Tearing Down Powered Up

Guts Man is my prime target for this one. I love the character, and his new voice was kind of jarring, being unlike any version of Guts Man before it, but still quite likable. He doesn’t sound as stupid as other versions. He’s like a big brother(the good kind) who’s a construction worker.

Sadly, though, playing as him isn’t as much fun as fighting him. He’s practically defenseless. His primary method of attack is to pull these blocks out of nowhere, which makes a great defense a lot of the time, and can get you past some obstacles, like spikes. He can also pick these blocks up and throw them.

Sadly, his trajectory stinks. The NPC version can throw at a downward angle, but the PC version throws straight. And if it hits something, it shatters into pieces that can do damage, but most of the time, these will miss your enemies.

And he can’t even make blocks all the time. I’ve done it in some places, I’ve done it while in the air. And other places… nothing.

He’d have been much better served with a punch, of a double-fisted pound attack similar to GutsMan.EXE’s hammer. With or without the shockwaves. Just so he can hit enemies that are below his waist level.

It’s also funny how weak he turns out to be, for a guy with such emphasis on strength. I found this out the hard way, as it seems in New Style, if there are two blocks of his type stacked up and you remove the bottom one, then the top falls. It wasn’t like that in Old Style.

And it wouldn’t be such a big deal, except the falling block will KILL Guts Man if he happens to be too close. He’s supposed to lift boulders the size of houses with ease, but a second block of his own size shatters him to pieces.

And it’s these same blocks that can do absolutely no damage to an enemy.

That’s right, even the weakest of enemies, if you generate a block above them, will shrug it off like nothing, no matter how many times you do it. The blocks can only be generated where there are no enemies, and sometimes you just don’t have that luxury, putting Guts Man at a SEVERE disadvantage in close-range situations. In fact, I don’t even know how he could beat the Yellow Devil, given the limited room there is to move. More on that later, though.

Incidently, I’ve not reached the second part of Wily’s castle with Fire Man yet. Given that his flame goes out with a squirt of water(reactivated by flame), I really wonder how it’s even possible to beat the game with him.

I hear from Gelg that Time Man’s not the greatest to use, either.

Also, if you hate the lifts from the old Guts Man stage, you’ll REALLY hate the revamp. It has TWO sections like that. The first is alright; hell, I can get through the original in Old Style with no problems. But the second part is god-awful. In Old Style, there was only one part… that, or the second was so easy I just forgot about it.

To compound this and make me question the current dev team, they’ve made it worse by removing the Magnet Beam. At least in Old Style, you have that open-ended option. That was a cool thing about these older games, and even up into the X series’ early entries. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be more than one solution to a problem. Can’t do the lifts? Can’t stand the disappearing blocks(called “Shutsugen Blocks”)? You could get the Magnet Beam to pass the obstacles such as that. In MM2, you could use the Items, like the Jet Sled in Heat Man’s stage. Here, they instead give you another double-sided sword of an obstacle, opting instead to let you nerf the challenge factor rather than think your way past a problem with an alternative. It feels broken. Not impossible, but a few blocks north of wear fun takes a day and frustration fills in.

See, if anything proves too tough for you, you can always go back and choose an Easy Mode to tackle the stage in. You can do this at any point in the game, same for Normal or Hard, before each stage. This will often add special blocks that will make many jumps, obstacles, even spike traps easier to navigate.

However, this is where the problem lies. Say those platforms are the only problem you’re having in the stage. Well, tough. If you dumb them down, then EVERYTHING in the stage is dumbed down. It’s not a unique phenomenon, but is sort of annoying to have to reduce an otherwise trouble-free area just on account of someone’s sadistic side. It’s most noticable in enemies, whose attack patterns change.

Incidently, on Normal, they removed the recoil an enemy will take from the Mega-Buster. Rather annoying. So unless they’re hit with their weakness(or a super-powered blast, unlockable), they have high-damage weapons, annoying recovery time, touch damage, an X8-style “invincible super attack” mode, and can walk right through your attacks like the Terminator in a psychiatric ward. Hardly seems fair. You’d think something like that would carry over into the playable versions.

On a side note, funny how that works. There will be an NPC everyone wants to play as, and when they finally get to, the character is changed from what we wanted to play as. I can understand some things for balance, but still. Zero seems like a good example of this.

Yellow Devil is worse than ever. It feels like there’s less room to fight him, even though there isn’t, and they changed his weakness. Won’t tell you what, though, in case anyone feels like experimenting. Sadly, the select button trick is gone. Yeah, it was a cheat, technically, but given the unbalanced feeling Yellow Devil provides in contrast to the rest, I think it was warranted. I have beaten him without, but not often. Maybe only once. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to.

Instead, here, you’re again faced with the stage-nerfing Easy Mode. This makes Yellow Devil a TON easier… he doesn’t move. Just blinks and fires.

Incidently, if you ever want to get Mega Man C, who can slide and charge his weapon, you have to beat Normal. It would have been nice to be able to think my way past an obstacle like the old days, but oh well. Beating Easy gets you Mega Man S, btw, who just slides. Beating Hard opens up “Mega,” which is Mega Man sans armor, aka Rock, who uses a close-range kick.

Another change that may irk some people: In the Old Style, when you go through Wily’s Castle, Cut Man and Elec Man would jump you at different points, similar to the Mavericks in Sigma’s fortress in MMX1 and MHX. Then before Wily, you faced the remaining four Robot Masters in a sequenced gauntlet.

And unlike MHX, there is no explanation for their return, except that they’re a different color. Pity.

Not here, though. Remember how this was the ONLY Classic series game without a teleporter room? Not anymore. It’s not a huge gripe in itself, except a lot of people have issues with the fact that you don’t get any energy refills after a boss fight. That, plus no E-Tanks, means you’d better stock up on lives.

Fortunately, you can leave Wily’s area and go build up at ANY time if you need to. A definite plus, same as in Maverick Hunter X. Saving also saves each stages progress, another plus, again like MHX.

So even if you’re not so hot, you can at least build up your lives to 9 to stand a better chance if you need to. Which you just might, as it seems most if not all Robot Masters now take more hits than before from their chosen weakness, some still alive after it’s all gone… a flaw the X team seems to have yet to fully overcome; I think the weapons drain more energy per use as well, but I’m not positive. Makes me and some others worry about the Metal Blade or Crash Bombs in a MM2PU, though.

I like how Red Priest put it:

“You can tell when you’re using the right weapon because it does TWO damage instead of one.”

Incidently, the weaknesses have been mostly changed around. While some make sense, others don’t. Another flaw the X team seems unable to overcome.

One problem related to this is too many instances where Super Arm is the weakness and you can’t use it. Like the return Cut Man match, or another boss that spams the attack…

Old Style has a confusing set of physics. It uses the original physics for the special weapons, but not the Mega Buster. Bomb Man’s bombs don’t explode on impact, for instance. They just bounce through enemies.

So why the Buster can’t shoot through walls is beyond me.

Another note, nothing new to gaming in general. When playing as anyone but Mega Man, including “Mega”/Rock, you will not collect special weapons. Yet, for some reason, Special Weapons Energy units will be dropped. One can only ask, “why?”

For the record, Super Metroid bucked this trend way back in the day by having enemies ONLY drop refills for stuff you not only had, but when you needed it as well. If you don’t get what I mean, it’s like so:

Say you have missiles and are missing some life. You will never get a Power Bomb or Super Missile dropped from an enemy until you’ve actually acquired the item. And only then if you’re missing any. If you’re full, enemies typically don’t drop anything.

And while bringing up Super Metroid, that reminds me of an interesting tidbit, not really a gripe. A curiousity. SM was one of the first games that would show the main character differently depending on which way she faced. She only had one cannon, on her right hand. If she was facing left, the cannon would be away from you. Facing right, towards you.

This carries over to 3-D games more naturally due to the 3-D models used, and was evident in Maverick Hunter X.

However, this is most curious. In MMPU, Mega Man will always use the Buster on the hand further from the player. Even characters with asymetric design, like Proto Man(due to his shield) will do it…

…BUT, if you’re firing and turn, then the Buster remains on the same hand, so it’ll be toward the player, until the firing stops. Then it resumes with the further hand.

A minor gripe, on another note, is the music. I like the remixes, but I like the originals better. Seem less chirpy and cheery. Pity you can only hear that on the Old Style. Incidently, it seems that the talk of putting Oil Man and Time Man into Old Style was just that: talk. A pity in some ways. Also a pity is that Old Style doesn’t have an “original graphics” mode. I always preferred the well-detailed, less-cutesy look it carried in its day, and left the stylings of the characters and story to your imagination. Not that I hate the new graphics, I just like the option.