Mastodawn

Mega Man (12): Dual Override got me

You know me, I see Capcom doing a new Mega Man title and I’m already there. So, we get a whole minute and a half trailer, most of which is fluff. A hall counting up to eleven and over, opening a sealed room where Capcom stashed the Blue Bomber in for their pony jar experiments.

Colours! Excitement! Giant ass robots!

Then almost twenty seconds of beta footage with each scene having reference to past Mega Man thing. A Beat balloon in the teleport-in spot (Mega Man weirdly teleporting in at the far left of the screen.) The next scene has a Wall Blaster mounted unto the ceiling and Gamma’s blueprints on the right side in the back as well its face plastered around the pillar in the next sequence. I do love that we see a bottomless pit sequence with exploding balloons that you have you as a stepper while a yellow Pipi flies over and drops an egg of fireworks. Something about this screams Robot Museum, but I’m probably wrong, but it has that intro level feeling.

You can also see small particle effects flying off as the slide ends. All these small touches show love and care, and often extend to the big things too

Nevertheless, this stage is clearly about celebration, and that’s what this trailer is about.

Then Mega Man has his parts opening up, showcasing one of the worst cases of unnecessary LEDs in robots in a while, ending the spiel with Proto Man’s whistle.

This is going to end up in a model kit as a gimmick

I’m an old fart who has played Mega Man since its beginning. It’s my favourite game series out of all and I’m an absolute sucker for this trailer. It’s clean, it does its job showcasing how to do proper 2D action level design in terms of clearly stating what’s ground and what’s death. Screens are laid out as puzzles and obstacles to clear rather than continues stream of hallways with enemies like in Castlevania or Metroid. I won’t go deeper into this, because how Mega Man games nail stage designs most of the time is a post I need to write.

2027 and the game is coming to every single platform that’s out now. Yes, that also means for the Switch and PS4. If I’m as lost cause for a proper Mega Man game that isn’t mobile slop, I’ll buy it three times down the line.

That 2027 smarts. We’ve got past experience what it means when a Mega Man game is revealed too early. We both know that getting hype is the recipe for a disaster yet here I am, smiling like I’m on something and I know I’ll bitch about whatever damn gimmick they’re going to introduce. I didn’t mind the Gears in Mega Man 11 even if I tried to play the game mostly without them. Gimmicks have been something that each Mega Man game has introduced. Some have stayed in the series, most of them have changed to something else. Rush, sliding, Charge Shot, collecting letters for Beat, the Rush Armours, Rock’n Arm and so on. I hope they’ll do something else than the Gears, but if Override refers to a mechanic that similar to Gears, I hope its an evolution of the system in a manner that allows a more seamless usage. Surely, Dual means we’re going to get something with Proto Man, but I’d wish against multiplayer. Balancing the stages for both single and multiplayer would require extra focus and effort, something I’d rather see put into single-player only.

Whatever the gimmick ends up being, if its something that’s used “externally” like the Gears rather than as something integrated into the basic motion and controls without extra, like the slide and Charge Shot, it shouldn’t be as a part of the Boss Battles. That’s my biggest gripe with Mega Man 11, where the game insists on the Gears gimmick, everything was build around it and it didn’t really flow properly. It was just extra buttons to press to slow or speed things up. You could build a whole new kind of game around that idea.

The thing with Double Gears was that it was an external insist, not part of the core controls.
As a side note, Mega Man’s getting back his PlayStation-era proportions to some extent after the NES size throwbacks

I understand if Capcom wants to drop numbering new Mega Man games. However, I hope they don’t. I want them boldly claim that 12 on the box cover, but there are about 130 Mega Man games before this, 24 of which are Classic series entries. Maybe this is a slight rebranding, and the next Mega Man X game, God willing there is such a thing, could utilize the Maverick Hunter X naming to differentiate the two series for newcomers. A possibility of Capcom wants to separate these sub-series from each other for clarity.

One thing about Dual Override still, the music doesn’t like the techno wah-wah 11 had. If the demo track is anything to go by, they’re still doing that a little bit but not to the same extent. There’s something off about both Nintendo and Capcom putting this sort of second-tier wah-wah sounds on 2D games when they could do better. Still, the demo music does remind me a bit of the PlayStation-era tracks.

Referring a bit to my previous post, what’s my gut saying here? Jumping seems to be nice and snappy, shooting doesn’t seem to have any issues and Mega Man gets scuffed as he gets damaged. He doesn’t blink during invincibility after getting damaged, but has electricity sparking around him. The level is well designed in terms of clarity, you see what parts you can jump and where they end. Down the line, challenging platforming requires this. 2D platformers that obfuscate their platform’s edges don’t realize that. However, all the lighting effects from explosion and shots are just enough too bloomy to obfuscate their hitboxes. I would’ve preferred them to be a bit more cartoony or defined, but players should learn them after one or two hits. At least they’re all colourful bloom. Perhaps I would’ve preferred the game to be more anime in looks in general, but that’s fine. It keeps the same look as Mega Man 11 in broad terms.

All those firework crackers, explosions and the Charged Shot are just enough too bloomy for me. It melds together, but that’s not what this sort of visual style does. In that, the game looks safe, nothing out of run-of-the-mill.

We don’t see the player hugging any of the static objects when landing or jumping to them, so can’t say much about physics yet. However, after a slide there is a clear stop in motion, so either you can’t walk directly from a slide, or the player didn’t continue onwards after initiating the slide. I hope the latter is the case, as one defining aspect of Mega Man controls is the flow these controls have. They shouldn’t have any points where the momentum stops, unless you let go of the D-Pad. In other words, the player should be in control all the time, and if the game introduced these moments of stops, that raises both of eyebrows.

The logo is very bland. I hope it’s a beta logo, but if they’re not going to revise it to look bolder, that can say something about the game itself. I hope this won’t be a safe entry in the series, as we’ve had compilations and rereleases for the last decade that showcase how things work. I’ve wanted Mega Man games to be a bit more expanded, something the Intro Stage did early on. We can have more than eight Wily Numbers, or we could have more stages like with Doc Robots, just without the recycling. Stages aren’t the only way to expand Mega Man, however. Item Replicator, Super Adapter, all these things that add to the player’s arsenal and core play are just that. Mega Man (World) V is great because it tried something new changed the core just enough with the Rock’n Arm and its Grab abilities. No new buttons, no new modes per se, just adding to the core controls, expanding what the player can do.

Lastly, new Robot Master Design contest. I really dislike how it’s done. It should be a contest for kids under ten, but because it’s a general competition on Twitter, age restriction applies. I find this extremely disheartening, as kids should be the main audience for Mega Man, but I guess I have to swallow the bitter pill and admit to myself nobody under 25 even knows what a Mega Man is. Kids have such an unrestricted imagination when it comes to this kind of thing. Give them a general direction what to draw, and their imagination goes wild. They don’t think the proper logistics of it, they make it up and explain how shit just works. A middle-aged dude who has art degrees or studies how to design emotionally appealing stuff won’t have the same spirit. It’s going to be by-the-books and sad.

I’ve got ideas

Yes, there has been a number of comic artists like Hitoshi Ariga who have designed Wily Numbers, but these have been largely by the numbers by people who have been with the games’ history at the ground level. I’m not sure how to put this in plain words, but these bosses designed by adult players have don’t really have that spark of ingenuity and pure, sparkling imagination kids have.

I don’t know if I’m going to enter the contest. Would that be going against myself if I did? I’ll have to think this over a few times, nevertheless.

I’m hopeful this game will be good, something that pushes the series forwards again. I hope Capcom will return to form and put a Mega Man X into production as well, and use that as a springboard for something new and bold, expanding what we’ve seen in Mega Man 11and now in Dual Override. I shouldn’t be hype, but nostalgia and hope are strong weapons. With my emotional connection with the series, I can’t really deny my human nature. Damn, I’m eager to see more. What timing for me to start replaying the Classic series.

#capcom #games #gaming #megaMan12 #megaManDualOverride