Crappy Number Nine

About a year ago, I wrote this piece about Mighty No. 9. I was pissed about how that Kickstarter project was being handled and made my thoughts as clear as I could.

But now the game has finally been released and the game's code was sent to my inbox. I hesitantly installed the game with what little hopes I had. I kept thinking that those damning reviews were based off of the negative press surrounding the game and they were missing the little gem that would be Mighty No. 9. I was hoping a little bit of old Megaman nostalgia would seep into my heart and warm the cold, calculated core of my critical heart. But even the tiniest bit hope I had was lost. when I started up the first level.

Mighty No. 9 does not play well. Might No. 9 doesn't feel like a four million dollar game that took three years to develop. It feels budgeted. It feels stripped of detail, content, and charm. And most of all, it's not fun. To give it some iota of credit, there are moments that have some shine to them ranging from some cool platforming sections to some pretty neat boss battles ideas. But the fact that they are few and far between in a game that took me 4 hours to beat on my first playthrough leads me to conclude that those moments are not nearly enough to save this game.

In Mighty No. 9, you play as Beck, the latest creation by Dr. Will White, an ex-employee of the ominous CherryDyn company. An explosion breaks out at the city's Colosseum and suddenly all robots go berserk. CherryDyn is the lead manufacturer of these robots takes heat for the attack. Beck is the only robot not affected by this event and becomes the only hope to save all the other robots. These robots were all friends at some point since they were all created by Dr. White. I guess there is supposed to be some sadness felt by the player since Beck has to fight all of his old friends, but the story doesn't really push much of that on you due to lackluster voice acting and terrible, terrible puns. It's also revealed that there is some virus infecting all the other Mighty's and only Beck has the power to extract that virus and save his friends. The story doesn't make much sense and the end villain isn't even revealed until the end of the game. There are also some subplots for side character development, but they don't even really...go anywhere.

It's obvious that the story was developed in parts and/or had other parts planned for a sequel or for more content but was somehow cut. Or my favorite theory, the story was not given any thought at all! The other robot who helps you in your adventure, Call, has a whole story that never gets explained due to reasons. Not only that but her creator, Dr. Sanda, is just a complete blubbering idiot throughout the whole game. He's literally The King of Town except less funny and more annoying. So you never get any satisfaction in knowing what is going on.

Megaman isn't known for the well thought out and intriguing story but at least most of the early games made a bit of sense. They also had loveable character like Rush and that little weird canister dude that gave you power-ups near checkpoints. Despite my complaints with Mighty's story, you never play these games for the story. So let's get to the game-play.

Mighty No. 9 plays fine in the beginning of the game. It teaches you the basics pretty quick and the controls seem fluid and responsive. But the game takes a nose dive right after that. Something as basic as jumping gets problematic. Unlike the Megaman X series from the days of yore, there is no wall jumping to help mitigate platforming mistakes in this game. Instead, Beck is able to grab onto an pre-defined edges and jump from there. The issue is that it doesn't work all the time. And it can get really frustrating. Other times the game expects pin point accuracy otherwise you die. The game doesn't have as tight of controls as something like, Super Meat Boy, so this requirement for accuracy is uncalled for and unnecessary. Not only that but jumping has issues with short hopping as well. It just feels like this game wasn't play tested at all.

Mighty No. 9 differs from Megaman in that shoot-to-kill isn't the main combat mechanic. It's more like shoot-to-stun-then-dash-into-them-to-kill. The more enemies you defeat in a single dash, the bigger your score is. The game rewards your high combos with health refills that are extremely helpful for some of the longer (not tougher, I'll get into that later) boss fights. The game mainly pushes you in this direction by sending groups of enemies at a time. The problem is that there are frequent random encounters with enemies that are either alone or take too many hits to stun. This puts a screeching halt to the combo progression and only adds to the frustration I had. In the later parts of the game, I cursed in frustration when I found that enemies could clip through walls thus allowing them to evade most of my shots while still being able to peek their head out to hit me.

Then there are the boss battles. None of them are epic. Not even the final boss. Everything just seems a bit slower than regular Megaman games and it really makes the bosses feel easy (when the controls actually work correctly). Most bosses just require you to do a jump or dash or two to evade oncoming attacks, then punish them with your regular gun. After defeating a boss, you get their power a la Megaman. But the powers are relatively worthless. It's easier to just beat every boss with your regular gun instead of use the weakness. The only useful boss weapon is Battalions missile launcher because it does multiple hits in a single blast which saves time and stuns enemies quicker. In fact, the Battalion missile launcher will be your new best friend as the game progresses.

That being said, there are no hard bosses in this game. Even if you don't know how to dodge a certain attack, you can usually dole out enough damage so that the boss is defeated before they do the attack again. Even the final boss is pretty easy. And even that boss isn't even that epic; it doesn't fill the screen or look that large at all. And if a boss seems hard, it's because they are flying and only have certain moments where they can be hit. It's not their attacks, it's just the waiting that can kill you since some boss arenas do have pitfalls (I'm looking at you Avi!!!).

There are some good things about this game. Correction: there's one good thing about the game. There is this part in the Pyrogen level where you have to evade falling obstacles while dashing across falling platforms. It was a fun thirty seconds.

I don't want to spend more time writing about this game than I did actually playing it. It took me maybe four hours to finish this game. That means that Comcept (the developers) spent about a million dollars for every hour of content. I was going to say "every hour of enjoyment" but that is not an accurate description of my experience with this game. I would not recommend this game to anyone and I apologize to anyone who backed this game and was disappointed. I just want to let those people know that I'm here for them. Maybe we can start a support group for being let down by Kickstarters. What a waste of three years...

I could go into the graphics, but I'm not. The game just looks more moving clay models rather than nice crisp sprites that I was expecting. It's fine, graphics can be disregarded only because the game itself isn't that good to begin with. If the cake is actually a pile of crap, putting icing on it won't make it taste any better.

Below are just a couple of the boss fights I picked from the game. Some are kind of cool like the one with Shade, a sniper robot with bouncy bullets. Ironically, the boss arena is the smallest out of all of the boss levels. Another one I picked was Avi's boss fight just to show how frustrating bosses can be when they are flying. I apologize for the lack of sound. My sound recorder wasn't configured properly when I recorded my play through.


P.S. I found my name in the credits. I know, I'm not very original. (The credits last four hours!)