Blue Bomber Megaman called, he'd like to have a word with Inti-Creates.
Are you missing the Megaman Zero games? You're in luck! Megaman Zero's developer, Inti-Creates, decided to create their own 2-D sidescroller jump-and-shoot action game, Azure Strike Gunvolt. It is a ripoff,
it is, but Inti-Creates know what they are doing after spending years developing 2-D Megaman games for the GBA and the Nintendo DS. Striker Pack on the Nintendo Switch is a compilation of the first two games.
The story is a whole lot of anime nonsense, the first game has Gunvolt rescuing a futuristic Japanese Idol songstress from a group of... 8 villains, while the second game has Gunvolt and his rival Copen take different routes at stopping another set of 8 villains. It's not
entirely like Megaman, bosses in these games are called Adepts, being with super powers like Gunvolt, and Gunvolt doesn't earn powers from defeating enemies. As a matter of fact, in Gunvolt 1 you can take out 6 of the 8 adepts in any order that you want, the other ones being preset, while in Gunvolt 2 you only get a pick of 4 out of the 8. The games are fairly short, and
finishing each should take about 5 hours or so. Both games are
pretty much identical, save for the second playable character in 2, so everything I'll say is true for the duology.
Jump and shoot, that's the
name of the game, but it does offer its own twists and mechanics to set it apart from the
other blue bomber. Gunvolt, GV for short, can be equipped with five different items to boost his stats or grant him abilities such as dashing on the air, as well as equipping up to four different super moves that run on a
3-stock meter, which refills as you dole out damage. GV, by himself, can jump, dash, shoot and walljump, but his Adept ability, or his Septima, is the FlashField. By shooting at enemies you can 'tag' them, and then you can use FlashField to electrocute them. You can tag multiple enemies at the same time, and using Flashfield to take out multiple enemies becomes the name of the game. There's another mechanic, Pervasion, which makes you invulnerable as long as you aren't using your Flashfield. Sounds
too good to be true, and it is, Flashfield runs on an energy gauge that refills slowly over time or instantly if you double tap down on the control pad. Dodging attacks by Prevasion costs you energy from this gauge, and if you run out you have to wait for a while before you can use Prevasion and Flashfield again.
It's all very fun, Gunvolt is
built for speed, and the mechanics help in making stages fun to go through. Prevasion sounds like it'd make the game too easy, but it isn't and if you rely on it, as opposed to manually doing everything, costs you points, which in turn hurt your rank and in turn means less rewards after finishing a stage. And you want rewards so that you can synthesize equipment pieces. One BIG flaw with the games is the Challenge system. Challenges are small goals that you can complete to earn materials for synthezing, the problem being... Challenges are on a per-stage basis and they only open up after you finish a stage. And every time you clear a few challenges others pop up,
basically, meaning that you must reply every stage a
handful of times to clear every challenge. It's quite dumb, and it meant that I relied on very few pieces on equipment on each game since I wasn't too keen on replaying the same stages over and over again. The games are a blast to play, they really are, but I'm not one for unnecessary padding.
The second game adds Copen as a playable character, and he is pretty darn fun. He can only tag one enemy at a time, and he does so by
dashing into them. Once tagged, his bullets will zone in on the tagged enemy, and his EX weapons will shoot directly towards them. EX weapons! Taking yet another page from Megaman, Copen gets a new EX Weapon every time he defeats a boss. These weapons consume energy from a limitless energy gauge that runs on cooldown. His prevasion is
tied to dashing, both share a 3-stock gauge, both evading damage with prevasion and dashing consumes a stock, however, landing your dash and thus tagging an enemy instantly refills it. You can also double tap down on the control pad to instantly refill your stocks. Copen has equipment too, but it's tied to a numbered limit rather than a five-piece limit, and while he has all this funky EX-Weapons, he only has two supers, which run on cooldown, one that heals him and another one that deals damage. Copen is an absolute treat to play, but he is certainly stronger than Gunvolt, expect to score a ton of As and Ss when playing as him!
The games are relatively challenging, but all in all, they are easier than Megaman X. Gunvolt 1 is certainly harder than the second one, but infinite lives makes retrying a
zinch. Plus, whenever you die there's a small chance you'll get a full revive and a buff(Limitless Flashfield) to boot, at the cost of your rank. There's no excuse for not beating these games. That said, you might be hardpressed to aim for the true endings. Gunvolt 1 requires you finding seven hidden jewels, which probably will require you to replay stages. It's a bit annoying, but stages go by fast and you can
take the chance to finish a few challenges, plus, you get to fight the true final boss and unlock 5 Gauntlet stages, remixed sections with tougher enemies and bosses! In Gunvolt 2, in order to fight the final boss you simply need to finish the game with both characters and then
replay their last stages. The true ending, however, requires you finishing 80% of the challenges with both characters.
No thanks. They are easy, but you're not gonna make me replay every stage upwards of three times, no way. That said, both Copen and Gunvolt share every boss, but
only half of the stages, having a nice amount of unique ones each.
The game's most
pervasive flaw is how the script is designed. Dialogue plays as you go through a stage and even while fighting bosses. This huge letters alongside some obnoxiously large portrait show up whenever characters, usually Gunvolt/Copen and the boss, talk with each other. And this
CAN obscure the screen and whatever is going on. Dialogue is in Japanese, so it's not like you can just trust your ears(Although, to be fair, Gunvolt 1 has an English voice over option... but the script was mangled, so it's better to go with subs) to know what they are talking about. Gunvolt 1 offers the option to toggle these annoyances On and Off with the X button, and you can select to turn dialogue off before starting a Stage in Gunvolt 2. My advice?
The script is horrible and uninteresting, turn it off all the way and just enjoy the game. Another minor gripe comes with Gunvolts supers, you have to press R3 to use them, but it's incredibly easy to tilt the analog and use the wrong super move. It can be annoying when you're trying to use a healing super and waste the stock, but you can learn to
cope with it.
Forget about Mighty Number 9 and Megaman 11, Megaman
never went away, he simply changed into Azure Strike Gunvolt! If you are up for some bite-sized 2-D Sidescrolling actiong, Striker Pack delivers in spades. Even if you take into account the fact that it's two games in one, the entire package is a bit on the short side, relying
unashamed padding to lengthen the experience. That aside, Striker Gunvolt is everything fans of the Blue Bomber would want and then some.... provided you can stomach the whole generic animu designs and script.
8.0 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment