Mighty No. 9: First Hands-on Impressions

It only took about five minutes with the E3 demo of Mighty No. 9 on PS4 for me to remember why I never played a Mega Man game to completion as a child. Like Mega Man, Mighty No. 9demands perfection and has no problem kicking your ass if you don't give its level design the respect it deserves.

In short, my poor little blue guy died, a lot, on the easiest of three difficulty levels. You want another Mega Man game? Here you go. Be careful what you wish for.

With that said, I still had a blast with my blaster. The game's developers include Mega Man's Keiji Inafune, and his influence can be felt from the start. Mighty No. 9 is a game that is faithful to the legacy of Mega Man while offering an array of modern improvements in control and features.

The biggest improvement is the design around main character Beck's dash move. Blasting your enemies will temporarily stun them, and it's possible to just keep firing your weapon until everything is obliterated. But the most fun is unlocked by repeatedly dashing into your enemies once they are stunned. Doing so will absorb the creatures "xel" and propel you forward, searching for the next baddie. At the end of every level, you are rated on how much xel you absorbed, your overall damage, kills, and combos. This set up encourages the player to turn every level into a quick but cautious speed run.

You'll want to dash into everything you see, but you'll also want to make sure that no enemy goes unkilled. The fast but dangerous pace of Mighty No. 9 adds to the game's difficulty, while maintaining the nostalgic feel of the franchise that inspired it. The game asks for perfection, even though the path to perfection can and will get you killed. I actively sought to dash into everything I saw, but on more than one occasion, going for the fancy kill instead of staying back with my blaster cost me my life. As infuriating as all those deaths were, those long streaks where I put together a big combo with dash after dash made it feel worth it.

In addition to the regular enemies, Mighty No. 9 offers plenty of classic Mega Manenvironmental traps, ranging from spikes to conveyor belts trying to push you into a mess of laser beams.

The only thing I wasn't especially fond of was the weak story that isn't worth recapping, and the awkward and drawn out dialogue. Mighty No. 9's greatest strength is its combat, and the inability to skip through some of the cut scenes feels like a drag. I don't really need a reason to want to kill robots, thanks.

This being 2015 and not 1987, Mighty No. 9also features a variety of modern add-ons to the main campaign, including a challenge mode, online racing, and a "Boss Rush" option that lets you skip the levels entirely and face off against as many of the game's biggest bad guys as you can before succumbing to their might.

Challenge mode kept me on my toes, sometimes forcing me to only use certain abilities or to complete a crazy series of dashes and jumps that you won't find in the main game.

The game's boss fights are classic Mega Man while also requiring liberal use of that dash move. It's frequently needed if you want to quickly get out of the path of incoming damage.
Mighty No. 9 is available Sept. 15.

Jason Gallagher is a staff writer. Follow him @MuckrajerJG