For a series that has been around since the Eighties, Mega Man has seen little changes to its overall blueprints. Depending on who you talk to this either brings about sounds of glee and joy for its nostalgic and tenacious gameplay, or yawns and disgust for its seemingly formulaic churning out of the "same game with new bosses." Mega Man ZX attempts to steer one of Capcom's flagship series into new waters, with an emphasis on the 2D, non-linear style of gameplay made famous by Nintendo's Super Metroid and Konami's Castlevania PSOne, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS games. The waters made be unfamiliar and the ship may appear pretty from the outside, but inside this is the same old ship.

The game begins with Giro, owner of the delivery service Giro Express, on the job delivering a undisclosed weapon to the local Maverick (a.k.a. out of control robots) defensive group known as the Guardians. Accompanying Giro is one of his teenage assistants, either a boy named Vent or a girl named Aire, depending on the user's choice, both of whom lost their mothers during a Maverick attack on the amusement park they were visiting ten years prior. As the two approach the drop-off spot, they are ambushed by Mavericks looking to steal their parcel. Forced into a do-or-die situation, Giro and his assistant open the parcel to find two rare items known as Biometals, which allow anyone who merges with it to become a 'Mega Man'. Activating them, Giro becomes Model Z, based on the Mega Man X character Zero, and his assistant becomes Model X, based on Mega Man X himself.

After blasting themselves to safety, the pair join forces with the Guardians, not only to help protect the locales but to keep the Biometals out of the hands of whoever is manipulating the Mavericks. As the story progresses it begins to lack the well-oiled procession of the beginning segments, coming off dry and forced. The main human characters - Giro, Vent/Aire and Prairie - are interesting enough, but the antagonists are all age-old archetypes. Oh no, not another snide robot who thinks he can easily beat me - yawn. [You remind me of O'Neill when faced by the latest Goa'uld threat! Stargate Ed].

What will not bring about any yawns is Mega Man ZX's presentation; taking full advantage of the DS's 2D and stereo capabilities, Capcom has gone above and beyond the call of duty to make their game stand out. The first of these to make an appearance is the animé style cut scenes that open the game. While they are far from crystal clear, suffering from pixelization and lower than TV frame rates, each one of these fully voiced over (though without an English dub) videos and they bring the most important parts of the story to life in a way that text bubbles simply cannot.

Once the actual in-game graphics engine takes the stage you'll be surprised at the vibrant glow of the entire game. By pairing watercolor paintings and 2D sprites, the environments throughout the game are truly beautiful, flaunting the depth of the DS's color palate. The characters (all of which have some sort of robotic costume, if not actually are robots) also make heavy use of the large palate, with shades of every color to bring out all their mechanical details. Every enemy has a different death animation, one for death via gunfire and one for death via slicing weapon, which makes slicing and dicing through levels extremely satisfying. Though the game is entirely in 2D, that didn't stop Capcom from throwing in some 3D effects to further spruce the game up; some of the enemies, and most of the bosses, make use of 3D effects in their appearance or attacks. All of these graphical achievements are met with only a very occasional bout of slowdown.

Musically Mega Man ZX is more than capable, most notably taking full advantage of the stereo speakers on the DS to pump out the techno jams. Though none of them stand out as anything you wouldn't expect from a Mega Man game, the mix of upbeat fun and fast tempo, high tension tracks continues the trend of enjoyable background music. The sound effects are decent, but noticeably absent other than the sound of your character attacking and the resulting explosions. One notable feature of the Japanese version was the in-game voiceovers, but they were essentially stripped from the English version, with only those in the videos left intact. Depending on your feelings about whiny, Japanese voiceovers, this is either a positive or negative decision on Capcom's part.

As I've touched upon already, Mega Man ZX attempts to combine the level-based progress of previous Mega Man games with the free-roaming play of the aforementioned Super Metroid and Castlevania games, a seemingly perfect fit for the side-scrolling, run-and-gun, get a better weapon core Mega Man series. Unfortunately, the developers were unable to fully commit to this new way of gaming, giving birth to an unsatisfying hodgepodge of gameplay.

Gone are the level select screens that would normally whisk you off to fight the boss of your choice, replaced with a walk anywhere you want to go to mentality. The only thing that holds you back is the need for key cards to unlock certain doors. Sounds non-linear, right? Well, you have to accept a mission before the necessary story segment activates, letting you actually progress to the end of each level, negating that non-linear feel. "But wait, we make you attempt to find the area using an insequential letter system and confusing map, then force you to backtrack all over... I mean walk there - that's non-linear, right?" I hate to break the news, but the only feeling this brings to the forefront is annoyance. If there is one commandment that Konami's Castlevania games have ingrained into gamers, it is this: thou shalt provide an easy-to-use map that shows where the player hasn't been and thou shalt avoid backtracking unless absolutely necessary. Okay, two commandments!

Instead of saving between boss fights, there are now health-refilling save points littered throughout the game. Their locations are hardly ideal though, as they are not found in areas that hold a boss fight, again unlike the two games mentioned above. After spending fifteen minutes trudging through a level to reach a difficult boss, which is every boss fight in this game, it only makes sense to offer a save point. Extra lives, which should have been phased out with level selecting, do not amend this situation; you never seem to have anymore than two lives at any given time, as extra lives are extremely hard to come by, let alone hold onto, which gives you precious little chance to find a boss's weakness, if any, pick up their pattern and finally defeat them. With Capcom - the master of final bosses - designing these guys, you know very rarely will you be able to defeat a boss the first couple tries.

Finally, Mega Man ZX sees the introduction of neutral areas - the Guardians' headquarters and an protected Innerpeace city. These two areas are large, spanning multiple screens, each populated with characters you can talk to. These areas try unbelievably hard to waste your time - and succeed with flying colors. The Guardian HQ has multiple floors full of hallways and doors, of which only one floor and four doors actually have relevance. NPCs are sparse, bringing up the question of why they even have a base this big in the first place. The Innerpeace city stamps that question with a humongous question mark, as the city takes the same characteristics and stretches them to a thinning point over three screens. The entire city should have been on one screen and the game gives you no reason, other than to waste your time, to the contrary.

Obviously, Mega Man has a few notable differences when compared to the Metroid and Castlevania series, one being the high level of difficulty, but Capcom's inability to fully commit to adapting their game to this new style ends up undercutting the advantages of pursuing the combination in the first place. This may or may not matter to longtime fans, but those newer to the series, as well as those looking for a new Mega Man experience, may leave this game feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.

Non-linear traits aside, the gameplay essentially remains the same - your Mega Man runs, jumps and blasts the crap out of everything they see with an arm buster and/or a melee weapon such as a plasma sword, a halberd or throwing knives. Defeat a boss and you gain control of their Biometal, which when combined with your own creates a new hybrid, each with its own weapons, elemental attacks and special powers that utilize the otherwise unused second screen. None of these powers prove innovative or extremely useful, appearing to be tacked on instead of well-developed ideas.

The difficulty is also a problem, as there are some balance issues. This is a series that prides itself with having only one difficulty - controller-breaking hard. When you begin Mega Man ZX you can select from two difficulties, easy and normal, with hard to be unlocked after normal is finished. I always consider normal as the way the developers want you to play the game, as if they intended their game to be easier or harder then they would have made the necessary changes. Normal mode in this game is far too easy until you reach one of the deadly bosses, as the easy to navigate levels are underpopulated with enemies. Hard mode needed to be normal mode with normal's bosses, normal needed to be easy with easy's bosses and easy needed to find its way onto the cutting room floor.

Lasting appeal is pretty limited here, giving only hardcore games a real reason to return. Choosing a different protagonist proves to be nothing more than a novelty, as the gameplay and story differences between the two are minor at best. There are info chips hidden throughout the game to collect, each containing a picture and a small description about every character and robot you'll meet. After finding and checking out what these actually are, only the most obsessed fan will not ask "why?" The usual item suspects have been hidden throughout the game, such as upgrades, extra lives and sub tanks, but nothing considerably fresh or game-altering. That is unless you own Mega Man Zero 3 and Mega Man Zero 4 for the GBA; by inserting either of these games into the cart slot at the bottom of the DS you can unlock their bosses into the world of ZX. Defeating all of them from each game unlocks a secret stone, which can be used to gain access to the super Biometal, OX, one of the few truly fresh ideas found in this game. It's a shame then that this system connectivity comes not only too late in the GBA's lifespan to either be taken advantage of here or by any other company, but it also comes too late in lifespan of the games in question. Finding a used copy of either game is becoming increasing difficult (especially if you want a complete copy), let alone trying to find a new copy of either game by hitting up Internet sites such as eBay. If you do happen to own both of those games then be prepared for a treat; everyone else might be a bit irked at their inability to gain access to the OX Biometal.

Mega Man ZX is not a bad Mega Man game by any stretch; the wonderful presentation and tried-and-true game play will easily appeal to long time fans of the series who have yet to grow tired of what Capcom has to offer them. Everyone else maybe have trouble pushing through what is obviously a series in transition - the developers of this game were not able to fully to the transition, somewhere along the line deciding that maybe they didn't need to make a change or maybe deciding to make changes too late in the development cycle. Whatever the reason may be, it doesn't justify the indecision that drags down what could have been a wonderful game.

Reviewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).