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Thread: Mighty Gunvolt

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    Post Mighty Gunvolt

    Mighty Gunvolt (Inti Creates 2014, for Nintendo 3DS)

    Graphics: 7/10
    Sound: 7/10
    Gameplay: 5/10
    Overall: 6/10

    The legendary franchises of gaming are born from innovation. Zelda, Final Fantasy, Mega Man; these and others spawned a staggering number of games and amassed huge fans with a single game, simple, but born from a spark of innovation. They are the standard that all other developers strive to reach. Well, most developers. Some teams are content to copy a formula that works. Why bother risking failure with something new when you could play it safe? That, dear reader, is the sort of thinking that spawns a mediocre game. It's long been a personal philosophy of mine that the greatest sin in making games is making something boring. Even a bad game can be funny or break in interesting ways, which is more than you can say for a title that is just middle-of-the-road.

    Straddling that horribly boring stripe on the asphalt is Mighty Gunvolt, a downloadable title for the 3DS. Let's call a rock a rock here; this is Mega Man. However slightly it differs from the classic run-n-gun platformer franchise, it plays almost identically to any of the NES games. There's a stage split into screens, so you go right, jump on some platforms, shoot some robots, get to a boss room, duke it out and continue to the next stage. Somehow they've managed to make it less interesting by excluding the ability to challenge the stages in a non-linear order. And the way this game starts is just painful. It opens up with some faux-Engrish text, heavy-handed and unfunny in its mutilation. I have it on good authority that they didn't even bother with that in the Japanese version, so why the forced attempt at humor in the English version? The funny thing about poor translations in localized games is the subtly awkward structure, with the occasional misspelling. The intro and ending text for Mighty Gunvolt, mercifully restricted to a few paragraphs, is as subtle as being beaten over the head with a wooden bat labeled “parody”.

    Gunvolt, the protagonist, differs from Mega Man in that the charge shot has been replaced by a sustained beam. You can use the d-pad to angle the attack up and down, and you can fire it as long as you don't get hit. It actually struck me as kind of a neat idea, and it's brilliant in the very seldom times the stage and boss designs compliment its use. Seriously, I can count the number of times it was of use on one hand! There are two other playable characters besides Gunvolt. The first, who is definitely not just an advertisement for an upcoming game, is Beck from Mighty No. 9. Beck plays (and looks) a lot like Mega Man, slide dash included. His charge attack sends him literally charging into enemies, an attack that looks pretty cool, but in practice is a really great way to open yourself up to enemy attacks. The other character is Ekoro, a trainee angel from another Inti Creates game that never made it very far out of Japan (for good reason), Gal*Gun. Her charge attack allows her to charm enemies, and defeating a charmed enemy causes it to follow her, providing support fire on any on-screen enemies. This was actually a pretty cool idea, and it works on any non-boss enemy. They all behave the same way, though, which seems like a bit of a missed opportunity.

    There's a lot of that in Mighty Gunvolt, plenty of ideas that could have been good but weren't explored. There's a lot of chaff, too. In what can only be a gesture of “wow look how retro we are”, the game has a score counter filled by killing enemies and grabbing sweets (???) as well as a multiplier that goes up with each successive enemy kill made without taking damage. The game doesn't even record the scores for each stage anywhere. That would make too much sense! It would add too much replayability. Probably the better things about this game are the visuals and sound. The character spriting is really nice and decently fluid for an NES-style game, and the stage tiles are very well done. Thanks to the uninspired stage design, I've never been so bored by such nice looking pixel art before. The music is almost there, kinda catchy in the moment and reminiscent of better composers, but not quite memorable. The sound effects are satisfying and fitting, in an almost “I swear I've heard that somewhere before” way. The best part of this game's presentation is the boss design. Each of the bosses make for pretty cool looking foes, and some of them have some daunting and clever attacks. It's a shame that each of them only have a few unique attacks, and that you're in for a needlessly long fight so you can get good and proper bored of their attack patterns.

    This game was originally a purchase bonus for Azure Striker Gunvolt, a more substantial and interesting-looking game. So, it is with an odd sense of disgruntlement I've come away from Mighty Gunvolt. As a purchase incentive, I'd rate it alongside the incomplete, six-track “soundtracks” and tiny, folded poster prints included with some retail “special edition” localized games. It's not even a particularly funny parody of a good game. The promise of the bonus is better than the thing itself. As of November 2014, the game's available for individual purchase for $3.99. If you were planning to rush to the eShop to take advantage of this prime deal: don't. Just don't bother. Playing this bonus Gunvolt game will be wasting minutes and dollars that you could otherwise spend playing the actual game.

    ~Kyle "Kaypar" Parker
    Last edited by Kaypar; 02-01-2015 at 11:09 PM.

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