, the game said I had unlocked only 3% of everything. And I had been pretty thorough in my game play. My main disappointment is that the title apparently sold poorly, so Capcom never bothered to use this engine and character style to update all of the other Mega man games to be more modern in style.

Review – Dead Cells (PC)

Mar 23rd, 2023

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

I have to full be upfront here. When I first started playing Dead Cells, I hated it. Well, I liked it, but grew to hate it. I reminds me a lot of Rogue Legacy in it’s presentation, but it’s quite a bit faster and more difficult than Rogue Legacy is. I really really liked Rogue Legacy. Dead Cells also feels a lot like a Metroidvania title, though many will argue it’s not really a Metroidvania game, it has a very similar gameplay feel, even if the actual loop is different.

It’s closer to being a Roguelike platform game than a Metroidvania game, I’ll accept that. You do revisit areas, but not out of necessity to collect missed items or areas by using new skills, a Metroidvania hallmark, but because in Dead Cells, you live, you die, you live again. Actually, I’m not even sure you’re ever really ever alive, or maybe just you’re never dead. Your ACTUAL character is basically just a big sort of, blobby fungus thing. You start the game and possess a body and go from there.

Each iteration through the game, the levels are the same, but the layout is randomized. The route is also somewhat randomized, in that you can often choose where to go next. The choice can come at a trade off though, as the game gives bonus rewards for speed. Your equipment is also randomized. You get an assortment of initial drops to choose from and enemies drop items, but the secondary abilities and stats are all randomized out.

Between lives, you can unlock some permanent perks though. Which will help with progression as things get more and more difficult. This is where my chief problem with this game WAS. I’ll address it, but I do want to emphasize the “was”. The progression, really does not keep pace with the skill leaps on each stage. And dying at certain point in each run can mean losing any chance of progressing your ability at all, which results in a LOT of repetition and feeling of going nowhere. The ability to unlock skills only comes at the end of a stage. There is also a larger upgrade option for drops that only occurs every few stages. When you die, you lose all of your collected souls, which are used for upgrades.

You can unlock the ability to keep some of them, but it’s such a small amount it’s almost worthless. It also means the only incentive you have to spend early on, is on the ability to save souls between lives. So you never actually GET stronger for a while. It also doesn’t help that some of the unlockable items are kind of worthless and only serve to pollute the potential pool of drops.

After throwing myself against the first boss a few dozen times, then the stage that comes after the first boss, I completely shelved this game. It was fun, but not, THAT fun, to play essentially the same 2 levels over and over endlessly for a minuscule boost in power.

The game was eventually patched to add a difficulty adjustment slider, which brought me back and suddenly, the game was super enjoyable. Funny enough, this isn’t the first game this sort of thing happened to me with, Control did the same thing with the same results. Some of the more “hardcore” people complained, but it really doesn’t affect anyone else to play on an easier difficulty.

With the new ability to slide things to be less brutally difficult, the game was suddenly incredibly enjoyable. It meant going much farther long, beating more bosses and the game, and actually being able to progress along with unlocks. This also meant that the progression system was meaningful and the difficulty could be raised a bit as things became too easy. It honestly felt a lot more how the game was meant to be played.

Gameplay aside, the graphics use an interesting dense pixelated style that, despite it’s pixelatedness, really shows off all of the motion and environment well. Everything stands out well and looks pretty nice, in a slightly gross and morbid sort of way. The enemy variety is alright as well, each zone has it’s own sort of stable of enemies that show up, though some of them do get repeated.

There are also some more difficult enemies that only show up on higher difficulty levels. In addition to the difficulty sliders added in the mentioned patch, the game itself has a mechanism to increase the overall difficulty based on how many times the final boss is defeated. In order to unlock the “true ending”, the final boss must be defeated several times on increasing difficulty levels.

There are also several mini games and additional time attack modes that can be played for some extra challenge if that’s your jam.

The core gameplay loop is still a bit repetitive, and there is a lot of repeating each level, which may not be for everyone. There is still some trickiness to the difficulty as well, even on “easy mode”, which can be a turn off. Still, it’s a fun and fast platformer that plays a lot like traditional Castlevania/Metroidvania types in it’s mechanics.

Star Wars Black Series – Chirrut Imwe

Sep 13th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

I cannot, for the life of me, properly remeber Chirrut Imwe. I keep wanting to go with Churrit Imwe, or Chimwe Irrut, or some backwards variation. Last week I commented on his partner Baze Malbus.

So Chirrut Imwe is the closes thing Rogue One has to a Jedi in it’s cast. Ok, technically Darth Vader is in the cast, but he’s kind of a minor character who mostly exists for fanservice. It’s never super clear if Chirrut is force attuned or anything, though given his martial arts skills adn that his character is blind, it seems likely. Unfortunately for Chirrut, he lives in a time without Jedi, so no one was able to train him. He is sort of a Jedi sympathizer monk of some sort.

Where Baze Malbus is kind of a stocky brick of a figure, Chirrut Imwe is considerably less restricted. This is great since he is sort of a martial artists character. He has a nice cloth skirt that allows his legs to still be posed in kicking or jumping poses without limiting the articulation. His torso doesn’t have anything particularly glaring that gets int he way of the arms either.

Chirrut comes with an small assortment of weapons. First is his staff weapon. It’s pretty straight forward. He also includes his crossbow, blaster, weapon thing. It’s kind of hard to describe. It’s basically a space rifle, but it has an extra handle piece that can slip over the barrel with little fold out bits that make it look sort of like a bow or a crossbow. It’s a laser gun though, so it doesn’t exactly shoot bolts. Then again, we are talking about a series that includes a Wookie that wields a bowcaster crossbow.

Chirrut Imwe is probably the most exciting figure to come out of the Rogue One series of figures. It’s a shame that he was hard to come by for a long time and it seems like a lot fo people kind of forgot Rogue One even was a thing.

Star Wars Black Series – Baze Malbus

Sep 6th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

Star Wars: Rogue One gave us a nice interesting ensemble cast of heroes. What it didn’t really produce was a particularly great line up of figures. A couple of the more interesting characters in the movie and figures are Baze Malbus and his partner Chirrut Imwe. Both of these figures were actually kind of hard to come by for a while, partially because wave 1 of the Rogue One waves sold incredibly poorly. For a good while, you basically were looking at paying a ridiculous mark up on either figure on the secondary market.

I’ve seen both show up at Five Below, at least in the states, so, they are considerably more affordable these days. This is extra nice since these guys certainly work better as a pair. Unfortunately for Baze Malbus, he is the weaker of the two.

The basic sculpt is pretty nice, his outfit is interesting and he has a nice stocky build that’s not too common in Star Wars figures. He also sports a pretty hefty backpack to support his heavy gun. While the backpack is a cool design, it really hinders this figure all around. It’s very heavy and Baze can hardly stand up on his own without falling over. His bulky design already hinders his pose-ability to begin with.

To top it off, his head suffers like most of the Rogue One figures with a very soft sculpt and paint job. There was definitely something weird going on with the production of thee figures that didn’t help them look exciting when on the shelves.

If you’re not a big Rogue One fan, you’re not really missing out on anything skipping Baze Malbus, but he does compliment Chirrut Imwe nicely in a display, and chances are both will be available together.

Star Wars Black Series – Darth Maul

Aug 30th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

In the same wave as Anakin, we’ve gotten a second much needed re-release of a very popular prequel trilogy character with Darth Maul. Darth Maul was number 2 in the main line of figures, part of the first wave of Black Series every released. He is also pretty popular, that kind of makes him a little hard to find.

For the most part, this is one of the more impressive Black Series figures I’ve picked up, mostly in part due to his array of accessories. To start off, there is his double bladed light saber. The blades are removable and it splits into two sabers. Nothing amazing, but having all those choices is really nice and it’s accurate to the films.

Second, he has a pair of macro binoculars. They look nice, but he can’t hold them and look through them while wearing his cloak. It’s been a bit since I have seen The Phantom Menance, but I am pretty sure he was wearing his cloak when he is seen using the binoculars.

Speaking of which, lastly, we have the cloak. A nice cloth goods cloak would have been perfect, but the design trick here is pretty clever so it’s kind of forgivable. Darth Maul comes with two heads, both are pretty much the same head, except that one has the cloak attached to it. The whole piece, head and cloak, is removable, and has proper arm holes for his arms and all that when attached. This is clever because it means the cloak can properly sandwich down onto Maul’s head and look right, without the head horns getting in the way.

Aside from the accessories, the body is a pretty standard Jedi style body. I don’t believe it’s just a straight repaint or anything, but they all wear the same sort of tunic outfit, even though Maul’s is black. He has a nice range of motion as well, which is good given how acrobatic Darth Maul’s fighting style is.