Megaman X4
Quadruple Yay!Is anyone getting tired of these yet? Well, rest assured, this is the last real Megaman X game for awhile, until we get to Rockman, that is. Only Megaman X Command Mission to go, and you'll be free of Megaman for just a bit.
SO, this was the first 'next gen' (at the time) Megaman X game, and BOY can you tell by looking at the graphics. Well, actually, not really, but I'm gonna say so anyway.
The biggest change this time round is that Zero is now fully available as a playable character, no holds barred, ready to rip some Mavericks to pieces with his trusty Beam Sabre, which is infinitely cooler than anything George Lucas ever made, just because I say so. FZOOM!
With this new fangled "playstation" thingy noone had ever heard about, Capcom decided that the LOADS of extra storage space meant that not only could they create more colorful and detailed graphics, and better sounding music (one of the best soundtracks in the series this one, which IS saying something), they could also throw in some lengthy anime cutscenes to tell the story.
Contrary to the PSX rerelease of MMX3, the cutscenes actually have a point, and are really used for the story, not to introduce bosses anymore, and they're all great!
I'm not much of an Anime buff, but this is great stuff. Bear in mind that this was only 1995 or something, so it's nothing technically astounding, but they look good, and the direction is pretty good too.
I own the European version, but I've played the Japanese version, and it's better unsurprisingly. The English dub is pretty good though, although it has that typical anime-esque cast of voice-actors who think that adding a British or Australian accent makes it somehow sound cooler. Come ON! When have Brits ever sounded cool!?
I can only assume that this happens so much to compensate for the Japanese language's MASSIVE variety of speech styles, and that is EXCLUDING real accents and dialects. There are so many ways of indicating, through speech alone, the age, gender, social position and self-image of a character without resorting to dialect, that probably the only way some translators see out of this problem is to make people sound Australian.
Now don't worry, there aren't actually any Australian accents in here, but there's some fake British and some stupid Southern Accent for Iris for some insane reason, but generally speaking the timbre of the voices is pretty good, and most characters seem to have been dealt with pretty close to their Japanese counterparts.
Which brings me to the next major surprise, the story actually KICKS ASS. I mean, geez, Megaman games have never been known for intelligent or clever story-writing, most of the games are of the same depth of the average Mario game, but this one puts its cutscenes to good use and actually offers some very good insights into the Megaman X Universe, as well as creating a major plot-twist in the series.
You have to be familiar with the previous games to fully enjoy the impact of it, but I can tell you I was quite shocked to find out the truth behind some of these characters.
Fortunately though, for Sequel's sake, the entire story has been fucked up now, in true Capcom fashion, so this is about the last game in the series that has an enjoyable story. Bastards.
In terms of gameplay there's really not much news. Playing as Zero does introduce an entirely different fighting style, and there are some minor differences between X and Zero's scenario's, but there's not as much variety as was offered in X3. Still, the action is a lot better, and there's definite value in playing through both scenario's just to see the great cutscenes.
So, in all, this is still a great action game, with a great story, although it sadly lacks those little details and alternative stages that made the prequels so nice. Also, there's no really cool secret this time. There's an extra powerful armor for X and Zero, but you have to unlock it using a CODE instead of actually showing skill, which is also disappointing. Still it gets a 9.2 for being kick-ass. But this is the last one, honest!
posted by Ingen! @ 2:39 PM
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