Mega Mage by J-tr is a Mega Man fangame with some neat ideas I haven’t seen done in other Mega Man fangames, such as giving you a different power if you go a different route within the level. There’s even a split path after you beat all 8 Adjusters, each with its own set of 7 unique levels and bosses (and even a different ending!), so make sure to use a different save slot if you want to try both routes. However, there are also a lot of cheap hits that require either trial-and-error memorization or liberal use of your Leaf-Tanks to heal (such as Virgo’s sword attack, which I’m still not sure is even possible to avoid at all)–and the game knows this because said Leaf-Tanks start showing up more frequently as you get closer to the end (of both routes). Also, the game makes you re-fight all 8 Adjusters on both routes, which is extra annoying. Overall, kinda hard to recommend despite being free, but if you’re a fan of Mega Man, you might be able to look past its flaws and appreciate what it does well (you don’t need to know Japanese to beat it).

Crash Test Oliver was also close to being an okay game, but there’s no music and the level design can be kinda bland and repetitive at times, like when you have to avoid 9 pairs of two chasing dog enemies in a row while being shot at by a turrent. It doesn’t help that the final boss abruptly and secretly changes your mechanics: you shoot instead of punch–which you do rarely because all enemies are immune to punches (punching is only for activating switches)–and yet you have to shoot the final boss a bunch to defeat it.

And now, after putting this off for a while, I continue my tradition of posting about my SG wins:

• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
  

  12 hours playtime

  3 of 23 achievements

This is a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio: there’s some light platforming while you wander around the city trying to find spots to spray graffiti on, and doing it enough has the cops come after you to beat you up, but there are a few notable differences.

First of all, I don’t remember being able to fight back in Jet Set Radio, but here, you can actually beat up the cops in return! Unfortunately, combat mechanics are extremely bare-bones (there isn’t even a dodge button) so there’s no real way to do any skilled play or reliably avoid enemy attacks during forced battle segments, especially after enemies get guns. You’re better off just running past enemies unless the game makes you fight them. The closest you get to variety are a couple boss fights where you have to spray graffiti instead, which would have been neater if everything else about combat wasn’t such an afterthought. The worst I found was a(n optional?) segment in the 4th area where if you fall in a hole to collect another graffiti pattern, you’re forced to fight two shielded enemies. You’d think you just have to get behind their shield to attack, right? Nope, they abruptly shift position so you hit the shield instead. Maybe you have to attack them while they’re attacking? Nope, same thing. Turns out, you have to do both at once, hit them from behind while they’re attacking, despite their attack animation having their shield go behind them. The game knows its combat sucks, too, because you have regenerating health.

Another addition is the tricks system, where you can push X, Y, or B on rails to build up points for a combo and increase it by leaning into rail corners or parkouring across long billboards. However, this is also barebones and only really comes into play for optional achievements and five 2-minute segments. Admittedly, I had a lot of trouble on the first one, and the game saves you into the segment so you can’t back out and practice. On top of this, there are no in-game descriptions of how the mechanics work, so I looked up a guide. Turns out the problem wasn’t me like I initially thought, but that the game didn’t explain its mechanics properly to the point there’s even a Steam Guide literally called “Things the Game Doesn’t Tell You” (always a good sign /s). See, although you’re told that you can lean into rail corners by holding left/right to increase your multiplier, you’re NOT told that this won’t register if your character is in the process of doing a trick animation from pushing X, Y, or B. After I discovered that crucial detail, I never lost another tricks segment.

All that said, the main difference between this game and its spiritual predecessor is that this one is more of an open-world game rather than being stage-by-stage-based. This also means the challenge isn’t so much in getting to each graffiti spot (like it was in Jet Set Radio) as it is finding where they are and finding how to reach them. I was originally gonna try to get all the graffiti spots thinking the game was gonna be more like a collectathon platformer, but after struggling to find all the spots in the smallest area, I looked up another guide and found out that not only is the game more Hidden Object than Collectathon, but some graffiti spots straight-up aren’t there until you progress far enough in the game, so it’s not even worth trying to look for them until after you’ve beaten the final boss.

I’ll end on a somewhat positive note: between each chapter are dream sequences where the game actually focuses on platforming for a bit. They’re okay, albeit simplistic like the game’s approach to other genres. Only issue I had was one started off where you have to break through a blue glass wall, and you do this with a mechanic the game may have told you about but that you’ve never had to use until this point: hold LT to boost forward quickly.

Overall, I don’t think I can recommend this game until it starts getting MUCH bigger discounts than what it’s been getting. It’s like the devs were only focusing on how they could expand upon the original game rather than trying to incorporate best practices for the genres they were borrowing from and thinking about which new mechanics would improve the game as a whole rather than be ignored until their designated mandatory segments.