Noir Reviews Mega Man X6

Noir Reviews Mega Man X6


Oh X6. I’ve been waiting to get to this game for a very very long time. It’s been years since I first cracked the factory seal on it and put it through its paces, but now is time for a reckoning. It was at this point that I realized that being a Mega Man fan was like being in a relationship not unlike the kind you see in lifetime original movies. Mega Man X5 was a definite downturn in the series, but X6 will beat the ever loving crap out of you, taking cheap shots just to rub salt in your wounds. But you’ll struggle through it anyway, because your love blinds you to just how bad you’re being treated.

On with the review! It's a long one!

Today, we’ll be using four categories rather than three, because I’m finding I like it better for video game reviews. The max score is now 20 rather than 15.


Story
Graphics
Sound
Gameplay

Story: (1/5)

What a mess. The basic plot is the same as just about every X game before it. Virus has run amok. Bad robots are killing folks. That’s about it. What makes this one so damned awful is all the incomprehensible plot developments, shockers, and secrets. Zero was killed in the last game, but he’s all better now. He hid himself away so he could fix himself. FROM DEATH. This is great timing, as an evil virus Zero is running around killing folks, though we don’t know where he came from or why.

A reploid scientist named Gate is “investigating” the virus incident, but he really just wants to get his hands on Zero’s hot body. There’s his reploid assistant, Isoc, who also wants to get Zero’s body too, and claims he is intimately familiar with Zero. There’s a robot that works for them name Hi-Max, who looks like the unholy love child of Roger Smith AND the Big O. He just likes to float around and talk about how superior he is. And there’s also the minor baddie, Dynamo, from X5, who is out to get Virus DNA because its something to do. There’s also a bit of backstory between Gate and Alia, X and Zero’s navigator, but the game’s poor translation makes it impossible to decipher what their history really is.

Oh, and of course the series’ big bad guy, Sigma, is there too, but he’s not behind anything. He only shows up at the very end of the game to take you on, in a half-dead body that isn’t even capable of coherent thought. His most memorable line was “JUSDIE ZELOOOO!!!” Yep. That’s an actual quote.

I mentioned the poor translation. Almost none of the text makes sense in the game. It’s “A WINNER IS YOU” bad. There are also frequent misspellings running rampant as well. I know Mega Man isn’t known for its deep plotlines, but at least they were all simple, and made some sense. This game couldn’t even address any of the hanging plot threads from the last two games. It gets one point for um..continuing the plot anyway, I suppose.

Graphics: (3/5)

As this is a PS1 era game, it obviously can’t be held to the same graphical standards as games today. But compared to other PS1 games, the Mega Man games weren’t exactly graphic powerhouses. This one is no exception, but for some ungodly reason, this game has a fetish for weird nonsensical backdrops and background images. The level that comes to mind the most is Gate’s Laboratory, the final stage of the game. The background is littered with giant, squatting robotic demons. They’re not enemies, or obstacles, they’re just chilling in the background looking like they’re squatting to take a dump. It’s like they couldn’t come up with anything decent to toss in there, and somebody in the art department screamed “FILL IT WITH GIANT SHITTING ROBOT BAPHOMETS!” The other stages are just as guilty of this, like the junkyard stage with gaudy children’s television show colors, or the giant flickering robot in the background of the weapons lab stage. This thing IS actually an obstacle, but its mere presence is distracting and makes the stage far more difficult as a result.

Sound: (2/5)

This game gets a 1 in the sound department, but only because the sound effects are pretty much the same as they have been since X4. The music is a whole different story. Mega Man games tend to be known for their infectious tunes, but this trend started to die when the series hit the 32 bit generation. For an action game, X6’s soundtrack is strangely mellow. Of the eight main stages, only two of them don’t come off sounding like narcolepsy inducing elevator tunes. And those six background tunes are so mellow and muted that they’re practically buried behind the other game sound effects. The two stages where the music isn’t mellow have obnoxiously hyperkinetic tunes that sound like someone wailing randomly on an electric instrument. The theme for Gate’s Laboratory is pretty good, and is infectious enough to remain in memory. But that’s one song out of many. I guess I'll give it a two for that song alone.

Gameplay: (1/5)

This is going to be a long one. Get some popcorn and get comfy,

This game is so freaking broken it hurts. The difficulty, the controls, and the stages themselves are all a gigantic cluster of bad ideas.

The controls are essentially the same as every other X game. But Capcom, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the game’s obstacles weren’t difficult enough , so they screwed with the control settings so that you die every time you push a button. The game has multiple ladders and wires to grab onto, which require only holding the up button on the directional pad. But the second you need to attack an enemy, you push the attack button only to have Zero scream like a lunatic and launch himself downwards towards the nearest bottomless pit. Apparently the most commonly used button in the game, the one you use to go…UPWARDS, can be combined with an attack button to send you DOWNWARDS. That’s just bad design.

The difficulty of this game is off the charts. It’s bad enough that there are millions of bottomless pits to navigate, each stage seems to want you so dead, they decide to throw even more crap at you while you attempt to make those jumps. I’m going to touch on each stage briefly, just to highlight this tomfuckery.

Commander Yammark’s stage: There are unkillable enemies that hover over huge chasms. They can be disabled temporarily, but when you try to jump past them, they like to resurrect themselves and nail you mid-jump. Oh yeah, and there’s a cave full of blind jumps where there are spikes always just offscreen, and you need to land on the backs of microscopic moving enemies to proceed. And this is the easiest stage.

Ground Scaravich’s stage: There are literally balls of shit that appear randomly, swiftly, and out of nowhere that WILL collide with you while navigating some tricky ass jumps. Oh, and the stage’s layout itself changes everytime you play it.

Blaze Heatnix’s stagel: The entire stage is a boss fight against multiple giant red metal donuts. They’re hard enough by themselves to kill, but combine them with rising lava? Fuuuuuu...

Blizzard Wolfang’s stage: This level is home to ice avalanches that suddenly scream down from above while trying to jump between slippery platforms, and there are areas where ice falls from above, and you need to climb up them mid-fall to escape. Imagine trying to jump on Tetris blocks to go up.

Rainy Turtloid’s stage: Oh lord. This stage. The entire area is a huge bottomless pit with tiny moving platforms no wider than your character. Enemies pop out of the hole to attempt to collide with you. And there’s no time to plan or time your jumps, because there’s a constant acid rain that chips your health away.

Metalshark Player’s stage: The ENTIRE stage is a trash compactor, where the ceiling constantly goes up and down, forcing you to scurry into hidey holes to stay safe. But a lot of those holes have insta-kill spikes. In fact, pretty much all of them do. And in the second part of the stage, the screen auto scrolls the whole time, pushing you to the right.

Shield Sheldon’s stage: Not that bad, actually, this stage can be finished under a minute, providing you can figure out how to redirect a giant laser beam using mirrors to open doors. Oh, and don’t let that giant laser hit you..

Infinity Mijinion’s stage: Tricky platform jumps are bad enough. Combine these with a giant robot in the background whose mere presence obscures your vision. It also constantly shoots at you, and releases drones that shoot unavoidable lasers at you. WHEEE!!

Gate’s Laboratory: The final stage. EVERY hazard I mentioned in the last eight stages is in here at once. This stage is broken up in three segments, each of which needs for you to have a different armor to get through them. And once you finish one, you can’t leave the lab to change armors without having to replay the last stage, which you screw yourself out of finishing because you just changed your armor again. If you screw up, it is actually impossible to finish this level. Good luck.

Oh, and if that’s not enough to make you cry, any of the initial eight stages can adopt properties from the other stages, adding their hazards to its own. They call this the “Nightmare System.” A very appropriate name.

To get through these stages, you’ll need power ups. To get these power ups, you need to rescue reploids you’ll find floating over bottomless pits, or hidden in secret places. There are also enemies that hunt down and infect these reploids. If a reploid gets infected, that power up part is gone for good. If you’re not quick on the trigger, you will find that, yet again, you have just made the game impossible to beat.

And if you end up in a battle with Hi-Max, who can show up randomly at the end of the stages, and don’t have his weakness, he’s impossible to kill.

That’s far too many impossibilities for my taste.

Overall: (7/20)

This game is awful. Pure and simple. Masochists are in for a good time. I highly suggest self-flagellation while you’re playing to enhance the experience. If you have a sensitivity to games that are stupid hard, or are prone to bouts of rage, stay as far away as humanly possible. If you’re a huge Mega Man nerd, you’ll play through it anyway, just like I did.

What? Oh…hi Zero…I was just talking to my friends, and not about you! Honest! OH GOD! NOT THE BEAM SABER!! NOT AGAIN! I’M SORRY!!!!