Gaming off the Beaten Path

Mega Man X: Command Mission - Part 1 I’ve finished yet another RPG, so its time to take a break from the kid’s stuff and review a game from yet another franchise I am intimately familiar with. I am just going to come out and say it: Mega Man is the reason I play video games.  Mega Man 3 is was the single game that made me beg my parents for an NES back in the 90s.  To this day, its still one of my favorite gaming franchises and one of the few I pay attention to in the modern generation.  For a brief period, Mega Man games were the only non-RPGs I actively played. That phase didn’t last all that long, but RPGs did become the genre I primarily focused on.  I was back to playing a bigger variety by 2004, but when I heard they were making a Mega Man RPG, I was pumped.  It wasn’t often I got excited by new games at that point, but this certainly made me take notice. I had also learned to temper my expectations for games, so while I appreciated the effort

Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet I have complained at length on this blog about popular gaming franchises receiving a pass for putting out lousy or even average games.  This is especially true of Nintendo’s first party standbys. In the 25+ years I have been playing video games, I can count on my hands the number of titles based on Nintendo IPs that received bad reviews.  If you don’t count the CD-I titles (and you shouldn’t), you could probably count them on one hand.  Take Mario Party titles out the equation and its down to one finger.  Look, Nintendo rarely makes bad games, but there are a number of titles from their extensive catalog that would have received an average at best reception if they weren’t Mario/Zelda/Metroid Etc.  All of those Zelda handheld titles come to mind.  Hell, the mainstream gaming media tried to convince us that Mario Clash was worthy of an 8/10 back in the day. Now that I’m done ranting, we can actually talk about this we