The Blue Bomber Returns: Mega Man 11 Review

Player(s): 1
Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, Switch, PlayStation 4

We’ve been waiting a long time for Mega Man to get a modern game and have been disappointed with re-releases or retro sequels instead. Capcom answered that call finally, and Mega Man 11 helps to show us that the Blue Bomber still has a heart.

Wily being Wily.

The Mega Man formula isn’t new and has been beaten to death between the Mega Man franchise and other games that borrow concepts from it. MM11 works very hard at trying to keep that familiar formula going, while making things fresh. This comes in the form of the Double Gear system. It allows the player to slow down time or gain a power boost. This is temporary, of course, but it adds a level of freedom that gives players an easy way to have more control over what’s happening on screen. Games like this can be very challenging, and the Double Gear system helps ease players in. For me, being a Mega Man veteran, I almost never used it outside of sequences where I felt like you couldn’t progress without it. These sequences were minimal, and with some very precise skill you can likely get past them too.

This all sounds like a crutch rather than something to help make the game feel fresh, doesn’t it? Well here’s the thing, the Double Gear system doesn’t just apply to the player, but it also applies to all the bosses and some select enemies as well. Having avoided any news on the game, my first surprise came when I got to Block Man. He activated his Power Gear and transformed mid-battle. It’s no surprise that I promptly died. It’s these tense moments that made the game more exciting for me. I always looked forward to what surprise the next boss would throw at me all the way to the end.

You can test out a weapon after acquiring it.

I speak highly of the bosses, but how do the stages hold up? They are just as fantastic. The level design is creative, fun and challenging. As is the case with a Mega Man game, they take the theme of the boss and represent it in different forms throughout the stage, leading to a fun amount of variety throughout. I’ve seen some people complain about the length of the stages, but the checkpoints are spread well (depending on your difficulty) and I never felt like anything was too long. It was just right for me. The controls are tight and feel great to help you enjoy the game to the fullest and are a huge part of why everything works so well together.

In a franchise filled with memorable music, it’s unfortunate that the music doesn’t fare as well as the rest of the game. It’s generic, tinny and forgettable. It may not sound like much of an issue in an otherwise good experience, but it really pulls away from the mood. Throw in a forgettable story that tries to humanize Dr. Wily but fails miserably and some of the features that are meant to keep a game engaging end up making it feel silly and worthless. The story is especially irritating because we have been wanting some kind of hint at the transition between the Classic series and the X series, but all we get here is an extremely generic repeat of previous stories, with a little more motivation given to the villain. It’s rather boring. On the bright side, the sound design is still top-notch, so your ears aren’t completely suffering throughout this game.

Can't have Mega Man without these intro scenes.

To top everything off, no modern game in this genre is complete without some bonus content. Capcom took the ideas they played with in the Legacy Collections they’ve recently released and refine it to cater to this game. There are a bunch of oddball challenges you can do that throw different scenarios at you, as well as various goals to hit in each stage (such as minimizing the amount of times you shoot). There are leaderboards attached to all of these challenges, and they offer a good amount of replay value if you want something outside of the normal game to play. Another welcome feature is the having a difficulty selector. There are four difficulties, giving you various crutches (or challenges) based on your choice. It’s a fantastic way of giving the player the option of enjoying the game at their pace. What’s especially nice is the way they word the descriptions for the easier modes, making sure the player doesn’t feel belittled for choosing them. It may seem like a minor thing, but it’s a subtle way of embracing players of all kinds to make sure everybody can fully enjoy the game.

I love how gorgeous the effects are.

My entire time with this game was spent on the Nintendo Switch. I jumped back and forth between portable and docked, never feeling like one experience was worse than the other. The Joy-Cons can sometimes feel odd to hold, and thankfully the game gives you the option of re-mapping the buttons how you like. The amiibo support is almost meaningless, as it gives you a random consumable once per day. The other versions of the game may look a little crisper than the Switch version, but the games are otherwise identical, and I really loved being able to play on the go whenever I liked. In the end, you should pick whichever console you prefer, as they are all the same.

I started a bad chain reaction...

I put in about 10 hours into the game, beating it on the first two difficulties and briefly checking out some of the challenges. If you plan on getting 100% completion, doing all the challenges and unlocking all the gallery features, you can easily increase that time to over double what I spent with it, making the $40 price tag more than fair. Capcom managed to breathe new life into a series that by all rights should be stale and dead, and they have given me hope for the future of the franchise. Fans of platform shooters and of the series in general would all do well to check out Mega Man 11. It was an experience I didn’t expect to enjoy, yet ended up falling in love with.

- Teepu

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Graphics: A
Sound: B-
Gameplay: A
Value: A

OVERALL: B+

Pros:

+ Great re-introduction to the Mega Man franchise.
+ Tight controls compliment the fantastic level design.
+ The bosses are some of the most fun and creative the franchise has ever seen.

Cons:

- The music is generic and mostly forgettable.
- The story is a laughable repeat of everything that’s come before.
- A couple of the levels look more similar than is good for them.

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