Life update, Mega Man X2 (vs X)

Life

Well, the past ~2 weeks have seen my project productivity at a low, first due to just various real-life commitments, and then due to a fiasco with the new chicky, who we bought a week ago and unfortunately seems to have come with a slew of health problems which necessitated a bunch of care.

Somehow I managed to pick up the pieces and do a good amount of work on Friday, which pleasantly surprised me.  We'll see if I can get things back on track next week, but at the same time, I'm reminding myself that there shouldn't be a ton of pressure to do so.  Yeah, I feel a bit bad for missing two weekly devlog posts (in no small part due to not really having much to show), but at the same time, I don't really owe anyone anything.

I'm currently working on redesigning the title/menu screens.  This is a redesign which has been brewing for quite some time, so it's nice to see it finally coming into fruition.  Every so often I'll end up working on creating things for this game that remind me of why I'm doing this in the first place, and this new menu ended up being one of them, which is great.

There's still a long road ahead though, even for just the menu screen alone, so there's certainly no shortage of work left in my future.

 

Mega Man X2

I played through Mega Man X2 in its entirety and I gotta say, I don't think I was really missing out on a ton.  I believe we rented X2 once upon a time, and at some point may have either finished it myself or (more likely) watched it be finished, but I guess I didn't remember all that much of it, and I guess I see why now.

It's not really that it's a bad game or anything, it just feels like Mega Man X was such a stronger package overall despite X2 providing more varied features.  Perhaps part of that is just personal bias from being more familiar with Mega Man X, but....maybe not.

Mega Man X (and X2) has a very different sort of "gameplay thesis" when compared to the classic Mega Man series.  The classic Mega Man series puts you interesting yet difficult platforming challenges, frequently involving dealing with multiple types of obstacles simultaneously.  Jumping across moving  or disappearing platforms while shooting at enemies, for example, is a classic one.  In the classic Mega Man games, you slide backwards a bit when you're hit by an enemy (you can't control this), which can and will lead to you falling to your doom.  This is very important to the platforming gameplay, as it ties together the two systems of jumping across platforms and shooting/dodging enemies.  This is probably an overgeneralization, but Mega Man probably often fails with newer gaming audiences because of the brutal nature of these platforming challenges.  It demands precision, quick thinking and good execution, and can be very unforgiving otherwise.  In other words, it's a good challenge.

Mega Man X doesn't really subscribe to that philosophy.  That doesn't necessarily mean that Mega Man X is an =easy= game, but it certainly reigns in the "unforgiving" and "brutal" part.  No longer are there insta-death spikes everywhere, and if you mistime a jump slightly -- no matter!  You can walljump upwards, no big deal.

The level design of Mega Man X is probably the biggest difference overall.  In Mega Man, you've got levels that are much more compact and usually consist of small set pieces to setup platforming challenges.  In Mega Man X you've got much wider open spaces, so everything feels much bigger in scale.  Dashing (and dash-jumping) is a key mechanic in Mega Man X/X2 and you can really tell that the levels were designed with this in mind.  In addition, they added collectible upgrades scattered throughout the levels, so there is sort of a metroidvania vibe going on.

Because of the increased visual fidelity, larger spaces, and collectibles, the enjoyment for a Mega Man X level focuses more on "exploring" what the level has to offer rather than in Mega Man Classic where the enjoyment came out of "being challenged".  This of course is also a general trend among games throughout the ages -- which is why you so often see older games labeled as the "Nintendo hard" games.

Unfortunately the level design in Mega Man X2 is probably also its biggest weakness when compared with Mega Man X in my eyes.  This really makes me appreciate the levels in Mega Man X a little more.  The best way I can sum it up is that Mega Man X2 has levels that feel extremely linear, where Mega Man X is a little better about varying things up.

 

Here's a segment of a stage from Mega Man X2 to illustrate what I'm talking about:

You literally just go left through a long straight hallway, climb down a ladder, then go right.  Booooooring.  Now of course, not all stages in Mega Man X2 are quite this bad, but take a look at Mega Man X, where you've got this instead:

Now that's an open space to explore!  To proceed through the area you need to go to the right, but you're rewarded with an extra life if you take the path up and to the left.  And if you dash-jump off of there, you get access to a hidden sub-tank!

It's not just limited to these wide open areas though -- later in the same stage, you have this section:

Here you're just going to the right, but there's two separate paths here which adds another layer of interest.  Again, it makes you feel like you have choice in where you want to go and where you want to explore, even though ultimately you're just going to the right.

Even when Mega Man X wants to just stick to a single linear path, it still does well:

There's no branching or anything here, but the level keeps things reasonably fresh by switching up between vertical and horizontal sections.

I think there's not really enough of this sort of constrast in Mega Man X2.  In Magna Centipede's stage, for example, you get this:

 

Go right...dodge search beams.  Go right some more...deal with big blocks.  Go right again....deal with more big blocks....go right some more....deal with an extremely generic "spinning blade" mini-boss...

There's just the sense that the overall level structure is kinda just more...dialed in.  Even when they tried to take a risk on something new, it didn't really pan out as well.  In Overdrive Ostrich's stage, there's some sections where you get to essentially ride a hoverbike, and zip along the ground while shooting.  There's even a heart tank that requires you to ride the bike to get it (it's on a spiked floor).  ...Except the boosting mechanics on the hoverbike are a little finicky, and getting the heart tank in this stage thus required me to abuse savestates.  And even then, there's a wall of spikes right after the heart tank, so you need to turn around to avoid dying, and even just this part alone required me to savestate many times due to the weird inertia / slow turnaround of the bike.  I think basically you should expect to just grab the heart tank and take a death here.

So it's like...yeah, they introduced something new, but....in the end it wasn't super satisfying.  Compare back to Mega Man X in Armored Armadillo's stage where you get to ride on top of this minecart that hurtles forward.  You can walk back and forth and shoot things, even jump while you're on it.  And that shit was COOL!

And in general I feel the same sort of "meh" with everything new that X2 added.  Yes, they added the ability to airdash, but I feel like dash-jumping sort of already fulfilled the same movement need.  Yes, the ability to fire two charged buster shots one after another was pretty dang cool, but the "pink" charge blast from Mega Man X was pretty dang cool too!

They added the whole "X-Hunter" system in X2 but it seemed very tacked on and you were given zero backstory or exposition on these three villains so again, they are very unmemorable.  It's not like Mega Man X explained a ton either, but the explaining that it DOES do sets it up very nicely and the character arc in Mega Man X is very strong as a result.  At the end of the very first stage in Mega Man X, you fight against Vile in an "unwinnable" fight -- you then lose, and then are saved by Zero, who blasts Vile while looking like a cool badass.  You don't get to fight Vile again until the Sigma stages, but when you do it's a nice payoff for this character arc as by that time you've gotten much stronger and finally are able to defeat him, etc etc.

Mega Man X2 doesn't have any of that at all.  It's hard for me to even remember what the story was in the first place besides "Sigma is back.  Zero's dead so I guess you need to restore him? (optionally?)  And then you.....go and just fight Sigma again.  Yay?"

They also seemed to really go nuts trying to use the additional SNES processing chip in X2 (the one that allows for the fancy rotational/shader/polygonal effects.  Ok, I get it, rendering a 3D wireframe head was neat and cool tech at the time, but Sigma's final form just being.....a wireframe head?  That is way less impressive than the giant hulking robot from Mega Man X.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the music.  Mega Man X has some greeeeeeaaaattt and memorable themes, and Mega Man X2 really just didn't follow up on that too well.  Again, the songs aren't =bad=, but they really aren't as memorable or strong.  Again, really makes you appreciate the soundtrack of Mega Man X more.  Heck, even the stage select theme in Mega Man X is memorable.  They really pulled that soundtrack off well...

So yeah.  Honestly I was a little disappointed because I was hoping for more, but I guess X2 just isn't as good in my opinion.  Looking around, it seems that some people do appreciate X2 more than X (mostly just citing the dual-buster shot being badass.......), generally it seems that X is regarded as the superior game.