Despite being announced a little before the Comic Con in mid-July, and despite the Comic Con passing with Capcom attending the event, we finally received our first look at Mega Man Universe today, on the advent of this year's Penny Arcade Expo. Actually, that should be "looks," because Capcom cleverly sent different gameplay videos to various websites, namely IGN, Gamespot, and 1up. They're all prefaced by an introduction by Keiji Inafune and tease Ryu (from Street Fighter), but contain different gameplay with different iterations of Mega Man. And the game looks...well, it's something, to put it lightly.
The game resembles what a lot of people feared Mega Man 9 was going to look like prior to its unveil: a cheap, low budget 2.5D platformer with mediocre animation. That's not to say I think the game will turn out bad, of course. Mega Man Powered Up for PSP had a similarly repelling art style with mechanics that weren't quite as tight as the original, but it was nonetheless a pretty enjoyable game with a great level editor. In fact, this game's art style is the complete antithesis of MMPU's. People made some good levels with that, and if this game is a spiritual successor to that game, then more power to it.
The Mega Man's used are the most hilarious aspects of the trailer. The Gamespot version uses "Bad Box Art Mega Man," an SD version of the dude shown on this cover. He's pretty hideous, yeah, but that's intentional. He could be a fun novelty to have as a playable character. 1up's version uses "Rockman" which is the Mega Man (Rockman in Japan) you've come to know and love. The IGN one uses "Mega Man" which I guess is the western interpretation of what Mega Man looks like, as evinced by Mega Man 3 and 4's NES covers, i.e. not taken to the extreme like Mega Man 1 and 2's covers. He also has some big eyebrows, which make him look pissed. Angry Kirby Syndrome lives on!
The appearance of Ryu (No way) is likely a hint that there will be plenty of selectable characters. How many there could potentially be is unknown, but Capcom has themselves a guaranteed sale of Morrigan makes it in. Heck, maybe they'll let you make your own characters.
Capcom's still being awfully secretive about what MMU actually is, so maybe they'll elaborate on it more either over the weekend or at the Tokyo Game Show, which begins in precisely two weeks. The first look here makes me a little pessimistic as to how it'll turn out, but I'd like to think Inafune has our best interests in mind. Then again, sometimes I don't know about him.
Image stolen from NeoGAF.
The game resembles what a lot of people feared Mega Man 9 was going to look like prior to its unveil: a cheap, low budget 2.5D platformer with mediocre animation. That's not to say I think the game will turn out bad, of course. Mega Man Powered Up for PSP had a similarly repelling art style with mechanics that weren't quite as tight as the original, but it was nonetheless a pretty enjoyable game with a great level editor. In fact, this game's art style is the complete antithesis of MMPU's. People made some good levels with that, and if this game is a spiritual successor to that game, then more power to it.
The Mega Man's used are the most hilarious aspects of the trailer. The Gamespot version uses "Bad Box Art Mega Man," an SD version of the dude shown on this cover. He's pretty hideous, yeah, but that's intentional. He could be a fun novelty to have as a playable character. 1up's version uses "Rockman" which is the Mega Man (Rockman in Japan) you've come to know and love. The IGN one uses "Mega Man" which I guess is the western interpretation of what Mega Man looks like, as evinced by Mega Man 3 and 4's NES covers, i.e. not taken to the extreme like Mega Man 1 and 2's covers. He also has some big eyebrows, which make him look pissed. Angry Kirby Syndrome lives on!The appearance of Ryu (No way) is likely a hint that there will be plenty of selectable characters. How many there could potentially be is unknown, but Capcom has themselves a guaranteed sale of Morrigan makes it in. Heck, maybe they'll let you make your own characters.
Capcom's still being awfully secretive about what MMU actually is, so maybe they'll elaborate on it more either over the weekend or at the Tokyo Game Show, which begins in precisely two weeks. The first look here makes me a little pessimistic as to how it'll turn out, but I'd like to think Inafune has our best interests in mind. Then again, sometimes I don't know about him.
Image stolen from NeoGAF.
Anyone who's a little tired of the usual third-person shooter doldrums might be looking forward to Vanquish, Platinum Games and Shinji Mikami's next title. The result, at least thus far, is pretty much what you would expect from a team that's clearly done their homework. It's a game whose style represents the best of what goes into western-developed cover system-laden TPSs and Japanese action games, culminating in something that's completely wild and fantastic.
There are plenty of weapons at your disposal, too. Four, in fact: heavy machine gun, assault rifle, shotgun, and sniper rifle, the last of which can be located in the first stage. (There are five if you want to include the rocket launcher and disc launcher, but you only get to play with those in a short training session.) The first two weapons there use rapid fire, so you'll likely run out of ammo on at least one of them. If you do, there are crates around that contain extra weapons, and it only takes picking up one to fully replenish your ammo. If you already have full ammo for that weapon, you'll enhance the weapon itself.
Oh look, I'm breaking my "don't discuss newer soundtracks" clause, and I almost feel bad about it!
It's packaged together with Contra Rebirth's soundtrack.
If someone were to ask me what my succinct opinion was after playing Metal Gear Solid 4, I wouldn't be able to give them a straight answer. It's not that I can't put together precisely what I thought of the game, but it's impossible to answer that question as quick as someone would like.
The battlefield is something we've never had in an MGS game. It's a welcome and fun edition.
It's still possible to play stealthy, though. It's just going to be a little harder.
I was thrilled to see the briefings come back from MGS1. I wasn't thrilled to see that a couple of them are excessively lengthy.
There are quite a few familiar faces here. But there are a lot of new ones too.
The robots aren't quite as fun to fight as humans, but they would be if you were playing this guy.




Perhaps it's something I should have realized upon seeing that the file size was a mere 240MB, but it still felt threadbare after playing through it. The hypothesis that compression could have been the cause of the small file may have been adequate prior to playing it, but nope. My immediate reaction afterward was wondering whether I missed something, but again, nope. And part of that file size is reserved to having the choice of both English and Japanese languages.
In recent news, looks like
Metal Gear Solid -- and that's strictly speaking about "Solid," not any of the other games in the franchise or the spin-offs -- have had an interesting cover history. It's mostly been rather positive, standing in stark contrast to many other franchises. But in the last few years, they've taken a different turn and adopted an alternate overall style. Not for the better, unfortunately.
Rumor has it that Metal Gear Solid's cover wasn't originally going to be this, but the team working with the game internally fought to have this cover. Glad they did, too, because here we have something that's beautiful in its simplicity. The Japanese cover is the same. The European cover does use Shinkawa's art, but it doesn't come off as well. There's a lesson here: making a nice cover doesn't merely entail using art, but using it efficiently.
All of the covers for Metal Gear Solid 2 use Shinkawa's art, though Japan's is different from what America and Europe received. This cover comparison is actually quite hilarious for anyone who played MGS2 back in the day. The big surprise for MGS2 was that you'd actually be playing a new character named Raiden for most of the game, rather than Solid Snake; the complete opposite of what the hype and American and European cover art would imply. The Japanese cover ruins this surprise, but that's probably not a bad thing considering the negative reaction fans had to being robbed of controlling Snake.
Metal Gear Solid 3 is one of the rare cases of each territory having a different cover. Both Japan and Europe got Shinkawa's art, with the European one being a not-as-good variant of what's present on the Japanese cover. Comparing the two, the Japanese cover immediately wins for including one of the best
Like this one! Apparently someone thought Old Snake's face was incredibly appealing for Metal Gear Solid 4's cover; so appealing that they wanted to show everyone through the cover. It's not, and it's not supposed to be either, which makes for an unappealing cover. A shame Japan's cover suffered the same fate. Surprisingly, though Europe's cover also has a close-up of Snake, it does it using Shinkawa art. It's by far the best of the covers.

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