I'm at a convention, and beyond the hall I run across a guy in a blue robot suit. Information technology's Mega Man! I make my fashion over to get a pic, but as I approach I run across that the color'due south not quite right, the helmet is rough-cut cardboard and he's wearing blue jeans. Awkward. Well, since I'grand already here I might besides take Mighty No. ix'due south picture.

Nosotros felt that same rush of excitement back in 2022, when Keiji Inafune announced he was going to make his own Mega Man game, Mighty No. 9. "Hither's The Mega Man Spiritual Successor You've Always Wanted," our headline read. "It's basically Mega Man with a new proper name," we said, which sounded like a wonderful matter.

Mighty No. 9 built up a rather massive store of excitement (and several million dollars in greenbacks) during those first few months, simply each delay, work-in-progress gameplay clip and rough beta test sapped enthusiasm for the projection. As information technology turns out, this was the game evolution equivalent of letting us down easy.

Mighty No. nine tries real difficult, but no

Mighty No. nine, released yesterday for nigh of the platforms it was promised to, is not Mega Man with a new name. It shares a lot of ingredients with Mega Man, but these are lower quality ingredients combined with none of the finesse of Capcom'due south classics.

Here's the introductory level of Mighty No. 9, played on PC with all settings maxed.

My fumbling get-go attempts at playing aside, these opening moments showcase some of Mighty No. 9's more glaring flaws—the atrocious voice acting, the unexciting cutscenes presented in the well-nigh basic way possible, textures that range from "fine" to "how did that wind up in the final game?"

Wait at that bus. Wait at it. It'southward hideous. What is with that bus?

Expect at our hero, Beck. When Inafune introduced us dorsum in 2022, he was a dashing, dynamic figure.

In game, Brook isn't quite equally dynamic. He withal dashes quite a chip, cheers to a core game mechanic that pulls Mighty No. 9 even farther afield from the Mega Human revival we were hoping for, but his character model merely doesn't alive up to the swagger of the concept art.

Patrick Klepek guest stars.

He kinda reminds me of a robot Monchichi.

The whole matter feels less like a $4 1000000 (or whatever was left over) studio title and more like an ambitious fan game that created a bunch of crawly art but lacked the skills or resources necessary to translate that art into video game course. It's like a Mega Man fan film.

Someone looked at this muddy water and said, "Aye, that looks good."

Simply that's all aesthetics. Permit'southward talk gameplay. The bones mechanics of Mighty No. nine—running, jumping, shooting and dashing—are solid. In the right circumstance the game is easy to control, and during moments when the dash-driven, enemy absorbing philharmonic organisation comes together, information technology can actually be quite fun. It only doesn't come together nearly as ofttimes equally I would similar.

This chip was fun. I will always retrieve this bit.

The biggest deviation from the Mega Man formula hither is the dash-combo system. Beck amercement enemies, then dashes through them to stop them off. Dashing through enemies in succession generates combos. This is a major component of the game. You can tell by the size of the numbers popping up on the screen. "This is important," the numbers say.

In some stretches of some levels, the enemies and architecture line up in such a way that this organisation really shines. Simply most of the time my flow is interrupted by obstacles or hazards or other things that felt like they were put in place to make sure I didn't get too used to being a bad-ass dashing robot. I wanted to exist Mega Homo, but declining that I wouldn't mind being a bad-ass dashing robot all of the time.

I should not need this prompt to remind me that a movement exists deep into a level.

The most Mega Human-ish attribute of Mighty No. 9 is the evil robot masters, or in this case corrupted robot friends. Once the opening level is completed, Mighty No. nine can fight Mighty No. 1 through 8 in any club he sees fit. Defeating them gives Brook access to their particular ability, from the self-immolation of not-Burn Man to the explosive rounds of non-Tank Human.

Boss battles are all about knowing fight patterns, and some fight patterns are easier to discern than others. Flame boss Pyro took me three tries. Electric dominate Dyna took me so many tries that I wound up going into game options and upping the "Lives Remaining" from three to nine. I love a challenge equally much every bit the adjacent person, but in that location's only and so much time in the twenty-four hours to go restarting an entire level.

I've been working through the Mega Human Legacy collection on the PlayStation 4 over the past couple of weeks, pedagogy my children how we used to do it in the good quondam days, along with several colorful new curse words. To an extent this has steeled me against the difficulty spikes and inexpensive deaths in Mighty No. 9. If I miss a jump and autumn to my expiry I accept to get-go over from a distant checkpoint? Fine. I made it to the boss with a single life left and have to start the unabridged level over again? I sympathise. How else am I going to learn?

The deviation here is Mega Human being earned that shit. Those early entries in the series were some of the best games available on the original Nintendo, short, sharp and well-polished. I will bang my caput confronting a Mega Homo level all day long, considering I know in the terminate information technology's worth it.

I don't get that same feeling from Mighty No. 9, which is why my game is sitting with two robot bosses left to salve. It'southward not the spiritual successor I was hoping for. Information technology'south a passable game that'due south attempting to employ clout it barely has to make full in the rough edges.

That Mega Human cosplayer with the paper-thin helmet and the jeans might not wait keen, only they're doing the best they can with what they have to limited their love. The Mighty No. 9 team at Comcept had a lot more than to work with than cardboard and denim, but that honey just isn't shining through.