Review #743: Power Rangers MegaForce

 POWER RANGERS, MEGAFORCE!.... doesn't work all that well without the music, huh.

 As not to stop this Power Ranger gravy-train going, here we have Power Rangers Megaforce. I'm not familiar with either the original Sentai version nor the American Ranger adaptation, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter.

 Unlike Power Rangers Samurai, this game has more meat to itself, being made up of five chapters with five stages each, as well as 10 unlockable stages, so it should clock you about 4:30 hours. However, if you hate the game, that probably won't be a selling point. You get to play as all five Rangers and swap between them at will, as well as take control of Robo Knight in a few stages. Beating the game unlocks Might Morphin' skins for the main cast, which is a pretty neat bonus. On another note, the game is fully voice-acted, which is surprising for a low budget game like this one, but on the flip side, during stages the Power Rangers will refuse to shut up, often times repeating lines and cutting each other off. It's ridiculous how bad it is, or how nonsensical it gets with the Red Ranger claiming he can hear the birds every few seconds. They also LOVE to state the obvious, like telling you that if you destroy a box you can see what's inside. Every. Single. Time. A box enters your view.

 The game is a simple go-to-the-right beat'em up, the standard fare for Power Rangers. You attack with the A button and use you useless blaster with B. L and R are used to change characters, but you can also tap their heads on the bottom screen. X allows you to use 2 cards and enter a Super Mode for a short time, while the cards themselves are used with the touchscreen. The cards are very weird, in that you find them throughout the game, but only a few of them are actually usable, only five of them actually. You can also scan real cards for in-game bonuses, but they are not necessary, thankfully. While all Rangers are basically the same, they have different attack combos and stats, so at least they look different, and play slightly different between each other. The Yellow Ranger is a bit weak, but covers wide areas, the Pink Ranger is great against single enemies and the Blue Ranger sucks.

 While the game is a simple masher, it tries to shake things up by frequently stopping you on your tracks and force some kind of goal upon you. "Defeat every enemy", "Survive for a minute", "Collect every Medal", etc. These are repeated so often throughout the game that in an attempt to shake things up... it actually becomes fairly repetitive. Besides, there are, what, four different types of stage themes: Factory, Jungle, Ice Cave and Streets, and every single stage might be same for all that they are. As per usual, Zord battle stages are horrible, in these case, they are slow-paced battles in which you either perform a simple attack combo, shoot a projectile or block.

 For such a rudimentary looking game, it sure has framerate issues! And you can tell it's a matter of optimization, since later in the game it gets really crowded... yet sometimes the framerate will be smooth, but then there'll be like only three enemies on-screen and the framerate will dip. On another note, the stage-select menu is painfully slow, it will take a while for you to get from stage 1-1 to 5-7.

 Power Rangers MegaForce is exactly what Power Ranger have been getting on handhelds since like forever, a barebones beat'em up with awful MegaZord battles.
2.0 out of 10