Mega Man X 8
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General Information
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Type.................: Game
Platform.............: PS2
Part Size............: 50,000,000 bytes
Number of Parts......: 18
Compression Format...: RAR
File Validation......: SFV
Image Format.........: .iso
Image Created with...: img




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Post Information
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Posted by............: Capcom
Posted on............: 07/12/2004

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Release Notes
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* Capcom
* 2D Platformer
* Release: Dec 7, 2004 »
* ESRB: Everyone



The Good

* A return to the old ways of classic Mega Man gameplay
* X7's horrible camera has been replaced by a far more functional one
* Legitimate challenge.

The Bad

* The classic Mega Man gameplay, while nice, feels dated
* Unimpressive visuals
* Mostly bad voice acting
* Uninspired, trial-and-error-heavy level designs
* Dumb, dumb bosses.

Last year's Mega Man X7 marked the premiere of Capcom's loveable, heroic blue
robot boy on the PlayStation 2. Unfortunately, the game proved to be a pretty
inauspicious debut for the company's vaunted mascot, as it strayed from the
series' tried-and-true mechanics and replaced them with frustrating new ones.
Mega Man X8, the aptly titled follow-up, returns the series to a more
traditional style of gameplay and eliminates some of the annoyances of its
predecessor. However, while that's all well and good, X8 can still often be an
intensely frustrating game, and still isn't especially fun.

The Blue Bomber is back for yet another PlayStation 2 adventure. Unfortunately,
it's yet another second-rate PlayStation 2 adventure.

Like X7, Mega Man X8's setup is a mostly throwaway tale of good robots versus
bad robots that dabbles in a lot of nonsensical anime-style ramblings about
things that are of little importance to the actual game. In actuality, all you
really need to care about is the process of shooting up a bunch of robot bosses,
taking their weapons, and moving on to the next round, much like in the olden
days of Mega Man. Of course, it isn't all quite so simple, as the additional
characters introduced into the X series previously, Zero and Axl, are playable
once again. You'll begin each stage by picking two of the three characters, each
of whom has unique strengths and weaknesses. Mega Man (or X, as he's referred to
in this series) has his usual abilities, including his charge blast and the
ability to acquire special weapons from fallen foes. Axl can shoot in multiple
directions and angles, and can hover in midair. And Zero is good in close
combat, and can double-jump. Of course, since nearly all the enemies you'll be
up against are best fought from long range, X and Axl are usually your best
bets.

The basic gameplay in X8 should be pretty familiar to any Mega Man fan. Rather
than the sort of 2D-3D mishmash found in the last game, X8 is mostly a 2D-style
side-scroller, with a couple of little Viewtiful Joe-like 3D elements thrown in
for good measure. You'll run around the game's levels, shooting up bad-guy
robots, solving some occasional puzzles, and then shooting up boss robots. While
this might sound wholly appealing to the nostalgia-focused crowd, the execution
of this classic brand of action platforming isn't nearly as solid as it should
be. This is mainly because the level designs just aren't very good. While you'll
run into no shortage of challenging and occasionally intelligent platforming
puzzles, far too many of them can be surmounted only through trial and error,
requiring you to run through them repeatedly to memorize where all the different
instant-kill spike pits are in relation to the jumps and drops you'll have to
make, and so on and so forth. This is pretty frustrating on its own, but the
fact that the game employs a limited continue system on all difficulty levels
but the easiest makes it even more so.

Another problem is that the combat simply isn't all that interesting. Despite
the fact that all three playable robots can earn new weapons and abilities over
the course of the game, it isn't often that these new weapons ever really feel
all that necessary. There are certainly specific situations and bosses where a
particular weapon is most effective, but more often than not you can get by just
fine using the default weaponry. The one nice thing is that since you have two
characters to control, you can switch between them on the fly by tapping the L2
button. Additionally, the game features a special combo attack that can be
performed by pressing the R2 button at just the right time during a battle.
Doing so sends you into a cutscene, where your two characters stand in a The
Matrix-looking environment, complete with green computer code shooting all over
the place, and blast the hell out of a bad guy. However, while the combos are
reasonably effective, they really don't look very cool, and they really don't
inflict enough damage to make them truly worthwhile.

Mega Man X8 isn't purely the age-old brand of Mega Man gameplay the entire way
through, either, as there are a few stages that deviate from the norm. A couple
of levels include vehicular combat, where you're in a ship, traveling along a
rail and shooting everything that comes into your path. While flying these
ships, you can boost or brake suddenly, depending on the situation. But apart
from that, you rarely ever need to do anything other than hammer on the fire
button, and that tends to get old rather quickly. Even some of the side-
scrolling missions shift away from typicality, such as one stage where you'll
find yourself having to engage in some cheap stealth action, dodging a bunch of
moving spotlights to avoid setting off alarms that bring forth scads of enemies.
Unfortunately, like the ship stuff, this stealth section (and pretty much every
area that shies away from the purest of 2D action) tends to get very dull very
quickly.

However, the most disappointing aspects of the gameplay are the boss battles.
While the bosses can be plenty difficult, that's about the only thing they have
going for them. The actual designs of the bosses are just plain silly. For
instance, you have the Burn Rooster, a flame-inducing chicken, and you have the
Optic Sunflower--Plant Man, anyone? The designs themselves might have been
forgivable if the fights were interesting, but they never are. The patterns used
by each boss are easy to decipher, and the only real challenge comes from the
fact that their attacks tend to do a lot of damage. Granted, the fight patterns
of Mega Man bosses have never been extremely complex, but this brand of boss
fight just doesn't hold up as well as it did back in the 8- and 16-bit days, and
these new character designs aren't as good as the old ones.

Even if this were the late '80s, bosses like the Burn Rooster would still be
mocked ruthlessly.

The only other aspect of Mega Man X8's gameplay that bears mentioning is its
character-upgrade system. In between every level, you'll have the opportunity to
shop for upgrades for your characters, including additional energy tanks, new
weapons, and new attacks. Cool idea in concept, but again, the game doesn't
really execute this system very well. The energy tanks are of course useful, but
a lot of the character-specific upgrades really aren't. Many of the weapons and
attacks just seem useless, and even the few useful ones rarely come into play.
Mainly, the whole thing just seems tacked on.

Mega Man X8 just isn't that appealing from a visual standpoint, either. Though
the horrible camera issues that plagued much of X7 are absent here, the overall
look of the game is bland and supremely uninspired. In addition to the lousy
boss designs (and two other robot designs that are rip-offs of Boba Fett and M.
Bison, respectively), the game's various stages lack any remarkable
characteristics, and mostly just look like rehashes of the same kinds of things
the series has been doing for years now. Even worse, the game's frame rate can
be quite erratic, despite the modest graphics, leading to a lot of areas where
the action simply slows to a crawl. The audio in the game also conspires to
bring down the entire experience, mostly thanks to the generally poor voice
work. It's all cheese-ball anime-style voice acting that overemphasizes just
about everything, and it only serves to distract, rather than entertain. None of
the music tracks really bring much to the table either, unfortunately.

Is Mega Man X8 a more playable game than X7 was? Sure, absolutely. Is Mega Man
X8 particularly fun? No, not really. The shift back to the gameplay style that
reigned during the golden era of Mega Man doesn't work to the game's advantage,
and, as a whole, the game is beset by so much frustration and banality that it's
difficult to recommend. If you're on the hunt for an old-school Mega Man
experience, go grab a copy of Mega Man Anniversary Collection, as it will serve
you far better than X8.
By Alex Navarro, GameSpotPosted Dec 9, 2004 3:52 pm PT