Mega Man X8

X8? Really? Uh, okay. Guess I lost track after...

Three, I guess. Yeah, musta been three. Anyway. X8.

An intro level, like Mega Man X. Cool. Good idea, makes sure people start out with the same experience, and the same chance to get used to the game. In X8, you're getting used to three different characters and the ability to switch between them. You've got X, Zero, and a new guy named Axl, who plays like Bass/Forte.

Also: Dialogue, cutscenes, a plot. On principle, I should try to care about this stuff, but paying attention to the opening cinema in a Mega Man game is like counting the sprinkles on a cupcake: you can be as attentive as you like, but in five minutes it ain't gonna matter. That cupcake will be eaten, and that Mega Man game will be presenting you with eight plotless levels that you can play in any dang order.

If you're gonna give a Mega Man game a plot, why not have some fun with it? A little treat for the people who pay attention to it. The setting prevents you from making it a story about, say, lesbian slave traders on the run from their future selves, but why not take it in a different direction? Make it dark, make it surreal, tell me of betrayal, of passion! Let them talk! Let them speak of jumping sharks, let them wring their pale hands and let their shuffling feet wear grooves into the stone beneath them! Look down on them from your web of shining lace, throw them a line, promise them love, for they are no less than the measure of you!

Which brings us to the level design. Mega Man 9 gave me a renewed appreciation for the levels of old, where platforms were platforms, spikes were spikes, and enemies were enemies. X8 is grey and drab and I can't always see where the damn enemies are and that. Is. A. Problem. Rendering everything in 3D is a neat trick, but if it makes it harder to tell what I'm looking at, then the graphics are bad. You could render every muscle in Megaman's face, you could model fire and water and motion with breathtaking realism and beauty, but if I can't tell where enemies are, then your game has bad graphics.

It doesn't help that the levels aren't laid out with much apparent care. I'm asked to make leaps of faith into what looked for all the world like bottomless pits, and I've made leaps of faith into bottomless pits only to see at the last minute that the next platform required Axl's hovering ability or Zero's double jump.

There's some good choices in there, some new ideas. There's the level where you change the local gravity and blocks fall on you if you do it wrong. Cruel, but it's laid out logically, so you can beat it if you're careful. But there's also some new ideas that don't really pan out. Like a snowmobile chase. And a hovercraft chase. The snowmobile's not bad, actually, I'll give that one a pass just for being new.

But the hovercraft... Let me relate something personal. I'm making a shoot-em-up game right now - a shoot-em-up set on a spherical screen, and built to take advantage of that fact - and you can imagine how much sweaty, tearful blood has gone into making that game usable and fun for people of all skill levels. We have made aesthetic sacrifices for the sake of the user. We love the user. Mega Man X8's hovercraft minigame does not love the user. Your bullets fly off in crazy directions, your target is constantly zipping around corners, out of your reach, and your hovercraft handles like the steering mechanism is full of, I don't know, eels or something. It's not a challenge, it just blows. Admit it, guys: playtesters came to you and told you these things, and you didn't care enough. Or you didn't have enough time, sure, but somewhere along the line someone didn't love the user enough, or even hate the user enough. I Wanna Be The Guy isn't a game born out of loving the user, at least not in a traditional or healthy way, but it's lit a fire in some hearts.

Mega Man X8 represents the departure from grace that Mega Man 9 answered. I don't hold against X8 the risks it took, but I do resent its failure to remember what made the originals good. Making a hovercraft minigame when you can't even make a good platformer level is like remembering to bungee jump but forgetting to eat.