Mega Man X4 (PSX)

Today on Super Adventures, because YOU demanded it, I'm taking a quick look at another Mega Man game! Last year I played the original Mega Man on the NES (plus a game claiming to be Mega Man for DOS), but I thought I'd skip the others and jump right ahead to the PlayStation era and the fourth of the Mega Man X spin-off series, mostly because I was asked to.

The first three Mega Man X games had been developed for the Super Nintendo, though X3 eventually found its way to PC and the shiny new PlayStation and Saturn systems. But by '97 the SNES had retired, so the series jumped to the fifth gen machines exclusively.

I was kind of surprised to see that Sony America let another childish low-tech antiquated 2D platformer slip out onto their edgy mature 3D game system, so I looked it up and it seems they weren't overly happy about it. It apparently took sustained pestering from Capcom before they relented and allowed the game to get a US release.

Whoa, I feel like I just loaded up Street Fighter Alpha or something by mistake. The slick scrolling text, the voice over, everything about this character select feels ripped straight out of an arcade fighting game by... uh... Capcom. Well okay that actually makes a lot of sense then.

I've never played a Mega Man X game so I have no idea who either of these two are, except that this isn't the same Mega Man as in the original NES games. In fact for all I know Zero is the villain with his own villainous storyline, but I think I'll go with team red first time around because I'm hoping for some kind of cutscene that explains why exactly a robot ended up with long flowing blonde hair.

Zero's story starts with a cartoon video clip of him confronting a sinister shadowy figure who looks a whole lot like Dr Wily from the original Mega Man games and sounds a whole lot like someone pretty new to the whole concept of voice acting, but is willing to give it a try!

"After him, he is my nemesis. Our rivalry, is what gives me motivation in life!"

Then Zero is assaulted with disturbing images of mangled robots scattered across the room. Well I suppose they're not that bad, I mean they're just showing pieces of broken metal really. About as creepy as a scrapyard when you think about it...
 

Yeah okay this actually is creepy now. Robots shouldn't bleed red blood!

Incidentally these cutscenes have a real classic anime look to them in motion, especially the main intro video which shakes around on screen like it's sourced from an old VHS tape. Makes me wonder if there actually is a Mega Man X anime out there that they borrowed the clips from, which I guess should be considered a compliment.

Anyway there's no time for weird robot nightmares now, Mavericks have emerged at the point 5567! This apparently means that Zero has to teleport up to the Sky Lagoon sky fortress and execute everyone in sight with a lightsaber.

The controls are slick and responsive and I've been given just enough room in front of my character to see where I'm going so no complaints there. I've got a button that makes me dash forward for a second, a button that makes me jump, and a sword button that converts enemy robots into more scrap metal for Zero's nightmares in one graceful swipe. Or three if I'm so inclined.

After a brief struggle against underwhelming odds during my otherwise uneventful walk to from left to right, I ran into an old friend of Zero's called Dragoon who explains that the Sky Lagoon has lost power and will soon come crashing to the ground. They haven't exactly set up what a Sky Lagoon is yet though so I'm not sure how bothered I should be about this.

Oh.

Well I may not know how many people were on the Sky Lagoon, but I can certainly imagine how many were in the city it just flattened. Bit of a dark opening for something presumably targeted at younger gamers. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just surprised that a Mega Man game has a death toll in the millions.

There's definitely something wrong with putting a massive sky structure directly over a city though, especially when it's not being held up with magic rocks or quantum particles or something else that doesn't involve keeping the power running 24/7 to keep it afloat. I mean they were basically asking for a catastrophe to happen.

The game's starting to require some more advanced platforming skills now, such as 'dodging wall turrets that spring out of nowhere' and 'hitting a bit of crumbling wall a few times'. I can't dodge back too far though, as it seems that the enemies reappear once an area's scrolled off screen.


SOON.

That was real funny how the game dropped the floor out from under me just then, leaving me stuck at the bottom of a pit with the walls closing in. Of course I reacted instantly, grabbing the 1up on the floor, then leaping up the side of the wall, using Zero's ninja-like wall grab move to get traction. But I wasn't anywhere near fast enough. Splat.

Fortunately the 1up reappears each time so I get infinite retries here to practice jumping up this closing chasm over and over again until I get it right! Over and over and over. Joy.


LATER.

They sure make them a lot bigger than they did in the olden days don't they? You must be Godzilla Man then, right? I wonder what weapon power I'll get for kicking this guy's ass. I'm sure I'd find a way to use giant metal wings as an offensive device, though I'd settle for being able to scorch the whole screen with plasma bolts from my mouth.

To my surprise and delight he went down pretty fast to my 'spamming the sword attack over and over' secret fighting technique, though I didn't get any reward for my work except the pleasure of running into Colonel Colonel, the robot with the greatest metal beard in gaming history:

Seeing a badass robot leader turn up at the scene of a robot assault is a bit suspicious, but Col. Colonel explains that he's only here to save his sister and offer assistance. Zero tells him that's fine and if he puts his weapon down and comes with him they can straighten this situation out. Unfortunately the Colonel takes that as an insult and storms off yelling about how his people prefer war over dishonour and shame.

Dude, you're standing on hundreds of thousands of innocent victims, talking to the guy who just saved your sister from the bad robots, maybe you should tone down your outrage just a little.

Nope! In fact things quickly escalate from here to the point where the king of the robots announces that they're going to form their own nation somewhere else. Apparently humans and robots have been living together in relative peace up to this point, but all it took was one flattened city to ignite years of mistrust and frustration into outright warfare. The robot army assembles and shit is now officially on.

Back at Maverick Hunter HQ, Zero finds that the Colonel's sister has appeared to plead with him not to fight. But he must, as that is the duty of a hunter, even though he's basically facing down an entire robot army alone here. X sure picked a great time to take a week off.

Oh, so the classic level select screen is still in the game, I just had to play the prologue stage to reach it. Well that's cool, I always like a bit of level selection, even if it's kinda hard to make out what I'm looking at here..

Here, I cut out each of the level images and assembled them so you can admire the pixel artistry.

I've got eight levels to choose from, presumably scattered across the world seeing as how some are set at night while others are in broad daylight. Well the images across the bottom row all look pretty, but I've gotta go with the Jungle first. Guns and rainbows, what's not to love? Also I'm hoping it'll be the easiest.

There's still not much around to threaten me so far, or at least not much that I've been able to catch in a screenshot. Most of the robots I've found have fallen to a single sword slash and it's been no struggle getting close enough to hit them.

The levels have been really narrow, usually only scrolling in the one direction at once (in this case vertically), so there's no mystery where to go either. But not much freedom to move around either.

Uh, is this a dead end or am I missing something really obvious?

Nope, it really does seem to be a totally empty pointless room. I guess the levels aren't quite as straightforward as I thought.

Hey it's the classic 'jump across the falling logs' routine. It shows up in so many platformers and yet somehow never gets old. Well maybe it gets a little old. Anyway what's important is that Zero is able to leap across effortlessly without any awkwardness in getting him on target.

And now I'm back to hitting things with my laser sword again. Guess the platforming bit's over then.
 

Well that's just awesome. I've faced robot wasps before, they show up in everything, but this is the first time I've had to fight an entire bloody hive of them. Not that it's an issue when you've got a huge laser sword, but it's still a really disturbing concept: the idea that there's a group of people out there designing and manufacturing entire hives of mechanical insects built only for murder. A troubling evolution of airborne assault drones.


SOME PLATFORMER GAMEPLAY LATER.

Mr Web Spider I presume. This gentleman is the guardian of this out of place looking sci-fi death cannon. Pre-rendered CGI style artwork often doesn't look so good when it's sandwiched between layers of pixel art.

Web Spider is also a bastard that likes to shoot out an homing energy web that swoops down and electrocutes me, taking off a good chunk of health and leaving me helplessly hanging in the air, open to getting pounced on by a giant spider robot next time he springs down from the top of the screen.

Fortunately every time I lose a life I reappear at the entrance of the boss fight, so it's no struggle to get back and give it another try. Less fortunately I only have the two lives left and once those are gone it'll take a bit more of a walk to return here.


SEVERAL FAILURES LATER.

Well it's certainly nice to have to make my way through the second stage of the forest level again. I'm not sure if having to replay all this is meant to be punishment for failing the fight, or practice so I won't next time. All I know is that these graphics are awesome.

By the way, the game's was kind enough to drop this health refill just before the boss room, so I didn't have to keep my health bar filled the whole way to have a fair fight. In fact enemies sometimes drop health as well, or even extra lives if I'm very lucky. Doesn't happen as much as I'd like though.

Well that's just awesome, Web Spider breaks out a second attack pattern after I've knocked him down to half health. So now I have to hit him a dozen more times while he's running around his web in the middle of the screen and firing off baby robot spiders at me. Also he still shoots those bloody homing energy webs. They're not actually that hard to dodge if I'm paying attention, but I haven't got so much space to move around anymore.

I gave Web Spider nine tries in total before I finally gave up on him. I had to double check my numbers there because it felt closer 900, but nope. I suppose it doesn't help that I had to wait 20 seconds each time for him to make his grand appearance.


VOLCANO LEVEL.

Okay fuck Web Spider for now, I'm going off to the Volcano Zone instead. Hopefully beating the boss here will get me a new weapon that I can use to make shorter work of that eight legged freak. Fire's good against spiders right?

Actually it turns out that fire's strong against Zero as well as I couldn't even make it to the boss this time because of all this lava everywhere. This is the level of challenge I was expecting from the Jungle level really, not just a total cakewalk leading up to a demoralising brick wall of a boss fight.

I need a new plan here to help keep my spirits up and save me from eventually having to fish my controller out from the shattered wreckage of my TV. I think it's time for a change of protagonist.


TWO PROLOGUE STAGES AND A FEW CUTSCENE VIDEOS LATER.

Hey, the mysterious empty cavern on the first Jungle stage has a holograph message in it this time! Both X and Zero play on the same stages, but their videos and conversations play out a little differently, giving them a slightly different perspective on events. Also X has a gun built right into his arm instead of carrying a sword, so that's different too.

Dr. Light was just calling to say that robot wars are bad and also that he's left a present for me: jet powered rocket boots! Now I can hover around for a short while by hitting the jump button twice. Man, poor Zero had no idea what he was missing out on.


TWO JUNGLE STAGES LATER.

Man this is going even worse than it did with Zero. I can get around his webs no trouble, the trick is simply to get a bit of distance and jump at the last second, but X does a pathetic amount of damage. I'm guessing it'd take around 24 hits to kill the creature with Zero's sword and you have to wait for him to stop flickering between each attack. X's blaster does half the damage, so that's almost 50 times I have to hit this guy. Not really my idea of fun.

Oh duh, it turns out that I can charge up X's gun by holding down the button. So now it'll only take half of forever to kill the bastard, if I can even survive long enough to make it past the his first attack routine now that I'm trying to charge and dodge at the same time.


WAY WAY WAY TOO LONG LATER.

Holy shit it really is possible to kill the guy! Wow I've got Lightning Web, I can't wait to test that out in combat! He said sarcastically. Because he's fucking tired out now.

Actually right now I'd be happier if I could turn this game off and never think about it again, but I've gotten this far, I might as well check out the rest of the stages before I turn it off.


CYBER SPACE LEVEL.

Lightning Web status: unimpressive. I guess it's more useful as a wall to leap from than a weapon, but I haven't had reason to test that. Though I am impressed with how I can switch weapons (and armour colour) using the shoulder buttons and I still get to hold onto my default blaster either way.

This is the Cyber Space level by the way, though I don't know whether that means I'm playing as a Matrix-style avatar, or if I've been digitised and physically transported into a Tron-style computer world. The game hasn't given me much reason to care either way to be honest; despite all the cutscenes and dialogue they haven't actually established why I'm playing through these levels beyond a two line description about there being a bug in the network.

'Rank B'? What, am I being timed or something?

Damn, it's put me back through the same stage again! I guess I'm stuck wall jumping up these ledges and shooting these balls out of the way until I do it fast enough for the door's satisfaction. Or, more likely, run out of health and lose, seeing as I'm making a ton of mistakes now that I'm under pressure and being forced to repeat stuff I've already done.

It'd definitely help if I could get the hang of pressing jump twice to hover instead of, well, jumping twice. 


LATER.

This bit's quite clever though, with switches on the floor that flip the entire level over. The game doesn't do much with it besides having you roll balls into energy fields and you couldn't exactly call any part of this level a puzzle, but it's something new at least.

Next stage!


AIR FORCE LEVEL.

Uh, I can't hit the robot from here, my shots are just flying right over its head. A decade of Mega Man games and the guy still can't crouch. Shame I didn't kill a boss equipped with a grenade launcher weapon as that would be handy right about now. Looks like I just have to trust that there's ground beneath me here and take a leap of faith to get into a better firing position.

And so Mega Man X plummeted to his death.

I should've know better really, as these levels are basically narrow pipes as high or wide as the screen. It doesn't even scroll up a little higher if I'm on a platform, so I can easily end up jumping off the top of the screen if I'm too high.

I just have to take a second to mention that I love these hammerhead shark airships sailing majestically across the night sky in the background. Trust a civilization that designed robot wasp hives and giant sentient robot spiders (that fire off tiny robot spiders) to construct a flying submarine in the shape of a fish.

Okay that thing wasn't an enemy sitting in my path, it was a mech suit just sitting there for me to steal! This thing's got it all: jet boosters, a gun arm, uh... actually more or less what I have anyway, just much slower. In fact I may actually be better off leaving it here and continuing on foot.

Hey, am I stomping across the top of one of those shark vessels right now? Oh wow I actually am, that's awesome.


LATER.

I really should have tried to hold onto that mech. Trying to jump up and shoot these turrets in between their blasts is annoying enough without having to fight off infinite bouncy walkers as well.

The damn things cut through my health in seconds by irritating me to the point where I made dumb mistakes. Next stage then.


MARINE BASE LEVEL.

Whoa jet skis! Cool.

Next stage.


BIO LABORATORY LEVEL.

Nice rotating staircase effect on this Bio Laboratory level.

This place is run by a robot toadstool with a breathing mask on called Split Mushroom who apparently 'occupies the laboratory and will attack whoever visits there'. So I've got that to look forward to.


SOON.

Mid-boss fight! This guy's fun to fight as he destroys the platform underneath me every time he attacks, eventually leaving me with nowhere to stand and no way to win unless I step on the platforms in the correct sequence. Actually that's not much fun at all, seeing as it pretty much cost me a life just to learn his gimmick and solve the puzzle.

Anyway, I'm skipping ahead to the next stage.


MILITARY TRAIN LEVEL.

It seems that mid-bosses aren't that uncommon in this and they don't mess around. I shot him and shot him and shot him and he didn't die so again I got impatient and slipped up again. At this rate I doubt I'm even going to see another level boss, never mind defeat them.

Though somehow I think I can live without ever running into Slash Beast.


SNOW BASE LEVEL.

That's real mature of you MMX4, making an ice wall appear right where my character was sliding and instantly telefragging him to pieces. I don't actually mind these ledges disappearing and re-materialising all over the place as it offers a bit of a platforming challenging without (usually) being unfair about it. Though having these hover boots probably helps take some of the stress out of it.

Anyway that's the last of the stages I can get to from the level select screen so I'm turning this off now.


What do I think about Mega Man X4? To be honest I'm finding it really hard to judge it fairly because it's kind of put me in a bad mood and I'm not entirely sure why.

I found that I was happy enough to drift through it while it wasn't asking too much of me, but when it started to put up resistance I found that I had no interest in giving it just one more try. I pretty much just wanted to turn it off and the more I fought against that the more miserable I got.

Which is a bit of a shame really as it has lots of things worth praising. It's got character upgrades, a save feature, a level select and infinite continues. The gameplay's pretty slick and it looks great in motion. The music's... well it's good enough to get the job done; not really on the level of the original NES games but then that's a pretty high bar to reach. I just didn't find fighting through the game's narrow corridors against respawning enemies to be as appealing as it could've been, and once I realised that every boss would be a test of endurance I lost all hope of ever making progress in it.

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If you want to share any opinions about the words situated above these words that you're reading right now then feel free to leave a comment! Or if you've played Mega Man X4 yourself and want to explain in detail how wrong I am, that's fine too. Feedback is good.