Review: Megaman ZX (NDS)

The Capcom milking machine continues with Mega Man ZX. God knows how many Mega Man titles have been churned out, but over the past five years it seems like there's been one per month. From the brilliant compilations to the missteps such as Battle Network 5, nobody can safely predict how each will turn out, and Mega Man ZX falls smack bang in the middle of the quality meter.

Following on from both the Mega Man X and Zero games (although a fair few years later), ZX features all new characters, but contains a number of homages to the first Mega Man game, from look-alike characters to a level ripped straight from the original Mega Man X. Plot wise, it's very similar, with the main focus being biometals; though never really explained, these seemingly contain the spirit of past reploids (otherwise known as 'robots' to non-Mega Man fans). Naturally your character (Vent or Aile, depending on whether you choose to control a male or female) obtains the X biometal while your friend gains the Z biometal. Our hero has the job of stopping the Sigma look-a-like villain Serpent from getting the W biometal - the 'W' being a nod to you-know-who.

Gameplay doesn't follow on from the X series, but takes its cue from the Mega Man Zero saga. Instead of choosing a boss and then tackling that level, you have a world similar to a Metroid game, but without the care and attention provided. The main pitfall of ZX is the dire map system; rather than showing the full layout of the world, you instead only see a grid reference labelling each quadrilateral shape (e.g. D4, I2 etc.). The thing is, you only see each area on the map once you've visited it; obviously this causes much confusion when you accept a mission (which is done through various data terminals) telling you the area where the boss is located, but doesn't give you the faintest idea of how to get there. It can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack when so many areas could possibly branch off onto another. Making it even more of a needlessly tiresome exercise is that you have to always go to the start menu to check the map - something that wouldn't be a problem on a normal console or handheld, but it is a big omission when there are two screens to make use of. The second screen of your DS is instead used as nothing more than a PC-like wallpaper that serves no purpose whatsoever. Why not display the map there, Capcom?

It's a shame that the map design is excruciatingly bad, because once you find the area you're supposed to be in, the gameplay is classic Mega Man. Continuing along the path until you reach the end-of-level boss is all that's needed, and the only downside is the shortness of each area. Another classic Mega Man moment is the upgradeable weapons which are present and correct. Once bosses have been defeated the first time, you, as always, get to use their biometal and special skill in future stages. Rather than go through menus to access them like before, you can use an in-game menu that is a lot quicker. Best yet, if you take off all biometals and just control Vent himself, your character can actually duck - an all new innovation in the Mega Man world. One thing that we would do best without is fighting the bosses all over again once you reach the final stage; although the annoyance of this tradition is greatly reduced now that you can change the difficulty level - something newcomers will be pleased about.

Apart from a few infrequent anime cut scenes, ZX isn't exactly pushing the DS hardware at all. Backgrounds, for the most part, are static and the character art is quite simply awful. It's really no different from what we've seen on the GBA, and for a handheld that can handle 3D graphics, we'd expect this exploited for the background environments.

Mega Man ZX has a lot of things right and some things wrong. We can see that Capcom have tried to breathe new life into a franchise that seems to be getting weaker as the years fly by, but what new ideas they've introduced have done nothing for the series. A terrible map system and dated graphics are only just outweighed by the classic gameplay that lies underneath. This is for die hard Mega Man fans only.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver