The whole thing has been a cluster in my opinion. The campaign(s), the nonsense around the community manager, the multiple delays, the rollout....all of its awful. While the graphics aren't the worst I've seen they aren't nearly as good as what they were showing off originally. I wonder if was a concession they made so the game could just come out already?

I supported this, but I never really paid any attention to it other than voting on what fake roll looked like. I then watched the ign review today, which was the first footage I had seen of it ever, and MAN that game looked janky and bad all over. It just looks so cheap and lazily made. It really bums me out. I had such high hopes for this at its Kickstarter.

even the sonic the hedgehog account is making fun of them

Judging from the stream interview I watched last night, it sounds like the classic Kickstarter mistake of creators taking too much on with stretch goals.

Stretch Goals never made any sense to me - they continue to add features, perks, platform support, etc - all under the same schedule. It's been the demise of so many KS projects.

It's sounds like the team behind M9 all point to the number of platforms they had to support, and the online features, as being the reason for the delays. I have to assume the terrible graphics are a result of the platform support as well.

Which is a bold move. Sonic BOOM isn't that far back.

So like Duke Nukem Forever it gets 2 stars for just finally showing up?

It getting 6s and 7s, so it pretty much hitting the "It is okay" range. Maybe, it is a failure given the pedigree of the producer, but I think the story is the game came out average/middling/bland/meh. Not a huge deal because that happens all the time, and so it is not a huge story.

Stretch Goals can be done well. Look at Shovel Knight for instance, rather than adding it all in immediately, they released the stretch goals in free patches, which I think is a really smart way around the whole issue.

My expectations for scoring were lower than an anime fan's on prom night

It could be worse, the codes could have worked.

Honestly I'm not exactly surprised by this, had low expectations very early on. Certainly glad I didn't back it. Maybe it could be a game worth getting 75% off one day tho.

That's an absolute disgrace

Totally agree - the problem is most don't extend the deadline (or are transparent about it from the start). Instead we get surprise delays and compromises on quality.

More companies should look to Yacht Club on how to do it right. Hell, I wish YCG would have developed Mighty Number 9 :)

This game would have made a killing if it came out in 2009 for XBLA.

I think the Sonic account may just be relating to putting out awful games based on nostalgia. Maybe there was no actual irony.

Ya gotta love it when you release a game and say "Yeah, it's crap, but at least it's a game" after years of delays and excuses. This will be remembered for a long time for the massive garbage surrounding the game and the quality of the game itself.

Dave Lang v Sonic the Hedgehog

Dave Lang isn't the only Video Game CEO trashing the Sonic account for that Tweet...

Edit: Just been notified that this is a parody account, but the point is that people are crapping on the Sonic twitter page for the Mighty Number 9 tweet because of Sonic's terrible history.

@mocbucket62 said:

@kingclaw said:

Dave Lang v Sonic the Hedgehog

Dave Lang isn't the only Video Game CEO trashing the Sonic account for that Tweet...

Note that that is a parody account, not actually the CEO of Sony.

Played through a bit of the game.

id say reviews are a bit harsh but not totally accurate. the framerate issues are a bit hyperbolic. it plays and looks mostly fine but its just mediocre. not bad. not great.

the dash system is kinda cool.

get it when it goes on sale.

@joe_mccallister: Wooooooff!!!

Alex is not happy about Sonic the Hedgehog throwing shade.

@arbitrarywater: also maybe not a fair comparison. the last big mega man game was 10 which was pretty good. outside of generations there isnt been a good sonic thing in like 20 years

Hey so, how about that Animated Series, huh? To be honest, that could*, be good.. Right?

And that Mega Man 2017 cartoon, yea? Err. Sure.

Ah, the good ol' days.. Le sigh.

I mostly posted that tweet because I find Alex's hatred of the Sonic the Hedgehog twitter account to be sort of hilarious. It might not be the best comparison (While it seems like Capcom has all but put a bullet in Mega Man for the time being, at least that series hasn't suffered a slow and arduous decline into punchline territory the way Sonic has) I just thought it was funny enough to share.

@bradbrains: Isn't being mediocre exactly what the reviews are saying. In fact, it seems to have one of the most middling set of review scores I've seen. The PC Metacritic score is exactly 50 and Steam's user reviews are at 49%

guys, can't we just agree that ALL games are bad?

So.... should I have gotten a code somewhere by now? I'm in the U.S. Did their survey, along with the redone survey when the first survey broke.

Edit: Nevermind. They sent me a Steam code instead of PS4. And I'm not surprised :(

Edit 2: And that isn't working. So time to bust out AVGN Adventures again for my action-platformer fix.

Could that be the reason for much of the venomous hatred for this game on social media right now? The gameplay footage that I've watched didn't look as bad as many people are saying it is.

That Sonic tweet sure did rustle some jimmies and bring out some questionable Sonic hate, good job Alex! We are all very impressed.

Sonic Generations and Colors are good games. Mighty No.9 will go down as one of the worst Kickstarter's in gaming history and tomorrow is another day.

So the wii u build is reportedly bricking some consoles too. Fuuuun. Yeah this is a discount by at best for me.

Honestly a lose-lose situation when you think about it.

Just burn the whole thing at this point. It's beyond saving.

That sounds like a weird mixup of news. Granted they communicated it poorly, to the point that even the GB guys talked about it as a second fundraiser on the Bombcast, but let me try to correct it as best I can:

They never did a true, kickstarter-esque, second fundraiser for Mighty No9. What they did was that they "opened up preorders" for the game with the goal of the preorders adding enough funds to the project for them to add Japanese voices.

(There had already been voting to decide whether English or Japanese would be the one language they could afford to have in the game, and English had won that vote. As characters talk to you while you're playing the game I find it understandable that they didn't want any players to have to split their attention by reading text while doing platforming, but I still think they should have reconsidered that design itself if it caused that much of an issue.)

At the same time they announced that they were planning to make (or were in talks to get ) an animated series based on the game made. This was not related to the preorder-fundraising-thing but was a completely separate thing that they were working on. There was never talk of raising money for it.

A lot of people were confused about these news at the time as well, to the point where they had to adress their poor communication on the matter in a later update. (It should also be noted that they never did reach their "stretch goal" through the "preorder" thing they did to add Japanese voices. Rather, after running a "Rewards Survey", where people picked what rewards (some physical) they were getting, they announced that the budget for those rewards were lower than they had estimated, because of what people had picked, and that they could thus move some of the money allocated to rewards over to development. ... apparently enough to fill the gap between the preorders they had gotten and their goal of adding Japanese voices.)

Actually, now that I've thought back to it, I believe that "add 1 voice-over language" was their original pre-order stretch goal, but it was eventually combined into "add English and Japanese voices", some time after the voting of which language would be picked was concluded.

They then announced Red Ash, their second Kickstarter project, as development of Mighty No9 "was wrapping up". There was also a second Kickstarter for like, an animated short or something, set in the Red Ash universe, that launched at the same time. The game Kickstarter failed, but before it did that Comcept announced on the Kickstarter that a Chinese company named FUZE Entertainment would help fund the game regardless so...great? The kickstarter money would then go to "additional content" should the Kickstarter still succeed (which it didn't).

The Kickstarter for the animated short did make it though, so that's still going on apparently.

@jacksukeru: even straightened out by you that sounds confusing as hell; don't blame anyone for being lost as to what actually fucking happened during their (apparently multi-stage) fundraising/kickstarter campaign.

i'm always one to give benefits of a doubt to things but this just sounds like it was a mismanaged hodgepodge ever since that initial honeymoon period of "new megaman game guys!" it actually kinda surprised me they finally managed to eke out a mediocre game at the end of it.

i do like how middling games can somehow be the center of more dramatic clusterfucks than just plain bad or (actually) bug riddled games (this does seem to have its share though...).

@adequatelyprepared: Hold up. We got CK II out of this mess so there is a silver lining.

@monkeyking1969: @beachthunder: People seem to be misunderstanding game review scores again, average is around 75 not 50; 50-75 is generally terrible with a handful of exceptions. If you want to classify it as mediocre relative to other terrible games (as in it's no Ride to Hell), then have at it but it's still not going to be functionally average at the end of the day.

Maybe, Capcom was right to drop Mega Man if it was going to continue under Inafune.

Not to mention Mega Man Legends 3...

Makes you wonder.

@efesell: To be fair, the Sonic account is basically a parody account at this stage that operates with so little oversight that it is constantly taking the piss out of itself. It is kind of amazing.

Except it is functionally average. Nothing about the game is as terrible as most would have you believe. It's a perfectly competent, and frankly pretty fun, action platformer that is not stellar in any way (though occasional visions of how great it could have been do show through) but also not awful. At its core, it's fast-paced and handles perfectly fine. It mainly suffers from generic environment design, drab colors, sometimes questionable level design, and several bosses that could be more fun to fight.

This is all based on the PS4 version. IMO it deserves a solid 7.0. I'd grant it another 0.5 if they fix the few spots that have inexcusable framerate issues (though 90% of the game runs fine).

I've never played a Megaman game. Dunno why, we had a NES as a kid. But nobody ever talked about those games until I got online and communicated with Americans.

the only one i really got into was mega man 3 and i have a feeling ill suck at it today with me old man reflexes.

Let's be honest. Unless this game was absolutely perfect, it was going to be viewed negatively by the people expecting it to revitalise the Mega Man concept. I'm not saying it doesn't have it problems: the characters look bland and uninspiring, the dash into enemies mechanic was interesting but never felt utilised properly, the voice acting was mixed at best, and the level design was pretty bad (the amount of times I wasn't sure if the hole in front of me was one I was meant to jump into or not was not funny). That being said, the moving and shooting feels very good and dashing around remains quite fun.

The problem with this game is the legacy. People were expecting it to take up the mantle from the Mega Man franchise, and it was never going to be able to do that. Mega Man is too deeply rooted in people's nostalgia, and this game was going to look like a cheap imitation no matter how good it was. If this game didn't have the expectation going in, people would have just passed it off as a fairly average game with a few problems, but the hype caused it to look worse than it really was.

Personally I wish they hadn't ripped off Mega Man so closely. Keep the basic gameplay and weapon absorption concept, but change the story and characters somewhat. This looks like someone wanted to make a Mega Man game but couldn't get the licence to actually use Mega Man (which I guess is technically the case).

I wonder what you call the sequel? "Mighty No. 9 2"?

@flarephoenix: I don't think that's right at all. Shovel Knight exists. The new Doom exists. Stardew valley exists. A billion good metroidvania games exists. A lot of games are able to take ideas or damn near whole pieces of yesteryear games but still find a way to make them work today or update them to make them relevant again. This game is boring and bland after cavalcade of delays and shit show of a launch. I don't mean to make it sound easy, it probably isn't, but the fault does not sit with the consumer after giving away a 3million~ budget(they seem to love saying the near 4million was not pure budget and there were a lot of costs taken off the top of that which is true). Most indie devs making fantastic games based off childhood memories and nostalgia would probably love a budget of a few hundred thousand.

@vortextk: I'm not saying that expectation was the sole reason this game was viewed negatively, just that people were going in with a certain expectation this game was probably never going to measure up to. Things like Shovel Knight and Stardew Valley aren't the same, because they aren't trying to be exactly like some other game from the past. Shovel Knight (the only one of those three I've played) is using the look and feel of an NES game, but it doesn't feel like any NES game specifically. It's not trying to fill the void of a specific franchise. Mighty No. 9 is trying so hard to be a Mega Man game, and it was sold as the "spiritual successor" to the Mega Man franchise.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to say this game was absolutely flawless and people are being unfair towards it. It has a lot of problems and it is not a great game by any stretch of the imagination. All I am saying is without the expectations and legacy, this game would have faded into the distance with very little thought. Most people would have looked at it, seen it as bad to mediocre, and thought nothing more of it. The fact that it's supposed to be a "new Mega Man game" is the reason it is more disappointing than it really is.

I will say however the delays and problems during the launch, while assuredly frustrating to those affected, should not be used to judge the quality of the game itself. Things like the wrong codes getting sent out are annoying, but they should not be used to judge the quality of the game itself.

You look at Mighty No. 9 and wonder where the money went.