Mega Man X2 - one out of one - Henry Arrambide

Mega Man X2 – 1/1 – Henry Arrambide

A Capcom title for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I know you’re out there - people who play videogames because they think they’re actually fun. Don’t be afraid. It’s not a bad thing. I see it all the time. You go on a forum or some comment section or something like that, and you can see the divide. You see, for some reason there is, as with almost any collective, a breed of gamer out there who doesn’t enjoy games. I realize this is a bad way to start; alienate the readers, come off as a jackass. But go back to those forums you crawled from. Take a look. Has anyone brought up the ‘games as art’ argument? Someone talking about “depth” or “story” and how Game A is better than Game B or how Game C should be heralded as Product D? Look at that for a moment. Read their reasoning. Ask yourself does this person know what the hell they are talking about? Why aren’t they playing games and discussing games?

As far as I can recall, it started around the PSX era. Final Fantasy 7 and Xenogears. Grand sweeping pre-rendered cut-scenes and dialogue boxes delivered stories of sword wielders and mech pilots going on adventures and facing ultimate evil. These games were mature. These games were deep. Never mind the fact that FF7 was stereotypical or that Xenogears was burdened with so much high school philosophical referencing that rendering individual personal interpretation was impossible. “Artistic Gaming” was here. I’m sure you’ve seen people come into Book and Lit boards asking for books as “deep” or “compelling” as Game A or Game B. You have to be careful with these types, recommending them something that plays with subtext or personal interpretation and metaphor too much will have them resorting to the same complaints they have with games like Silent Hill 2 or Shadow of the Colossus: It’s boring. It’s got no story. You do nothing.

As far as I can tell, this stems from the fact that there are people out there who play games not because they are fun, but because it’s a subculture, a group they can fall back on, some way they can socialize. They think what they’re doing is somewhat childish, and yearn for some kind of ‘maturation’ of the genre into who knows what. Yes, insult the masses why don’t I?

As far as gaming and art are concerned, I’ve always believed one thing: do what only your medium can deliver, and excel at it. That is when you know a game is excellent, or possibly that term that can throw any message board into a fit of rage: artistic. Possibly.

Mega Man has been around since the eight bit days, spawning hundreds of sequels, spinoffs, and guest appearances. Much like any other character, he has been forced to evolve and move along with the times. This has brought us recent titles such as the Mega Man Zero series and the Mega Man ZX series. Oddly enough, the Zero series was originally made as a ‘return to roots’ project. But they filled it with Cyber Elf collectibles, the patented Capcom ranking system, and odd ways of upgrading and collecting power ups which demanded you bend over backwards and perform feats of strength for the game. All bloat.

The Mega Man ‘formula’ is moving right while shooting anything that is going left. You could make a case that “listening to badass midi’s and blasting away cartoonish enemies” should also count somewhere in there. Mega Man X2 is the Mega Man formula perfected. It is everything that was known about making a Mega Man game at that point in time dumped into a single cart. Mega Man 7 was a step back to tradition for the sake of the fans, Mega Man X3 was a step into overindulgence and too many ideas for the sake of “advancing the series", and its predecessor was still setting up the ground rules and not having enough fun.

Let’s fire up Mega Man X2. It’s nighttime. The sky is a rich purple, bright green lasers are flying in from the right side of the screen. In from the left speeds Mega Man and the Green Biker Dude, on future motorcycles. Who needs plot or exposition? In the first twenty seconds of the game, the only time you aren’t controlling Mega Man, it is the stuff of Saturday Morning Cartoons. Speed and suspense. Your green biker companion is shot, going out in a spectacular 16-bit explosion. Mega Man jumps off his bike as it crashes into an enemy, coming to a standstill. Knowing you’re watching all this unfold to a hyperactive midi, the game simply flashes READY. You sure as hell are. No long text dumps or pre-rendered scenes – just visual language.

With it’s opening cinematic, the only one for the rest of the game until you fell the final boss, everything has been setup. Move to the right quickly as possible or you may end up like your green biker friend. Objects coming at you can hurt you. Know when to jump. The only thing not in the intro to appear after the READY alert is simply a health bar. Easy enough, no instructions needed on how to use it. You get hit, it goes down. From here on out, kill everything. The music will keep you pumped and the cartoonish graphical presentation will make everything easy to see.

Not that the game is a straight line you must keep going right on. You can take your time, explore, blast away. It may or may not help. If you want to speed through, that’s fine too. This isn’t Mega Man Zero, where that S Rank will be needed to unlock the best power ups. The game is about fun, not meeting some arbitrary standard. The game does not lose when the player wins. But be warned, just because you can choose whatever boss you want doesn’t mean the game is going to hold your hand – the game is fair with the player, but it isn’t going to hold back being hard if you actively go after the evil looking spike riddled alligator or mean looking fire boss. Slow down and explore, learn strategies, find power ups, AND THEN go fight the meanest looking dude in the room.

Go ahead. Pick the Gator first. I fucking dare you.

There’s no Capcom ranking system which will prevent you from getting the best equipment because you failed to complete the game in ten minutes. Why would a developer want to punish players for wanting to explore?

Exploring can yield you health upgrades or body part upgrades, but nothing essential to beating the game (in theory, if you’re a sadist). That is all up to you, the player to decide, adding a sliding scale of difficulty to the game, once again some sense of fairness. Power-ups aren’t esoteric in their concealment, half lay out in the open, just out of reach. The other half hide just off the trail, hidden on a side-path requiring maybe a little more out of the player. They can make the game easier if you are having trouble. They are not what later X games would bring to the table. There is one set of armor. Eight health expansions if needed. That is all. Unlike what X3 did with a suit, then upgrades to that suit, then a golden upgrade to that suit but only if you didn’t get the previous upgrades. This is simple (don’t get me started on X5 or 6’s “Here’s a suit now, there’s three more suits hidden in the stages, some are time sensitive and you only have one opportunity to find them” mentality). Hell, you might not even need these upgrades (once again, X6 had among its multiple suits the Shadow Armor, a ninja armor which was required to beat the second or third to last level – take THAT players).

There are no endless seas of spikes or pixel perfect jumping sections. Every level plays with the “Go right, shoot enemies” formula a little. One level has various weather effects that change the way enemies fight or how you can move. Another level places you on a motorcycle from the opening, only you’re in control now. You can choose not to use it at all. I think one of the best levels is a junkyard where these Ceiling bound magnets allow you to jump and float around. Parasitic robot bugs fill the level; there is a nice midboss setup showing you what they are capable of. When you encounter them minus the host, you are good food for them. They don’t do copious amounts of damage, they just stop and control you for a minute or so. They could theoretically run you into enemies and the like, but the only certainty is that they will eat up time. They are enemies of the impatient. Stop, breathe, beat them. There is no ranking system here, the game won’t punish you for getting hit, because getting hit is already punishment enough. You don’t have to die from your mistakes every time, just learn from them. You will have to learn, even with a fully powered Mega Man.

The game isn’t a walk in the park. You will die. You will have to learn boss strategies. But they never turn into mind numbing puzzles with abstract solutions. It’s all visual language – you have a gun, keep shooting about until you find what works. Go right, shoot enemies. Sometimes you have to shoot more than once. Boss’s visually react to the proper weakness. The game is consistent with this method. You never have the genre switch up on you – things stay action/platformer, never are you suddenly playing a racing game or intricate puzzle game (once again, later era X games began to implement puzzle levels and racing levels for the sake of ‘advancement’ or ‘variety’, even though by this time the X series had become more of a cash grabbing ritual). It’s clean, it’s fast, it’s simple. Blow shit up. If it were a movie, book, or cartoon, it would be mindless, maybe boring, action. As a videogame, it is crunch, flow, and pure fun.

Never forget.