Mega Man Zero

After the first two games of the Mega Man X series, the concept of playing as X's shiny red counterpart, Zero, was introduced. Needless to say, with his dashing good looks and nifty beam saber, playable Zero was a hit. Years later, a game would be released on Game Boy Advance - Mega Man Zero - focused solely on the long-haired blade-wielding Maverick Hunter.

The atmosphere of MMZ is a bit different from the X series, flung further into the future and into very different circumstances. The game combines the side-scrolling goodness of Mega Man with Zero's powers and a number of RPG elements to produce a story-driven, action-packed adventure.

Mega Man Zero takes place over a century after the X saga. In the game's introduction, a group of reploid soldiers and a reploid scientist run through a swamp being pursued by gun-toting robots with less-than-friendly intents. The scientist, a female reploid named Ceil, and the last remaining soldiers stumble upon a laboratory hidden in the swamp, and enter to find - much to their surprise - Zero, the legendary heroic reploid. Zero is inactive, slumped over and supported by a few cables in the decrepit laboratory room, but protected by a forcefield; so Ceil sacrifices her accompanying cyber-elf, Passy, to destroy the seal and resurrect Zero. Zero proceeds to blast through the enemy forces in the lab and take Ceil back to the reploid base in safety. Here we discover that MMZ is set in a world dominated by the forces of Neo Arcadia, a safe haven for humans, but headed by an unlikely leader - X - who strives to hunt down and destroy all reploids, believing them to be Maverick and ill-boding for the remnants of humanity. The game's missions are story-driven, some of them tying in with one another to a degree (i.e. one mission, to gain control of a factory, is followed by a mission to defuse a hostile situation in that same factory). Every mission has a purpose in the resistance effort against Neo Arcadia, in which Zero is the reploids' last and most promising hope.

As previously mentioned, Mega Man Zero is mission based. Unlike the Mega Man and MMX games, MMZ's stages are laid out by means of a comparatively non-linear mission selection system. After an introductory mission or two, the player is presented with a handful of missions to select from. Completing a mission will replace it with another choice, and so on until all the missions are depleted and it's time to take on the final stages of the game. It is possible to fail a mission, in which case you may either restart from your last save and keep trying, or move on and never return to it. Several missions, as mentioned in the factory example above, take place in the same enviroments - and many of these environments are directly linked to the game's reploid base "overworld" of sorts, meaning you can return to defeat enemies and get items you've missed, but not to replay mission content.

Besides the story-driven mission-based play, another key difference between MMZ and the other games of the series is the weapon system. Zero begins with one weapon (his Zero Buster, which is more like a handgun than a gun-hand), quickly gains a second in the introductory stage (his Zero Saber beam sword), and later on in the game gains two more (an extending spear of sorts and a shield which doubles as a boomerang disc). Each of these weapons can be leveled up - using them to hack away at enemies gains weapon experience, and with new weapon levels come new abilities, like charging up the Z-Buster further or an aerial spin attack for the Z-Saber. There are also no heart tanks or subtanks in Mega Man Zero - but in their place are cyber-elves, which are found scattered around the game's stages (there are over 70 of them in all). Cyber-elves, like Passy in the intro sequence, sacrifice themselves to execute special abilities. Some elves' effects are temporary, like restoring some health or paralyzing enemies; but some are permanent, including increased health in the forms of a larger energy bar and subtanks. Others have more impressive effects, like the ability to remove spike traps from the game.

There are other features too, like elemental chips which give charged weapons an extra effect, and energen crystals which are largely used to feed immature cyber-elves to bring out their powerful potential. Outside of the weapons, elves, and missions, though, MMZ plays mostly similar to the Mega Man X games. Zero can charge his weapons, he can dash, he can slide along walls, he can kick off walls, and every mission has a boss to face.

The gameplay graphics of Mega Man Zero are something of a combination between Mega Man X and Metroid Fusion. Zero runs, shoots, and slices smoothly; enemies are well-animated, and destructive effects (like slashing an enemy in two and watching both halves briefly drift apart before exploding) are finely executed. Character portraits in text boxes and hand-drawn stills are done in an anime-influenced style, and look very nice. Sound effects are well done, and though the soundtrack is a bit limited (there are more missions than there are music tracks), the tracks are pleasing to the ear.

Aside from collecting all the elves, which can net you a final, secret elf, there is a rather large (if you're interested) element of replay in the ranking system. When completing missions, the player is scored based on time, damage taken, number of enemies killed, number of cyber-elves in effect, and so on to attain a certain number of points for that mission, and over the course of the game these points are averaged for an overall ranking (S, A, B, C, D, F). It'll take more than a bit of work to get a high average ranking, as the rank qualifiers are strict. It's an extra challenge, but easy to ignore if all you're concerned with is collecting all the elves, a more immediately rewarding goal.

Mega Man Zero is a remarkable blend of story-driven missions and intense side-scrolling action. Fighting bosses and enemies is a joy, as is simply roaming through the base, jumping off walls and otherwise abusing Zero's fantastic powers. Perhaps the only complaint one could lodge on this game is that it's short, offering only a few hours' worth of play to complete a first time; but those few hours are filled with action. While it may break some time-honored Mega Man traditions, it's often for the better.

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