E3 2015 - Mighty No 9 Hands On

One of the games I have been waiting for since I backed it on Kickstarter was Mighty No 9, I keep up to date with the news that comes from the developers, but I never expected to play it before it's release, but with Deep Silver publishing the retail release of the game, I had the chance to do just that at their E3 booth.

The demo on hand held many stage options, I tried out two different stages and got a good understanding of what makes the game so special, it's like Mega Man, but better and that is saying something. Of course, comparisons to Mega Man are all but inevitable when it's created by the same person and Keiji Inafune has proved he has a lot of ideas left.

The first stage that I played on was the Highway stage, it was raining and I had to jump from car to car, with the occasional truck thrown in for good measure. The issue with this stage was I had no real idea of how to move, so jumping into it was quite the challenge, but it was still fun to try. Beck, or Mighty No 9 if you prefer has a dash move that needs to be used in order to move around correctly. Beck is not able to jump all that high, or double jump, but if you jump and dash, you can reach higher ground and clear larger gaps with ease. It was a lot of fun to try and make some of the gaps, while still avoiding enemy fire, even after many deaths, I still had fun trying to progress as far as I could.

The second level I tried was the military level, which was not so heavy on the platforming, but a lot more focused on the combat. Beck can shoot from his blaster, which has a set distance it can travel, but it's not that effective against the enemies of the world, in fact you need to use that dash move again, though now it's for dashing through the enemies. When you deal enough damage, they will flash and then you can dash through them, but they are not all the same. Some enemies will flash green, some red and the rest yellow, as you dash through them you will absorb those elements.

Absorbing the power will allow you to level up your attacks, allowing you to deal more damage when you attack, but these won’t last forever, so you need to keep attacking, dashing and absorbing to keep the power up. Should you fail to do so, you will revert back to the normal attack power and then you need to start again, one part of the process that is cool is that if you don’t dash into the enemy within a few moments, the amount of power you get back, meaning you really need to keep on the go.

While I never completed this level either, it was a challenge, I still really enjoyed my time with the game and while it is still a few months until it releases, I can’t wait to spend a day learning how to play the game just right.