Mega Man 10 Review

Capcom found great success when they released Mega Man 9 in 2008. The return to 8-bit graphics, old-school difficulty and affordable price made the game an instant hit and brought the original series back into the limelight. Now a year and a half later we are getting Mega Man 10, a game that stands as one of the best entries of the original series.

The story is as simple as you can get. Roll collapses and is revealed to have contracted a robot virus called roboenza. This virus soon begins to spread among all robots in the world. Dr. Wily claims he is not responsible and agrees to help in the construction of a cure. Mega Man then sets out to find the cure and save the world. Like I said, simple. But we don’t play Mega Man for the story, it’s the gameplay that makes us come back time and time again.

The standard formula for Mega Man is intact here. You have your 8 Robot Masters that you can tackle in any order you so choose, obtain a special weapon from them upon their defeat, then you get to do your usual trek through Wily’s fortress (come on, you had to know he was lying!). I have to commend developer Inti Creates on their incredibly clever level design. You’ll play through levels with fragile slippery ice, sandstorms that cover the entire screen, highways with speeding trucks, each level is different and unique with their own set of obstacles to overcome.

The enemy roster is just as diverse, with most enemies fitting the motif of the particular level, such as baseball throwing robots in Strike Man’s stadium stage, and head exploding snowmen in Chill Man’s ice stage. In between stages you’ll have the option to go to Auto’s shop and purchase various power ups that you’ll pay with screws that you pick up along the way. And you will need those power-ups, because this game is hard. Not as difficult as Mega Man 9 was, but this game will definitely give any seasoned gamer a challenge. For those who like to play their games with less difficulty, an Easy Mode has been included, in which you will take less damage and spikes of instant death are covered.

When you want to take a break from the main game, Mega Man 10 offers a number of different extras. Time Attack is back, tasking you with completing levels as quickly as you can. Challenges make a return also, but in a different form. There are now two sets of challenges. One set functions as your standard achievements/trophies which you achieve as you play the game. The other set of challenges are self contained, which essentially take the best and most difficult elements of the Mega Man games and condense them into these challenge rooms for you to conquer. Add in Hard Mode (which adds more enemies, makes subtle changes to the level layout and makes bosses faster and gives them more attacks), the ability to play as Proto Man (who can slide, has a shield and charge shot, but takes double damage), and DLC in the form of extra stages and a third playable character, and you have a game with tons of replay value.

Mega Man 10 accomplishes everything it sets out to be. The music and graphics perfectly emulate that NES 8-bit style and the difficulty will leave at least one broken controller inside every gamer’s household. It would have been nice if the actual game was a bit longer, especially considering the excellent work that went into creating the levels we do have. But with all the extras and DLC that’s on the way, Mega Man 10 is a game that is definitely worth a download.