Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (PSP)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 8.1 (4.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Alex Navarro
• Reviewed on: 01/30/2006
• Updated on: 05/17/2006
• Released on: 01/31/2006
• Originally published on GameSpot: Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (PSP) Review

Game remakes are kind of a funny thing. If polled, the vast majority of people would probably say they prefer new game experiences to dressed-up versions of old games, but remakes certainly seem to have their place in the lexicon of gaming. After all, not everyone had the opportunity to play many of these games back in their heyday, and remakes like Resident Evil on the GameCube, Conker: Live & Reloaded, and Double Dragon Advance have shown that with the right amount of effort, even old games can feel new again. Mega Man Maverick Hunter X is the latest example of a publisher taking an old title--in this case, Mega Man X for the SNES--and revamping it for a modern platform--the PSP, in this case. If you've played the original Mega Man X, the setups, scenarios, and battles will seem largely familiar to you. Visually, however, this is completely new, with crisp 3D graphics to modernize the experience and some new anime vignettes to help tell the story. Toss in some cool bonus content and the same great gameplay as the original, and you've got a remake well worth playing.

As any card-carrying Mega Man aficionado will tell you, the Mega Man X series was something of a departure for its time. Sure, it was still a side-scrolling action platformer starring everyone's favorite blue robot boy, Mega Man, but the game took place several years after the events of the original Mega Man titles, and took on a slightly edgier tone. The story revolved around Mega Man (or X, as he's called here) hunting down a number of renegade reploids known as Mavericks. Reploids are typically the sorts of genial, helpful robots that do many of mankind's more laborious tasks. But when an evil reploid (and former Maverick Hunter) by the name of Sigma leads a revolt and turns a number of his fellow robots into Mavericks, X must set out to destroy the revolution much the way he always has--by picking from a number of available boss stages, blasting his way through them, defeating the boss at the end, and taking his weapon.

For all its posturing to the contrary, Mega Man X really was just a marginally slicker take on the same sort of Mega Man action we've all known and loved over the years--and that's just fine. Though the X series did eventually run out of steam as the years went on, the original Mega Man X is one of the best Mega Man games out there, and Maverick Hunter X does nothing to ruin that. The gameplay pops just as well as it did back in 1993. All the same mechanics and upgrades from the original game ring true in the remake, too. As you defeat the bosses you can usurp their weapons. You also have your default blaster, which can shoot both quick shots and bigger, more powerful charged shots. X can leap off of walls and earn armor upgrades that give him new abilities, like dash attacks, reduced damage taken, and new blaster shots.

How X gets these upgrades is one of the few things that have actually been altered in the overall game design. You still gain these upgrades by visiting assorted capsules spread throughout the different boss levels, which have evidently been placed there by X's creator, Dr. Light. But which stages contain which upgrades has been shuffled. Because in some cases certain abilities are needed to defeat certain bosses (having the dash attack to beat Storm Eagle, for instance), this does radically change the order in which you tackle each stage. The bosses themselves also are slightly different. It's very minor, but if you're intimately familiar with the original game, you might notice slight differences in the attack patterns of each boss. It's nothing game-changing, though, and for the most part you fight each boss exactly the same way. Beyond the boss fights and Light's capsule placements, the level designs are almost entirely the same throughout the game. Enemy placements, jump puzzles, and the like are all pretty much how you remember them, albeit with a fresh coat of paint on each one.

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