LogFAQs > #932567499

#45





Years of release: 2013 (PC)
Beaten?: Yes

Another fangame! This has been a good decade for fangames, as the bar of entry to game dev has gotten lower, the ability to replicate games from the 80's and 90's has gotten significantly easier with the use of modern game design tools, and the desire to do so has largely become the domain of small-time devs who grew up loving these games and want to see them done right. I'm all in favor of this.

The greatest compliment I can give Mega Man Unlimited is that, much like AM2R earlier on my list, I frequently just straight up forget that it's not an official game, and internally I sort of think of it as being canon even though it isn't. (I ranked this game higher than AM2R mostly because I'm a bigger Mega Man fan by the way, ha.) It's pretty damn close to something that the Capcom team would have made! Especially at the time they made MM9/MM10.

This game gets a lot of stuff right. The visuals look authentically Mega Man, especially the enemy design, which captures that goofy big-eyes look well, and all the new enemies here are arguably even more clever than real Mega Man games. The game controls exactly like you would expect a Mega Man game to. The level themes are all clever; the weapons are all extremely useful. Even the music, with a few exceptions that were clearly written by a different person (I think they got replaced at some point?), really holds up on its own against other Mega Man soundtracks, and possibly even excels, I think.

The only knock I have to give this game is that I think it's trying just a little too hard. Even for me, an experienced Mega Man veteran, this game is quite a mountain to climb; the levels in this game are long and sometimes full of finicky instadeath traps, and there's almost never a chance to take a breather as every room of this game is chock full of challenge. I really have to psych myself up and take an advil or two before I play this game because it kind of gives me a headache. It's hard. It's not quite SO unfair as to be unplayable though - it's still within acceptable difficulty range for a game like this, but it's definitely on the outer range.

It's a fairly minor quibble. This is a really ambitious and well executed project, and I think it says a lot that this game has been featured not just once, but twice at GDQ, which is warranted, because it's a really good speed game. I don't know if there are any other Mega Man fan games that outclass it - I saw that Rock & Roll one the other day and I didn't get around to playing it during this decade, but maybe I should pick that one up too since it looked pretty professional. I'll bet it's better than Mighty No 9 at minimum.