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Heavy Sigh
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Heavy Sigh »

Countershade's gimmick feels tacked on like they made his level and suddenly realized it had no gimmick to cover up the fact it its literally just a straight line otherwise.

MIGHTY FACTS! COUNTERSHADE

Countershade, serial number Mighty No. 8, is the eighth robot in Dr. White's mighty robot line. Built as a support robot for long range attacks and infiltration, Countershade is 193cm/6ft 4 inches tall, and weighs 273kg/602lbs. He only has one arm, as he lost the other one and does not feel the need to have it replaced.

Countershade is a ruthlessly efficient hunter and trapper who greatly values his independence and that of other robots, promising to set all of them free when he becomes the president of his robot nation. While under the influence of the virus, he shows disdain for humans and any robots who serve them willingly, calling the people who fled the Capitol Building "meat sticks" and Beck a "little doggy" as he tries to chase him down. He speaks with a western drawl.

If Shade is defeated, he will appear in the Radio Tower stage, shooting down robots that Aviator plans on using to set fire to an airship Beck is riding.

Development

Countershade was supposed to be a female with the theme of "radar and optical camouflage" along with "espionage and assassination." As the Mighty No. robots were designed for robot gladiator tournaments, they decided bosses were either tailored to destroy other robots or cause damage in general, with as much variation as possible. Even though Imaeda asked for No. 8 to be female, Kimo Kimo made No. 8 a cowboy anyway. Inafune felt the design was great, and thought it would be a great idea for him to lose his right arm in addition to giving him cowboy spurs. The development team worked on the colour scheme until they decided on the current one.

Trivia
Countershade is based on SearchMan.EXE from Mega Man Battle Network. Countershade also share some traits with Gemini Man, such as being able to create clones and using projectiles that ricochet off surfaces.
The design of his face (a pointed goatee and eyes concealed by the brim of his hat) is reminiscent of expert marksman Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III.
Countershade doesn't actually "teleport" - if the player manages to attack him before he switches his position, it's revealed that he only becomes invisible. Also, it's hinted by the Variation Code: Countershade that he can also become intangible while he cloaks.
According to KIMOKIMO, Countershade can transform his rifle into a hand. Additionally, Countershade has surveillance cameras for eyes.
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Chirei
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Chirei »

Bad level. The next one's gonna be worse. Nothing will beat Seismic's, though.
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Ashan
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Ashan »

Yeah, this level is weird. It wants to trick you into thinking it's like a, "explore the area and chip away at the boss whenever you find him" level, but in actuality it just seems to be as linear as any other level, but they basically make you run through the same straight hallways with barely anything happening twice. It's bizarre and I don't know what their original intention was, cause I can't imagine this was what someone came up with from scratch.
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Mea
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Mea »

Countershade's design works surprisingly well for being a cowboy with a sniper wearing a chinese disc hat.

Stage was dumb, I don't remember if I beat it or not. Why put instadeath traps in a level with essentially no checkpoints?
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Leet »

they really, really had to throw in a "rebellion is wrong" message in there somewhere
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by KobaBeach »

I kinda see what raocow means with "petit chien" sounding more endearing, like something a father would say. Like hearing such a deep voice call the player that just makes me moist

Portuguese would be the same because I know they'd try to translate it as like "cachorrinho" or something.

Leet wrote: 5 years ago they really, really had to throw in a "rebellion is wrong" message in there somewhere
I wouldnt be surprised if that's just Capcom and Inti's thing like how Katsura Hashino has really bad opinions on women, minorities and the LGBTQ+ community (especially trans folk)

Like, at this point...
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Bean
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Bean »

Yes, the endgame stages are divided up. You can still play them one at a time, and it'll auto-save after you're done with each one.

As for this one, definitely my least favorite stage of the main eight. It's just so boring to chase after Countershade, and they up the danger by adding instant kill wires as you go along. Dynatron will short them out in the one room if you've beaten her, but it's not like that area is too bad anyway. Funnily enough, the worst winds up being the central hall where you start. Either way, there's no checkpoint until you reach the boss. That one hurts.

Oh, and if one of Countershade's purple shots hits you, your controls will get mixed up. Fun times.
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Shard1697
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Shard1697 »

Everyone's already talked about the level design, but what about how the robot's aiming laser is represented by... red particles that fly past with travel time? Instead of a continuous beam?

It looks so bad and it's very unintuitive. It looks like something you want to dodge.
KobaBeach wrote: 5 years ago I wouldnt be surprised if that's just Capcom and Inti's thing like how Katsura Hashino has really bad opinions on women, minorities and the LGBTQ+ community (especially trans folk)

Like, at this point...
The rebels are the good guys in MMZ though. Minus Elpizo being an idiot
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Kilgamayan »

:( Miyuki Sawashiro-sama
Heavy Sigh wrote: 5 years ago The design of his face (a pointed goatee and eyes concealed by the brim of his hat) is reminiscent of expert marksman Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III.
God I couldn't get over the resemblance the whole time
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Kleetus »

I think it only would have taken only a few tweaks to make Countershade's level fun.
1. Add checkpoints (how about every time Shade moves), that way if you die late in to the level you don't start all over again.
2. Every time Shade moves, new enemies appear and obstacles are changed, that way you're not running through the same empty halls the entire time.
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Blivsey »

Countershade's English VA is Steve Blum, by the way. Good to know they were putting their budget where it mattered.
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Heavy Sigh
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Heavy Sigh »

Dr Sanda is so much lamer than Ciel. He cant even take 600 plasma bullets in the spine.

Mighty Facts! CALL

Built as a personal secretary for Dr Sanda, Call is exceptionally capable in information processing and time management. She is also equipped with an energy shield and cannon, for reasons known only to Dr Sanda.

DEVELOPMENT

While Call's personality was set in stone by the development team, her physical design was actually the result of a contest!

A voting contest was held to determine Call's character design. Each member of the Mighty No. 9 art team submitted one design, producing up to 9 different character designs. The voting contest consisted of 2 rounds.

The 1st round involved every design; with each participant allowed to vote for one design. The 2nd round involved the top three designs that won the 1st round and only backers were allowed to vote. The top three voted designs were E, F and H. Ultimately, design F won the contest with 43.39% of votes, E coming close at second with 41.14% of votes and H barely making it to third place with 15.47% of votes.

Design E
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Crow »

so i want to know too: with like, those bomb enemies, and the boss, and whatever else

was there something raocow wasn't getting or is it just -like- that? because to me it looked like it was just -like- that
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Mea »

So yeah, we got that lukewarm toss-a-fish-back-into-the-water kind of throwing a bone to a dog that is Call, Call gameplay today.

She does seem pretty cool though in Mighty Gunvolt Burst, where she appears in the same DLC update along with Joule, the heroine from the Gunvolt games. She has a ton of customizable shooting patterns there, along with a buddy system in being able to pick up up to 4 of those Eddie-looking robots (Patch?) that ram into the enemy like the Beat pickup in that flying section of Tenguman's stage in MM8. You can even change her costume to look like the ones Heavy Sigh posted above (and also design A)!

All in all, looks like she was done great justice there. And I like her design, which apparently was the one submitted by a Yuuji Natsume from Inti Creates.

edit: I feel like her bit about feeling no remorse or hesitation towards killing her own kind could have been taken somewhere interesting, it's an amusing contrast to the usual. The line about Beck being programmed with hesitation also seems pretty light compared to that 100 years(?) of ethics incubation X had to go through, also amusing. Maybe Dr. White is just a better AI programmer (although neither seem to be able to escape having their creations go whack).
Last edited by Mea 5 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Chirei »

Parama wrote: 5 years ago so i want to know too: with like, those bomb enemies, and the boss, and whatever else

was there something raocow wasn't getting or is it just -like- that? because to me it looked like it was just -like- that
Nope! This is literally the fight in a speedrun on the hardest difficulty.

More level sins:

-Call can only have 1 shot on screen, and it might actually somehow be weaker than a normal lemon.
-In addition to this, the enemies keep their insane amount of health and do not compensate for you being a weak assistant side character.
-You can completely bumrush the stealth section with no consequences, which is the best way to design a stealth segment.
-The spike corridor is literally the same thing as the spike corridor in Area I/Megaman ZX... except with like no room for error.
-Call's Barrier is basically useless. The few times you'd use it barely make it easier to get through the level. This really diminishes the point of the entire cutscene trying to point out its existence.
-The obvious wrongness of the boss being vulnerable aside, it's also RNG whether or not you get a security camera or a bomb that does way more damage out of the cargo boxes, meaning speedruns are inconsistent at this part.
-JUMP JUMP JUMP BARRIER BARRIER ERROR BARRIER JUMP JUMP HOLDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Ashan »

Yeah so this level is just garbage filler that serves literally nothing except to slow the overall flow of the game to a screeching halt. I can't even remember, was this some kind of stretch goal for the Kickstarter, that you'd get to play as Call? Cause it seems like it. If not only for the reason that -- like every other stretch goal in that mess of a campaign -- it just served to make things worse.

I really hate when games add on these "throw away all the mechanics of the game and upgrades you have for some unrelated game that's not really fun and has nothing to do with anything" things. The Mario & Luigi RPGs have all done it with their giant battles. Spider-Man PS4 had it with the Mary Jane stealth sections. Like, come on, I didn't spend all my time fighting everything and getting cool gear just so you could pull it away from me and make me play a different game. Give me back the fun game that you put time and effort into.
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Ashan
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Ashan »

Oh my god, I looked it up and I was right.

$3,700,000

That is what the community paid for this level you saw before you today
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Crow »

game design :rao:
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Chirei »

One more thing to add on the front of "this level just throws away the mechanics you spent the past hours learning"

-I do not believe Call is able to get E-Tanks in any way. Even the Eddies won't throw her the II Tank, despite being the one character who needs it the most. All she gets is BARRIER... in a level that is mostly melee-damage enemies and instant kill.
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Bean »

The problem with this stage is that it's trying to be a tutorial level while having endgame difficulty in spots, especially with that ridiculous hover down the instant kill shaft part right near the end in a stage where you really haven't needed to hover at all until that point.

As boring as Countershade's level was, it wasn't as dumb as this one. The difficulty and confusion really seem to ramp up at times in some of these final stages.
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by KobaBeach »

Ashan wrote: 5 years ago I really hate when games add on these "throw away all the mechanics of the game and upgrades you have for some unrelated game that's not really fun and has nothing to do with anything" things. The Mario & Luigi RPGs have all done it with their giant battles. Spider-Man PS4 had it with the Mary Jane stealth sections. Like, come on, I didn't spend all my time fighting everything and getting cool gear just so you could pull it away from me and make me play a different game. Give me back the fun game that you put time and effort into.
this is also how i feel about minigames in jrpgs that aren't Triple Triad or BoF fishing
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Kilgamayan »

Man I read these comments before actually watching the video and was expecting something way worse than that. The boss is :carolboss: but the rest of it was fine.
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Ashan »

It really wasn't fine. It was
- a stealth section that didn't require stealth and did nothing creative
- an enemy gauntlet that is mostly just waiting for enemies to kill themselves, and you're given a weapon that isn't good at dealing with them
- a kazio-esque spike drop
- a boss that's again just waiting around for RNG to make the boss kill itself
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Kilgamayan »

Being able to rush and tank through everything (stealth section or otherwise) with the proper resources has been a staple of Mega Man games for decades. I agree that it makes things boring and stupid; the solution is to simply not play that way. This is less a problem with the game and more a problem created by the medium by which these gameplay recordings are produced; there's a inherent time limit to each recording session before it's time to play something else, so the most logical approach is to bull through everything regardless of the "intended" solution.

I have no problem with Call being inferior to Beck. Frankly, it would be stupid if she played exactly the same way, since he's made for combat and she isn't.

The spike drop was made to look harder than it actually is by suboptimal gameplay. There's no real way to sugarcoat that.

I did agree that the boss is dumb. :V
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Re: Mighty No. 9 - Better Than Nothing

Post by Chirei »

Kilgamayan wrote: 5 years ago Being able to rush and tank through everything (stealth section or otherwise) with the proper resources has been a staple of Mega Man games for decades.
I might as well point out one thing here:

There is a stealth section in Dark Mantis's stage (X8).

If you mess up and get caught, some dudes come after you, and you may get caught in lockdown. Hardly enough to prevent someone from beating the level or bullrushing through it, but it provides that "dang it" moment and emphasizes that well... getting caught is bad.

There is a stealth section in Blizzack Staggroff's stage when you have to rescue resistance members (Z1).

A similar thing happens here. With Zero being so fragile and weak in this game, those extra dudes are actually a threat. You feel some kind of consequence, but you can still blow past them with enough stubbornness and skill.

If you get caught in Call's level... nothing really happens of note. The enemy MIGHT start attacking you, but that's it. There's no sense of urgency or setback. You can completely ignore the whole thing. The mechanic does not work with its other parts.

A lot of people say that MN9 is alright, but I believe that that's only because they didn't look deep enough and understand just how much of it doesn't even work with itself. It really is a troubled mess, and that's before wrapping it together with all the context.
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