Mighty No. 9 - Keiji Inafune / comcept kicksarter project

[Tanooki]

Sarge got a feeling we're not going to agree here.

I wasn't whining, hell I sat on the Wii through it's entire life pretty much before selling it, through I had mostly abandoned it for a year and a half on the back end other than youtube and netflix. I didn't care about tech or I'd have got the PS3 only, my tastes are older really don't NEED HD. The games to me were more or less not on the level of the Cube which I really dug a lot, and the third party stuff was pretty spotty in quality and output (personal tastes or not.) I will say some did surprise me like CoD World at War and MW1 being on there, wow, Treyarch pulled a big one out on that sucker.

TP though fuck me I hated that Wii version. I tried and tried to get used to it and I couldn't. The only thing I found I did think worked better mostly were secondary weapons. Coaching the aim with the arrows, the hookshot and the boomerang were more fun and intuitive. But the sword play was a goddamn waggly mess that never worked quite right when you really wanted to every time (precision and accuracy) though later motion plus did on SS. Also the canned sequences on a rail like the burning cart that took me an hour to do because the motion and camera control were abysmal and I kept failing when it wouldn't do what my hands told it. I was gifted the GC version a year later, kicked its ass in like 10min on the first try and I could far better hold strong in sword combat too.

I did have some of the notable third party titles -- Zack & Wiki, Fragile, those 2 COD titles, MOH Heroes 2, Geometry Wars and so on. The stuff that aimed was sketchy other than line of sight stuff, FPS games worked as awesome or better than a mouse for doing head shots and stuff. Z&W that got a little troubling on some motions, have to re-do them a few times to have it take. All if it was mounting frustration for people. If it wasn't the waggle moniker would have died off to the snobby d-bags making jokes.

Post mortem is tough, but it's fair to say marketing screwed them both times. The name was bad, the selling to adults, selling to non-gamers, selling it as the other thing worked, for like 2 1/2 years. Then it went downhill. Then calling the second one WiiU confused stupid people everywhere. I had retailers talking to customers asking what it was not sure if it was an accessory box, accessory tablet for Wii, or a new system. They clearly didn't make it obvious to buyers it wasn't just an upgrade.

I find it very odd they would go with a Tegra CPU but an AMD GPU. Some of the early news talks about the system having a Tegra Pascal series, but Pascal is the GPU, not the CPU, so that's inherently confusing information.

Maybe the NX will be a fusion of handheld and console, with a traditional AMD console core and a Tegra-powered Shield-like handset that can travel independently. Not sure how they'd work that out, though.

Not sure, but you're right it is. I doubt your idea would play out with AMD and Nvidia having parts in the same console, not sure they'd be too cool with that. I think the fusion concept is almost a given considering what little is known or fairly known so far. I think if they follow the Nvidia Shield structure of devices and specialized android device they could have a cheap to develop/sell on winner.

[Gunstar Green]

I'm not sure if I should continue my impressions but here goes anyway:

So after beating the game with Ray (quite the freaking challenge compared with Beck), messing around with the challenge mode and the higher difficulties I've kind of warmed up a bit to the game. At the end of it all I can't lie, I had fun and that's all that matters. It's not a masterpiece but it is what it is and what it is, isn't awful.

I do hope Inafune will forge ahead with a sequel like he said he wants to because I think if they make a game on their own terms without all of the Kickstarter nonsense, along with the experience they gained while doing this one, they can maybe put together something special and try to patch things up with the fans.

[Exhuminator]

Gunstar Green...

What is bad about Mighty No.9 compared to Inafune classics like the Mega Man and Mega Man X series?

[Xeogred]

I think that response to Nintendo going after "casuals" shows that many gamers are just whiners. Their hardcore output was just as good as it was on the Gamecube, unless of course you're one of the folks that feels like tech is the king of everything. But if that's the case, why in the world are you a Nintendo fan in the first place? Most Ninty fans are gameplay-over-graphics types.

Amen. The Wii and U have some of the best looking games out of this and last gen. Style goes a long way.

[Sarge]

Yeah, probably true, Tanooki. Not tryin' to be combative, though. It's a good discussion that I'm not sure any of us will ever truly be able to nail down effectively.

(Also, I'm not accusing you specifically of being a whiner. I meant it in a more generic sense. )

[Gunstar Green]

Gunstar Green...

What is bad about Mighty No.9 compared to Inafune classics like the Mega Man and Mega Man X series?

The biggest gripe you're going to find from people is the level design, and that's because it emphasizes cheap kills over legitimate platforming challenge.

Part of that is because the infinite dash nullifies most platforming challenge. It creates this dichotomy where you're zipping along feeling pretty invincible and then you're caught in a cheap trap. Like Mega Man Zero 2 it kind of has an over-reliance on spikes and similar insta-death mechanics instead of trying to be inventive or creative with the obstacles. None of it is bad to the point of being broken ala Mega Man X6 or X7 but a lot of it is simply bland.

Though the dash mechanic in and of itself is fun. It's jarring at first expecting the usual shoot-n-explode from Mega Man but flying around, absorbing the enemies has a rhythm to it that's satisfying. The buffs you absorb are a pretty useless mechanic other than the weapon one that lets you fire through walls. There were bigger, more Kirby-ish, plans earlier in development regarding absorbing enemies but that fell out of favor and got replaced with the very minor, very pointless buffs.

There are some minor issues with Beck that are probably just personal ones for me that come down to muscle memory from the original games. It seems like they didn't want to go full classic or full Mega Man X so Beck's move-set is like something in-between. This isn't really a complaint so much as it is an observation that it might give some people a poor first impression. The one thing I did kind of hate was that they gave Beck a ledge grab in lieu of a wall kick. While the wall kick would have trivialized the already basic level layout, so I'm fine with it not being there, the ledge grab isn't that well implemented mostly because the game isn't clear about what ledges you can't grab. It was most noticeably annoying for me in the ice level. There's also the crouch dash, which is required once and they hilariously had to lazily put a button prompt over the only area where you need to use it so that you know it even exists. At that point just remove the obstacle, I mean seriously.

Speaking of things not being clear there are a lot of mechanics that aren't very clear. There's a back-jump Beck can perform while firing that I didn't even know was there until halfway through the game. The weapon switching isn't very intuitive at first and requires you to dig around into options menu to change your preset weapon switches which is a very janky use of the UI that could have been far more seamless. The aforementioned buffs also aren't explained anywhere in game outside of the hint menu and it took me a while to realize the blue enemies were what was filling my extra-health tank. I had no idea what was doing it.

I could bang on about the graphics and the music which are both just passable (or the story that really isn't at all but whatever that's not exactly abnormal for Mega Man) and that's the major irritation about this game, it's that despite it being generally fun and controlling well (its real saving grace, it's super responsive for a 2.5D game) just about everything about it rates as, "passable," like the bare minimum of effort to make it work went into it. It's kind of sad to look at some of the spot-on concept art and how poorly it translated into the 3D models. Everyone's mileage is going to vary on these things though. The overall lack of polish only hurts because I know the game's story though, I know the budget and I know how long it took so it becomes difficult to be objective about what is ultimately just $20 indie title.

I think one of the truths people keep ignoring is that a lot of Mega Man games are pretty mediocre. There was always a strong chance this would trend towards those titles especially with Inafune calling the shots more-so than ever before, but even then this is nowhere near the extreme end of the suck spectrum.

So while it's a disappointment it's also a bit of a learning experience, for fans not to expect too much and for companies using Kickstarter not to promise things to encourage more donations if they're uncertain how to pull it off. While they ultimately did deliver on all of their promises I feel like it would have been a much better product (and on time product) if they wouldn't have had to.

But at the end I had fun and maybe others will soften towards the game once the Kickstarter wounds stop festering. I wouldn't give Inafune any crowd funding cash ever again, but if he tries to redeem himself with a sequel I'll be waiting to give it a try.

[Exhuminator]

The biggest gripe you're going to find from people is the level design, and that's because it emphasizes cheap kills over legitimate platforming challenge.

Ahh, so it takes inspiration from the Inti Creates school of level design.

I think one of the truths people keep ignoring is that a lot of Mega Man games are pretty mediocre.

That's something I've been tempted to say around here more than once, but refrained out of fear of being lynched.

There was always a strong chance this would trend towards those titles especially with Inafune calling the shots more-so than ever before

See, now we're really taking the kid gloves off.

Nothing against Inafune, but he was never THE reason Mega Man games were great. For example, the original Mega Man and Mega Man 2's core planner was not Keiji Inafune, but rather Akira Kitamura. Just like with Mega Man X the core planner was Burusera Zofy. Everybody loves Mega Man X4, but again it was planned by Mitsuru Endo and Hiroyuki Yamato. So the point is, while Inafune was important to Mega Man's success, he was hardly solely responsible for why any one particular Mega Man game was awesome. So expecting him to be the golden goose and therefore Mighty No. 9 to be perfect, was probably a pipe dream from the start.

[Sarge]

I've never thought Inticreates was "can't miss", either.

Honestly, the original set of Mega Man games are awesome. I love all of them on NES. The X series is where things start to go awry. I love the first one, but I've never really gotten into X2 or X3. X4 brings things back, X5 was a'ight, and X6 was too, despite the annoying bits.

X7 I've never beaten, but it feels a little dumpster fire-ish. X8 isn't perfect, but it is a step up. And back to the main series, MM7 is just mediocre, MM&Bass is good, and MM8 is as well.

Then we get all the other spinoffs. The Zero and Advent games are solid, but they suffer from Inticreates' school of level design. Battle Network Transmission just felt off. I'm not going into the rest, because it's getting a little far afield.

Anyway, yes, there are some very mediocre entries in the series. Overall, they're above average, with some spectacular stuff in there, but it's certainly not a series that carried a guarantee of being awesome in every instance. There's a reason that I chose not to back Mighty back when it was announced, mainly because I saw the potential for the worst of Inticreates slipping in there. And it apparently did. I suspect the game isn't nearly as bad as folks are making it out to be, but it's not going to be on the level of a revival like Mega Man 9 was. Which is what I suspect most people wanted, honestly.

[Exhuminator]

In Inti Creates defense, they developed MM9 and MM10, and you seemed to enjoy those quite a bit.

As for me, I really enjoyed Mega Man ZX and Mega Man ZX Advent, despite their overly spikey bits.

[Gunstar Green]

That's something I've been tempted to say around here more than once, but refrained out of fear of being lynched.

That's just it. People Are willing to ignore the warts when they love something enough and it would have carried over to Mighty No. 9 if they hadn't lost all of the good faith the campaign originally generated.

If we could take this very same game and drop it on its original release date I feel like the reaction from many backers would have been a lot more positive. It'd still be criticized but not as harshly.

Regardless of the circumstances and who's to blame for them the atmosphere created around this game meant that nothing other than excellence was going to be accepted even if excellence was maybe never really a realistic expectation.

Also whoever was behind dropping the Bloodstained demo at the same time as the Mighty No. 9 release needs a raise. It was the perfect way to show confidence in their game and reassure their backers.