But, in the grand scheme of things, none of that really matters. I'm not even totally convinced the makers of the game knew who was who or what was what. The end of the game spends so much time extolling the time-honored virtues of always doing your best, staying true to your friends, brushing your teeth, and not beating-off more than twice a day that I'm lead to believe 70% of the supplemental plot details are entirely extraneous.

Having a gun on your hand must making golfing tricky.

   Gameplay wise, ZX has the most in common with Mega Man Zero's mission-style structure. As the game progresses, your hero is given a number of different story-progressing missions that he can pick from at his leisure. You can also take on a number of side missions, but they amount to little more than fetch quests [oh how fetching! - ed.]. What this boils down to is essentially the same stage-picking mechanism that has been Mega Man's trademark since the first game, except instead of seeing the ugly mug of the boss you're going to whack, you just get a text description of the area you're going to explore. Each of the story missions takes place in a typical Mega Man stock-level (i.e. volcano, frozen sea, power plant, etc.) that we've seen a thousand times before. And, to be frank, what we see is pretty under-whelming.

   Mega Man X4 demonstrated that giving old staples a snazzy new coat of paint can reinvigorate them, but ZX seems content to use graphics that, if not identical to those used in the GBA Mega Man Zero games, are very, very similar. Games like New Super Mario Bros. and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow demonstrated pretty early on how slick 2-D platformers could look on the DS, and ZX just doesn't measure up. There are a couple of short anime cutscenes that, admittedly, look gorgeous, but they are all too brief and, y'know, not playable. Sure, the graphics are far from offensive, but considering how bland most of the settings are, they really needed to be nicer. Oh well. At least the music was really good.

Kickin' it ol' skool!

   Thankfully for the somewhat dull presentation, the classic Mega Man gameplay still holds up incredibly well. Though the environments are dull, dashing, jumping, and blasting through them is still just as satisfying as stuffing a whiny fat kid's pants full of icy cold snow [for a fresh new twist, try it with some ice cubes on your neighbor's pre-schooler! - ed.]. Each level is an excellent balance of fighting and platforming which may seem difficult at first, but quickly rewards practice and persistence. One thing that did kind of dampen the ass kicking, however, was the all-too-frequent reuse of enemies. There were very few level-specific foes, and most of the fairly small set of never-do-wells get tossed into the mix a little too frequently. They also have a nasty tendency to re-spawn the instant you turn your back on them. A nice touch that serves to soften the blow slightly is that your enemies have different death animations depending upon how they were put down. If they got slashed with a sword, they split in half in typical anime fashion. But if they got shot with a buster blast, they blow apart into a shower of parts and pocket change.

   The bosses are all typical Mega Man fair, being edgy-looking robots designed after various animals. While most of them don't stand out much from the crowd [you know, those crowds of animal robots that always hang out in New Jersey malls - ed.], the two giant water bosses were both pretty nice to look at and seemed to diverge from the standard mold. The evil beasties do offer up an enjoyable challenge too, forcing the player to watch for patterns and be quick on his or her feet.

Body modification that doesn't involve a surgeon or an extra-large tube of the best ass-lubricant money can buy.

   The powers you gain from defeating said bosses are handled a little bit differently than they have been in past Mega Man games. Once you've killed a boss you no longer simply get a new projectile to fire from you arm (which is good, because the only things not already used as projectiles in a Mega Man game were Sherlock Holmes hats and used tampons). Instead, you get a new suit of bio-metal, which manifests itself similarly to the armor you could collect in the Mega Man X games. The suits do come along with new weapons, but they also provide a number of new skills such as the abilities to hang from the ceiling, swim, air dash, or shatter weak blocks with a buster blast.

   Apart from making you more effective in combat, these new abilities also allow the player to explore more of the game's world. Unlike past Mega Man games where each level was only accessible from the menu, the world of Mega Man ZX is interconnected, with a central town area functioning as a kind of hub for venturing out into the field. Before fans of Castlevania and Metroid get all excited, I should add that each level is still pretty much its own self-contained area. With one or two exceptions, each area usually has a door at the beginning and a door at the end, so if you want to visit part of a level, you're usually going all the way through. And, to make things somewhat more annoying, most of the levels build off of each other, so to get to later levels you'll often have to go all the way through the earlier ones [why don't you give someone a medal for THAT brilliant design decision, Capcom! - ed.]. There are a couple of teleport points, but not nearly enough to truly streamline travel. The in-game map, too, doesn't provide much help for explorers. Unlike the highly detailed maps in Castlevania or Metroid games, the map in Mega Man ZX is more of a grid with interconnected hexes depicting which areas are connected, but not how. For those of us who are completionists, this makes hunting for power-ups and performing the rather dull fetch quests you'll get from townsfolk hair-pullingly frustrating, as there are absolutely no clues as to how to reach certain areas.

Eh, I'd play it. But then I am a certified Mega Man junkster.

   Despite its mountain of shortcomings, Mega Man ZX is still a palatable game. It may not have particularly original gameplay, but it still provides the same satisfying thrill gamers have been getting from blasting or slashing enemy robots apart from the days of the very first Mega Man game. It will certainly be a treat for fanatical Mega Man devotees (Hey! I've only got one Mega Man pillow case... that I've made... today...) and may even serve as a decent enough introduction to the series for untrained novices, as it isn't a particularly difficult game, especially by Mega Man standards. However, casual fans of the series will likely be bored by the things they've seen any number of times before, especially considering the host of other excellent platformers the DS already has and the number of promising ones on the horizon. My current belief is that greatness will only return to the ailing Mega Man franchise when Capcom finally decides to make Mega Man 9. At least, that's what my magic 8-ball keeps telling me. He is kind of a cocky bastard, though.

       ... Mike Zeller