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But They Only Come 3-feet Tall
by Captain Heady
Short Review:
It's awesome, if you have a PSP buy it now. Kids will love it. Pussies who hate challenge will love it. Casual gamers will love it. To masochist, this will be their best friend. Why are you still here?
Long Review:
In 1987, Capcom a relatively unknown company released one of the hardest NES games at the time. Now after years of porting, remaking, porting some more, then porting onto a cellular phone, then again porting it, Capcom finally decided to once again, remake the glorious gem that helped make them what they are today and spawn a crap load of sequels and spin offs that would soon produce it's own Shopping Network. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mega man Powered Up.
He's here to kill you.
Nearly 2 months ago, Capcom released another remake titled Maverick Hunter X, which was a reintroduction to the Mega man X games. I should make it clear right now, that this is not another Maverick Hunter X. Although MHX is pretty [watermelon]ing awesome, Powered Up blows it out of the water with a shotgun and then explodes on contact with the ground like one of my state's governor action movies. This is not one, but two separate games in this one little UMD package. First, you have the Old Style mode. I'll make my review simple. If you played Mega man 1, you've played Old Style. It's just a graphical rehaul of the original game, with the camera zoomed out and borders surrounding the side of the screen to replicate the original resolution of the NES game, as well as the original NES music. This isn't really a bad thing, it actually fits the game quite well and adds to the nostalgia value of the game when listening to the old bad ass tunes. Of course, if this was just it, the game wouldn't be that special and in no way superior to MHX. But the magic starts in the New Style mode.
 
NOSTALGIA
The New Style is a complete remix of the original game. And when I say complete, I mean everything. The only thing this game has in common with the old game is the characters, and that's it. Let me make it clear right now, this game is brutal and unforgiving in Hard Mode. You WILL die in Hard Mode eventually. Luckily, if you find a certain level to hard, you can switch back to one of the other two easier settings, Easy or Normal. Easy mode is just that, easy. It's been tailored to help those who don't like hard games, even a 5 year old can beat easy mode. Normal mode is for those casual gamers who do want some bit of challenge, but my lord, Hard Mode is where it's at if you're a masochist. The cute visual style makes this game look like a children's game that anyone can beat, but it's all a lie, a lie I say. Aside for the increase difficulty, a new storyline has been thrown into the mix and like MHX, a small dialogue between Mega man and the Robot Masters begins when you enter the room. Some of them range from confused, others are just stupid, and others just want to blow crap up. All of the stages have been completely redesigned, as well as three new ones. A short intro level, and the lairs of the two new robot masters exclusive to New Style mode. The game handles the same way as in Old Style mode, which is how it's suppose to handle. Jump, don't touch spikes, Shoot, don't touch spikes, Beat boss, don't touch spikes. Both analog nub, and d-pad work perfectly, and all the other buttons can be fully customized to your liking. The musical remixing in this game is absolutely awesome, and not one track will annoy you endlessly. Well except maybe the buster sound if you turn the music volume down and shoot mindlessly, but you must be a retard or something to do that. Along with the sassy sound, the game also looks gorgeous. The camera zooms in closer to take full advantage of the PSP's widescreen and shows off the nice smooth graphical style quite well. There is a small bit of a problem with depth perception with the new upgraded 3D look that makes certain jumps a bit tricky, but nothing to really make you scream at the game, as well as the some slowdown when the action starts filling up the screen. Sadly, there is no slowdown during the Yellow Devil Fight, I would of [watermelon]ing killed for that.
Mega man continues his fight on the War on Terror in Iraq
The animation in this game flows fluidly, and there are various animations for each character raging from smashing against a wall, or trying to stop sliding on ice. (which is the [watermelon]ing CUTEST out of all of them.) Notice that I said for each character. That's right, New Style allows you to play as all of the Robot Masters, as long as you show mercy in battle by using only your Mega Buster. All of them have different abilities to separate themselves from Mega man, but they all control similarly as well so it's not to confusing. They also all have their own separate dialogue when you encounter the other Robot Masters and Mega man(?). There is a bit of trouble getting use to some of these robot masters, and fighting the ones you're weak against is rather brutal (Fireman vs. Iceman = Long Tough Battle). However, they're all still very beatable and fun to use. They also can go their own separate routes as oppose to following Mega man’s standard route. Some levels split off where only a certain Robot Master is allowed to go, an alternative, shorter, easier route that takes advantage of their abilities. But is there any real use for using these characters? Well yes there is, other than getting 100% on your save file, you are required to use them if you want to find every Scenery and Enemy Pack scattered across the levels in New Style. But what are they for? Construction my friend, Construction.
STOP IN THE NAME OF FASHION!
Construction mode adds an entire new level of replayability the Mega man series has never seen before. Really, it never has, all of them could be beat like, in an hour or two. The new Construction mode solves this by allowing you to build your own level using the packs you collected in the games, or downloading other people's level which are nicely stored on Capcom's site accessible via the PSP. Of course, using the same packs would get tiring quickly, so Capcom as well began offering weekly downloads raging from old style maps, downlodable characters, costume changes, levels made by other known groups such as Gamespy or some Japanese magazine, and even Ultimate versions of boss stages. All of this would be worthless if the level editor were impossible to use, but surprisingly it's retardly easy. The complaint many people have given is that this would of been much better on the DS. Well, it wouldn't really. Not only would you be limited to only have a few number of stages in your DS cart, but the only real gain would be the speed increase, other than that the PSP is a much better format for it. Creating a level is done with relative ease, the analog nub moves the curser, dpad selects the items you want, buttons let you choose whether you want to place, erase, copy, undo, massive place or delete and change the properties of certain objects. The space you're provided for these levels are huge, up to 120 squares can be used, 15 squares long, 8 squares high, all the size of the PSP screen so you'll definitely have the sandbox to build your evil lair with. The packs you're allowed to build with also come in a large variety. There are 36 different Scenery and Enemy packs you can obtain, and additional ones can be downloaded from the site. You can mix different Scenery packs with Enemy packs, make multiple routes, anything you want, the only limitation being that there is a point system when you place certain objects such as enemies, power ups, and traps. Other than that, spike traps, blocks, ladders, all of that is unlimited. You can make a freaking maze with no enemies if you desire. All the tools are there. The only downside is that you can't make your dream Robot Master boss gauntlet, but oh well, the rest is awesome enough to forgive it. Here's the good thing about it as well, they're all 128kb. So even your crapty 32mb can hold enough of these puppies.
Well Screw That
And now for the final part of Mega man Powered Up. The Challenge Mode. Now the game itself is already hard, but Challenge Mode is where it will test all of your skills. Raging from puzzles, to platforming hell, this will not be done with a day. Mega man and all the other Robot Masters have a total of 10 challenges, plus an additional 10 on completion of the the New Style game. All of the challenges take advantage of the character's abilities, while the final 10 is a complete duke it out against the Wily Challenges that all characters can participate in. And the reward for all this? Well I don't want to spoil it, but it's very, very sweet.
The Surf Ninjas live on!
Overall, this game is a massive Fan Service by Capcom. But it isn't to the point that new gamers will shun this title away, no this caters to the new comers as well. This is by far one of the most perfectly balanced and designed Mega man games Capcom has ever produced, and it's the best PSP game out there along with Daxter, Syphon Filter Dark Mirror, Socom, and Maverick Hunter X, if not surpassing all of them with the large amount of content and unlockables this game provides after completion with certain objectives met. This game will not be beaten so quickly in a weekend and tuck away, no to get 100% you'll have to beat every level, 3 times, in 3 different difficulties, with all 11 characters, that's 429 [watermelon]ing levels right there, and for perfectionist it keeps track of score and time it took to beat the stage so you'll no doubt go back to beat your old records. What's ashame is that a lot of people will overlook this game because it's on the PSP (LOLZ LEZ BASH IT!), and because of the new cute visual style. But people should be aware, that even with the cute remix, it's still a very hardcore game.
So in recap, Great Game, Great Visuals, Great Music, Awesome Replayability, Tremendous Challenge. You don't want to miss it if you have a PSP.
All images taken from Rockman Perfect Memories.
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AbnormalGravity
