Blue Bombin': Mega Man 4 - Part 04

That's a neat hat.

Mega man 5 is a lot better than 4, I think you'll have more fun with the next one, Alex.
Way to push forward and get this one done! Stay strong!

Awesome Deftones tee. Didn't knew Alex was a fan of them.

Here we go!

I....I liked the first few hours of Andromeda...

I was pleasantly surprised with 4. It's not X4 but I liked it a lot more than 3 but a lot less than Zero 3!

Wait, are there too many Mega Man games?

I have been watching the Fast and the Furious through amazon and it seems like amazon only has the extended cuts for 5, 6, and 7.

Oh, this one isn't Premium.

Dan should eat that hat

Sludge

I'm surprised Vinny didn't think of this:

Metall Gear?!

Let's do something more fun next Friday NY. Are we married to Mega Man until death doeth us part?

man, stuff like this and vinnyvania killed any will i had to play older nes/snes games. even with savestates, i,just have zero patience for some of this stuff.

It is some fucked up repugnant bullshit that you can kill the boss and still lose.

Just seems like bad design.

Man, this was the worst one yet (the game that is, not the video). There're just some mean, unfair design decisions the devs put into this.

I'm with @danryckert poop is funny.

I'm just 20 minutes into this but there has been some great Vinny faces in this one already, including this one which my stream froze on:

I got to say I am with Dan. In Alex's defense Mega Man 4 sucks.

Kerbal?

Yep, now I know for sure that this is my least favorite game in the series. I had my doubts, maybe I was being biased, but I know for a fact 5 is a masterpiece in comparison and 6 is boring, but at least highly competent. Damn, Mega Man. What happened?

I haven't finished the video yet but can't you shoot the drill missile under Wily's second form and explode it under there? That seems like it would make things way easier.

Either way, Mega Man X1 and Zero 3 hold up way better than these old NES games. Mega Man 2 still seems fine, I think, I need to go play that one myself.

One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires robots.

What happened to Yuki-chan's Papa?

I liked 4 a lot. Great music, decently challenging bosses without being too cheap (it's easier than it looks here, because Alex doesn't dodge anything), fun ending. I like some of the gameplay of 5 and 6, but IMO the overall music quality takes a dive, and that was always a big element of MM for me.

If there's no beatboxing, I want none of it.

I love this series so much. It's one of my favourite late-night series to chillax to, along with the Shenmue endurance run and Vinnyvania. Also love when you look at the database at the end of each game's completion. Blue Bombin'!

Yeah. It's so weird to listen to them talk about this game that I've really enjoyed the first ten hours of like it's unplayable. I've gotten none of the bugs I've heard of. Sure the facial animation hasn't moved on since ME3, but that's done very little to ruin the game for me. I'm super psyched for the release.

5 is better than 4 and a lot easier.

That foot pedal video switcher sounds right rock & roll. I would watch a behind-the-scenes "how we do it" video of that.

#poophat Congrats Alex

This is great to hear. Although I believe (cause we have all seen it now) that there is some jank in that game, I have also seen some truly impressive moments that are still peaking my interest. I bet I'll end up enjoying it even with its flaws.

I'm sure I'm going to get some hate for this, but I just don't care at this point. This video, and really, a lot of this series has been absolutely infuriating to watch. That Alex would resort to save scumming, it was enough to make me finally throw my hands up and quit on it. He complains about fairness and the checkpoints not being as generous in this game as they could be, but for the real reason he's having a hard time all he needs to do is look in the mirror. It's all him.

His defensive play, at best, I'd describe it as negligible. How many times throughout this series do we see level after level of him just plowing into enemies seemingly not even trying to dodge. He's obviously playing levels on the idea of either getting a good checkpoint to continue from with his lives or hoping for an energy drop or two so he can get to the boss chamber and then use his remaining lives there. That strategy was easy to pull off in Mega Man 2 and 3, not so much in the first Mega Man, nor this one because the checkpoints are not so kind as they were in those other games. It's not that the stages are too tough or unfair, it's that he's not even trying to play in an intelligent manner most of the time.

This video specifically the circumstances are different being it's just boss fights, but the glove still fits. In Mega Man 2 and 3 especially just having a robot masters weakness was enough to easily overwhelm them in most cases really. In this one the weapons they are weak to do not do the absolutely ridiculous damage they did in those games so the player must approach the fight with a little more thought than those other titles, but rather than do that Alex just complains about how the game sucks when the only reason it's so hard is because he's playing poorly. A great example is the Ring Man fight. It's simple. Charge the attack to full, dodge his rings as best as you can and absolutely don't get hit by his body. Alex consistently often misses his shots, misses opportunities to shoot, gets hit by the first ring that is fired off by Ring Man quite consistently, inexplicably stops charging the shot at some point and begins spamming the uncharged shot which doesn't do much damage at all, and somehow manages to find himself getting run into by Ring Man all the time. But according to him this game is unfair and it's not that he is playing like crap.

If he's not going to bother playing intelligently he could at least brute force his way through by gathering up a large supply of e-tanks and then going through it that way, but to save scum? Ridiculous.

I know I sound like I'm taking this way too seriously, but this series, when it started, it inspired me to go back and play through this series. When I was a kid I could never beat this particular game, but because of this series I finally came back to it and finished it. I actually have done Let's Plays of Mega Man 4,5,6, and 7, games I had never beaten (or in many cases played) because this series inspired me to go back to these games. So maybe I'm taking Alex wimping out on this game a little too hard.

It's fine that Alex stinks at the game and isn't willing to commit to playing in a fashion that will lead him to victory, but blaming the design of the game for your own obvious shortcomings as a player makes me question just how much I should trust anything he writes about games.

I hope for Alex's own sake that he is only playing the rest of the Legacy collection and no games beyond that. If he goes beyond that he may be save scumming between between every hit he lands on the Mega Man 7 final boss.

@shinofkod: Oh my god

@shinofkod:

Is @danryckert saying "St. Patty's" instead of "St. Paddy's"? o.0

Instead of making Alex wear that hat when he does poorly, offer to let him wear this hat when he does well:

@shinofkod Yeah, you're taking it way too seriously, but I feel ya. I never had much sympathy for the "you're playing it wrong" crowd, but having played these games dozens of times, this one's pretty tough to take. If they take it to Mega Man 9 and 10, it's going to get preeeeetty dicey.

Relax and accept that the skill level just isn't going to be that of a superfan, exactly. They should play how they like, even if it's frustrating for them, but FWIW my criticisms would be:

- Listening to Vinny's "E-tank! E-tank!" Lives are cheap, especially when you still need to get a handle on what you're doing and you're likely to need the tanks later anyway. If he had saved up instead, he could have totally brute-forced it way earlier. Instead, just use some lives trying a bunch of stuff out and seeing what works.

- Being timid on defense. Dodging Ring Man when he's coming at you by charging him early instead of waiting till the last second will mean he's not going to surprise you by stopping short or by occasionally smacking you with an unexpected third ring. Makes it a little tougher to avoid his second ring, but whaddayagonnado. And Alex seemed willing to take practically every hit possible going through those stages.

- Being timid on offense. Wasting lots of opportunities. For example, pretty sure the way they want you to play the final boss was to actually shoot him instead of head-butting him, just need to try a tiny bit to get the timing down. Pro tip: If you head-butt him with the shot over your head, you can still release the charged shot when you let go of the button, getting two shots out for the energy cost of one. Plus no time wasted charging.

@shinofkod: I can understand you, but as a non-Mega Man player I disagree. This is probably how I would play the game, and Alex' goal is just to get through, not follow som arbitrary unwritten rule of how to play the game.

Still a mega-buster.

This series inspired me to play the Mega Man series for the first time, alongside the crew. It's been pretty interesting. I don't think they realize just how much easier Mega Man 2 and 3 were for Alex because he mastered them over the years. For me, they were painful and I hated them at points. Mega Man 2 is my least favorite and I gave up on it in Wiley's Castle. 5 is my favorite followed by 4 and I didn't struggle with it anywhere near as much as Alex, who cruised through parts I struggled with in other entries. I also really enjoyed Mega Man 1 (more than 2 and maybe 3).

I wouldn't say it's only nostalgia and familiarity that makes Mega Man 2 and 3 favorites, but playing them all for the first time makes me think they are factors. Mega Man 4 and 5 have such better bosses (that don't instantly die by spamming an ability), stages with unique mechanics and less cheap annoying crap. Not to mention the charge shot is what makes these entries so much fun which Alex barley used.

It's an all around great series and no entry is bad to me (I really enjoyed 2 until Wiley's Castle). I look forward to playing Mega Man 6 soon. Glad Alex streamed these as it got me to discover some new favorites on the NES.

I think I've beaten every Megaman game besides 7, 8 and this one. Otherwise I would have remembered that stage 3 Wily music. That's some amazing boss fight music there, even for Megaman.

Doctor Wily, I've come to bargain!

I have a feeling that it's going to be another game that I greatly enjoy playing, but there will be nothing but an endless stream of pissing and moaning and saying how much of a shit game it is. Hell, that's already begun and the game isn't even out yet.

I know, "just don't listen to those people" and "if you like it, who cares what others think".

The problems with that are:

• It's a constant barrage
• It's really kind of a demoralizing/disheartening experience.

Oh well. I haven't kept up with a lot of the coverage and stayed away from most of the videos. From what I've seen and what I've heard from those that do like it, I'm pretty confident I will too. Mass Effect rose to be my favorite franchise, knocking Halo off the #1 spot (the changes they made to the story didn't also contributed). I liked Mass Effect 3. I didn't flip out over the ending.

Whatever.

Mega Man 4 is a bad video game. There, I said it.

Also, all Mega Man games beyond 2 have horrible music.

@joemotycki: i think 4 and 5 are both pretty weak. 6 is the first game that feels like 1-3 again and should have been the natural conclusion of the classic series (if you look at releases, 6 came out before X1, with it's to be continued stinger, and 7 wasn't until after X2)

I agree.

"That is dumb"

After 4 games I finally noticed Alex' main flaw in these games: He doesn't dodge enemy attacks. In many of the robot master fights he just kinda hopes they don't hit him while he damage races them with their weaknesses. That's a bad strategy. Well, "strategy".

Vinny is a great dad, he sees that Alex is getting frustrated with his game after the second time he killed the second stage Wiley and he does something silly like making the poop hat his face too cheer him up.

@spindini: Woof, I love Kerbal, but I couldn't stand the whole Dan asking stupid questions and failing to learn how the universe is put together schtick. My vote goes for some more FMVinny, I don't know if he ever played thru Tesla Effect, but that game is surprisingly rad.