It is
hard to believe that Mega Man has been around for fifteen years now. I
could go on a big rant about how Im "hardcore" because I have been
playing these games since the beginning, but I happen to think that all
of the self-proclaimed old school gamers these days are morons, so I
wont bore you with that. Instead, I think that Capcom deserves praise
for choosing to celebrate the Blue Bombers 15-year anniversary by
releasing a 2-D side scrolling game that takes the series back to its
roots. Well, sort of. It is a 2-D platformer, all right, but it has more
in common with the GBA Battle Network series rather than the games of
old. Mega Man Network Transmission is pretty simple and straightforward,
but there are a lot of little problems that keep it from being as good
as the Battle Network series or the 2-D side scrollers before it.
Just
like the Battle Network games
on the GBA, Network Transmission follows Lan Hikari and his Navi (an
intelligent computer program) Mega Man as they explore the internet,
delete viruses, and battle with enemy Navis. Unlike the GBA games,
Network Transmission puts the focus solely on Mega Man and you dont
have to control Lan in the offline world at all. Also, the gameplay has
shifted from an RPG to a pure and simple 2-D platform game. Elements of
the Battle Network games such as collecting and using battle chips and
having to "jack in" are still around, but the main draw of Network
Transmission is running and gunning action.
While
the influence of the BN games has a huge impact on the standard platform
game formula, it doesnt really make the experience any better. In fact,
it slows the game down and proves more annoying than anything. Mega Man
is only armed with a simple blaster which sucks ass for the first half
of the game and you have to rely instead on battle chips that Lan can
send Mega Man every couple of minutes or so. The battle chips give you
new projectile weapons, replenish your health, or summon other Navis to
come help you. Chips of the same type can be combined to produce new,
more powerful weapons.
There are
problems with this system, though. First off, having to rely entirely on
the battle chips slows the gameplay down to a crawl as you have to wait
for the right ones to come up. The chips can only be sent every few
minutes and are randomly assigned, so if you use up your chips or dont
get the ones you need, you are pretty much at the mercy of the enemies
around you unless you find a safe spot to wait around for more chips to
be sent. The second problem lies in the fact that most of the bosses are
so difficult that you cant really beat them unless you combine chips to
create the more powerful weapons. Since the chips are assigned randomly,
you have to wait around until you get the chips you need because the
boss battles are practically impossible to beat without them.
I
can see how this system of being randomly assigned chips is supposed to
lead to innovation as you have to learn how to play with the chips you
are dealt. In reality, though, it is pretty damn hard to play the game
when the only chips you get are all either defensive or health powerups.
This just makes the game tedious and boring. All the fun of the 2-D
gameplay has been sucked out because the speed and ease of play has
disappeared.
Another
beef I have with Network Transmission is the extremely unbalanced
difficulty. When you first start the game, Mega Man is a puny weakling
with limited health and a wimpy blaster. It seems obvious that the first
few levels should be easier so you can learn the ins and outs of the
gameplay and so Mega Man could get powered up. That isnt the case,
however, and the first few sections of the game are by far the hardest.
The game gets a little easier as you earn upgrades for Mega Man, but
occasionally youll come across areas that are particularly enemy-filled
or a tough boss battle where your only choice is to waste time waiting
for the right chips to be given to you so you can advance.
Mega
Man Network Transmission fails to push the GameCube in terms of graphics
and sound, and that is a real shame. Other than some impressive cinema
sequences that look just like the anime TV series, the game would have
probably run just fine on the GBA. The environments are simple and
bland, even by 2-D side scroller standards, and the character models
lack detail. The speech in the game is in Japanese and fits the
characters well, but the rest of the sound is average on every front.
This is a new product on rather powerful hardware, but it looks and
sounds like every other Mega Man game from the last fifteen years. Not
good.
Network
Transmission is disappointing all around. Hardcore fans of the Battle
Network games will get a kick out of it, but everyone else is probably
better off skipping it. Even when Network Transmission it was at its
best, I still found myself longing for the far superior experiences of
Mega Mans past. If you can look past Mega Man Network Transmissions
ugly graphics and frustrating gameplay, expect a 10+-hour quest and a
hefty challenge. It isnt great, but there are far worse games out
there. Give it a rent.