Zero Punctuation: Mighty No. 9

[ShenCS]

Let's not turn this into another sodding EU debate and all talk about how Yahtzee is blatantly stealing from Jim Sterling with his "How the mighty have fallen" caption.
And you know he did because he didn't put in a special part pointing out he didn't.
For shame, Yahtzee, you plagiarizing hack!

 

[FPLOON]

R.I.P PaPa Croshaw... How the Mighty have fallen this year alone... Also, the video froze a bit after Yahtzee mentioned the corridor level before continuing on about how that was it...

Other than that, I laughed hystarically involving the "Beck" cameo because, at least, he won't make me cry like an anime fan on prom night...

 

[SD-Fiend]

The problem people had/have with the graphics is because this game had a nine million dollar budget and looks this bad, where as games with barely a tenth of that money or less (Half Genie Hero, Dragon's Crown, Skullgirls, Shovel Knight) look a lot better in comparison.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Keiji Inafune is the creator of Mega Man is he? I thought he was just a character designer from the initial Rock Man team.

You are correct, the first Megaman character Inafune made was Zero iirc.

It was 4 million actually.

From what I know most of it went to getting console licences and less than half of the money went to the game itself.

 

[rgrekejin]

I'm frankly amazed this thread hasn't been hijacked into a Star Citizen discussion yet.

 

[Nazulu]

I didn't like the look of this game from the beginning, the style just seemed off to me, and I didn't like the character designs either. However, I just found out recently they had another style in mind that actually HAD style (a more slick cartoon animation), so it's a shame we never saw that version.

I guess it's better than nothing.

That's made giggle every time so far.

 

[Saika Renegade]

A classic case of overhyped overreach. If they'd done the smart thing and focused on the core game and maybe one or two major ports, they'd have had the time to knock out a game that was at least competent in presentation. By spreading their resources over so many ports (including a few consoles slated to die off in the very near future) they wasted a lot of effort that could've been put into so many more important areas.

 

[Alfredo Jones]

Sad thing is, Comcept actually did give us a good Mega Man throwback series before MN9 and without the need of a Kickstarter to fund it: It's called Azure Striker Gunvolt.

Gunvolt wasn't made by Comcept, but rather Inti Creates. They were responsible for the Megaman Zero series, Megaman ZX and its sequel, Megaman 9 & 10, and are helping with numerous other indie projects including Shantae Half-Genie Hero and Bloodstained. They even helped with Mighty No. 9, though the blame for that game's failure is still on the shoulders of Inafune and Comcept.

I do agree that it is a shame that other Kickstarters are getting unnecessary heat because of MN9, though I still have high hopes for them. Other Kickstarters seem to have taken note of what went wrong with MN9 and are actively avoiding making the same mistakes. They are being open and transparent with what they are doing. They are showing more of what is going on behind the scenes, providing screenshots, concept art, gameplay clips and trailers. Some have even given out demos to show what exactly they have accomplished so far. Overall I think MN9 has done a lot of good for Kickstarter, in that it has served as a warning for both backers and the people working the campaigns what not to do.

 

[Hawki]

Poor Yahtzee. He has to deal with the cesspool that is Australian politics on one side of the world, and Brexit on the other.

Oh, and I guess Mighty No. 9 too.

 

[babinro]

Glad to hear Yahtzee talk about the game without going into it's history and hopefully without letting the history sway his opinion.

I find it odd and wrong that people discussed Mighty No 9 in this way when we don't immediately dismiss something like The Wizard of Oz for how they treated the cast during the making of that film.

I can't defend Mighty No 9 beyond that though. I never bought the game and what gameplay I've seen made it look like a subpar mega man clone that lacked passion. It appears very underwhelming and reviews seem to back up that opinion.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

My thoughts from an earlier G+ post (This was before I went to see X-Men: Apocalypse):

Having sat down to play this some before I watch a movie about mutants and blue people, I suspect that a lot of the hatred is the Kickstarter backlash that we're seeing an increasing amount on game kickstarters that have delays. As somebody who has an unhealthy obsession with Mega Man, a lot of the negatives against this game don't even make sense when comparing it to what it's supposed to imitate. Example:

"the level design is constantly working against you"

Well, yeah, it's a Mega Man game. Some levels have it more than others (Looking at you Mega Man 9. If we go with knockoffs, trying to do the piston part of the final stage in A.R.E.S. Extinction Project Ex with Taurus can break a man.) but all of the Mega Man games have, at least, one level where death is plentiful and "FFF*********!!!" becomes the only word you can say. In the end:

It's a Mega Man game. To paraphrase Roman Reigns:

"It's not a good Mega Man knockoff. It's not a bad Mega Man knockoff. It's.....THE Mega Man knockoff."

 

[ExileNZ]

Well there's a surprise - Yahtzee is actually the most reasonable critic of this that I've seen yet.

Not to say that he showers it with praise (that's not why we come to ZP), but he's just less butthurt than most people about its problems - most of which are inherent in making a new totally-not-Megaman game.

 

[Bobular]

I've got to say, as a none Mega Man fan but a backer of Mighty No 9 I'm actually enjoying playing the game. I honestly don't get what the problem is, yeah the graphics are a bit lack luster but I wasn't expecting the best graphics anyway because few platformers have brilliant graphics, they seem to go for stylized graphics which this has.

The only other problem I have is that its a bit easy when you get the hang of it.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

The problem people had/have with the graphics is because this game had a nine million dollar budget and looks this bad, where as games with barely a tenth of that money or less (Half Genie Hero, Dragon's Crown, Skullgirls, Shovel Knight) look a lot better in comparison.

So did the proof-of-concept demo of this very game.

Mighty No 9 turned out mediocre because it was made with the now outdated Unreal Engine 3 and the creators never thought about using a more modern engine, which caused all manner of glitches to occur in the game.

Funny, I don't remember every other game ever made on Unreal 3 having those problems.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Those British political jokes and references... somebody's
For difficulty, there's a new title out called Furi, maybe named after the emotion it mostly generates. But either I'm really shit, or that game is quite damn hard. Only on second...Lev...boss? I don't know. Very fast paced fights and always changing strategies. The connecting walking parts are unnecessarily slow, probably for the conversation with your imaginary friend to take place. Oh, it's kind of weird too.

Oh man, that's a good call. Esp since Yahtz did an LP of Titan Souls and Furi looks like a waaaaaay better version of that

It kind of is, the boss fights are more linear in succession though, but they don't fuck about and increase difficulty quite sharply. The variety of designs, characters and voice acting are pretty good and all have a mysteriousness to the way they speak. It sort of reminds me of Afro Samurai (the series, haven't played the game) as he cuts through a variety of colourful opponents that are all merciless with their attacks. With added electropunk, bullet hell, surrealist sci-fi twist. Even still currently on the 3rd opponent, I am interested in what surprises lay ahead. It is pretty much an indie title, so the flaws are visible in areas they didn't need to concentrate in. But it is definitely a good indie example, they have worked on all the areas that matter, including competent voice actors. Certainly a recommendation for a budget game.
Though I haven't got anywhere near completion, so it might go downhill later. Impressions are good however.

I didn't like the look of this game from the beginning, the style just seemed off to me, and I didn't like the character designs either. However, I just found out recently they had another style in mind that actually HAD style (a more slick cartoon animation), so it's a shame we never saw that version.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

They could have gone with this...
They could have gone with this and not the "style" they went with...

WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING?!

Yeah, I only saw these screenshots the other day and am fairly surprised at the extent of the downgrade. I mean, that is the kind of screenshot that shows a consistent, atmospheric art style that draws you in. Something that would make me consider at least trying the game. But the current look of the game is instead screaming "amateur hour" and more at home with mediocre steam greenlight releases.

 

[darkrage6]

The problem people had/have with the graphics is because this game had a nine million dollar budget and looks this bad, where as games with barely a tenth of that money or less (Half Genie Hero, Dragon's Crown, Skullgirls, Shovel Knight) look a lot better in comparison.

So did the proof-of-concept demo of this very game.

Mighty No 9 turned out mediocre because it was made with the now outdated Unreal Engine 3 and the creators never thought about using a more modern engine, which caused all manner of glitches to occur in the game.

Funny, I don't remember every other game ever made on Unreal 3 having those problems.

That's because Unreal 3 wasn't out of date in those games, no duh. It's a great engine but it was no longer being updated by the time MN9s development was in full swing, so in order to fix things the developers had to manually edit the games code, which is one reason why development took so much longer then it should have. Had they used Unreal 4 instead the game wouldn't have had so many bugs.

 

[darkrage6]

Well there's a surprise - Yahtzee is actually the most reasonable critic of this that I've seen yet.

Not to say that he showers it with praise (that's not why we come to ZP), but he's just less butthurt than most people about its problems - most of which are inherent in making a new totally-not-Megaman game.

People aren't "butthurt", the MN9 people flat out lied about many things and their Kickstarter was very sketchy. Plus the Wii U version if known for crashing repeatedly, which is flat out inexcusable, the team were also being dicks by saying "it's better then nothing" yeah no it fucking isn't at this point.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

That's because Unreal 3 wasn't out of date in those games, no duh. It's a great engine but it was no longer being updated by the time MN9s development was in full swing, so in order to fix things the developers had to manually edit the games code, which is one reason why development took so much longer then it should have. Had they used Unreal 4 instead the game wouldn't have had so many bugs.

I think one of us doesn't understand how game tech works. Are you saying that Epic provided free bug fixes to its licensees (licensors?) over Unreal 3's lifespan but never integrated them into the main branch, leaving it a buggy mess for anyone else who picked it up? Because that's certainly not how I'd deal with things if I were in their position ? having to fix the same issues over and over instead of just pushing out a patch for everyone.

 

[ExileNZ]

Well there's a surprise - Yahtzee is actually the most reasonable critic of this that I've seen yet.

Not to say that he showers it with praise (that's not why we come to ZP), but he's just less butthurt than most people about its problems - most of which are inherent in making a new totally-not-Megaman game.

People aren't "butthurt", the MN9 people flat out lied about many things and their Kickstarter was very sketchy. Plus the Wii U version if known for crashing repeatedly, which is flat out inexcusable, the team were also being dicks by saying "it's better then nothing" yeah no it fucking isn't at this point.

If you're going to bandy around that "better than nothing" quote you should already know by now that it was entirely thrown in by the translator. Inafune has said pretty unambiguously that the numerous problems with MN9 are his fault and that he'll wear that.
There's plenty of stuff for fans and backers to be pissed off about (I should know, I was one), but that hardly qualifies as him being a dick about it.

My point is, Yahtzee went in with realistic expectations as to what a Megaman game actually is, and not some delusion about it being the second coming. He still calls that game out for its bullshit where necessary (which is a lot), but he's also quick to point out when said bullshit is par for the course for a Megaman game.

Hence he gives it a fair, critical beatdown instead of one fuelled by rage at everything the company did wrong.