Mega Man 2 quick review

Yesterday I got the opportunity to finally sit down and play MM2. After 2 hours I managed to beat the game, but it was thanks to the Legacy Collection´s ability to save and load states, without it it would surely had been an incrdibly frustrating experience and I would still be stuck at Flash man´s fake floors or Heat Man´s vanishing platforms. Instead fo doing a full review for a +20 year old game, I´ll just the best and worst moments, specially from a level design point of view:

The best

• All levels have a clear structure: each challenge is clearly separated by screen breaks, changes in direction, changes in the background/setting...This helps a lot to focus on the important task at hand.
• The platform on rails segment in Willy´s stage 4: This challenge is divided into 4 smaller ones, which follow a progression of introducing the challenge, introducing small variations, mixing them up and finally presenting a twist to the original challenge:
  1. Ride the platform while dealing with enemies spawning from easy to get places (the platform´s trayectory helps a lot with this). There´s no need to leave the platform at any moment, the main focus here in dealing with the enemies. It can be shortened a lot by jumping off the platform early.
  2. Getting on the platform is done exactly like in challenge 1, but it´s trickier. The player must also leave the platform at the middle of the way and later get back on it to reach the end. Enemies are removed from this challenge.
  3. 1&2 are mixed: Enemies are back and the player must leave the platform and get back on it in less time. Also, the platform´s route makes it harder to deal with enemies this time than in challenge 1.
  4. 2 Twists happen in this challenge: First of all the player doesn´t have to fall on the platform fro a ladder, but jump from a steady floor. Second: the player must jump off to a steady platform right after getting on the platform on rails, then wait for the platform to turn around and bounce off it quickly to reach the exit. This is the only instance where the player must use the platform "in the wrong direction", so staying on it would be detrimental.
• Item puzzles: Everywhere around the game and specially at the Willy stages, there are small puzzles that will require the player to figure out how to use the special items 1, 2 & 3 to solve them. These were very refreshing and a nice change of pace. Sometimes solving the puzzle will grant access to a 1-Up, an E-tank, a life capsule...or they will just allow the player to go on in the later stages. Awesome way to break monotony and the rewards always made them worthy and satisfying, so the player would try to solve one when he came across one of them. Due to the way MM2 structures it´s levels, they also add a reason for new replays.
• Thunder robots: These were another instance of a developed challenge. Robots throwing thunderbolts at you would appear riding in clouds: the player had to take them out and steal their cloud in growingly complicated setups. The paths of the clouds would change so they would give an advantageous position in the first minichallenge, but put you in more dificulties in the following ones, even to the point of adding foreground clouds to obscure parts of the screen. Even though it was a simple series of obstacles, it was very well though.

The worst

• There are many challenges that rely on trial and error and memorization. Heat Man´s vanishing platforms, Quick Man´s laser beams, Flash Man´s (not sure) fake floors...There´s no way to beat these challenges on the first try as they require knowledge not attainable by the player before going through them. What´s worse, they all are incredibly punishing, causing instant death to the player. These are not hard challenges as once the solution is known the execution is pretty simple and easy, but they will cost the player some lives getting to it. Also, the solutions are purely situational, so that nothing the player learns here will help him a different challenge using the same mechanics anywhere down the line. They just require memorization of sequences which is a knowledge that, once the corresponding challenge has been beaten, can be completely discarded. Even in these unfair challenges some structure is present and they follow a nice evolution, but the nature of the challenges themselves make them frustrating for the player.