Mini Mega Man Marathon March Mania; Mega Man 4: What is all this... new stuff?

And so today, we bid farewell to the blue bomber for now. We shall return another day, but for now, let's finish this marathon with Mega Man 4.

There's a lot of polish on display in this game, as there was a lot done to refine Mega Man 3's experience. A new villain in the form of Dr. Cossack (yes he is Russian, this game will love to remind you of that when you get to his fortress levels) has appeared with 8 Robot Masters of his own, leaving the job of Robot Master Ass Kicker once again to Mega Man. However, after defeating him, you learn that the Russian Doctor was doing this because Dr. Wily kidnapped his daughter and, once you learn this, it is up to you to go defeat Wily a fourth time. This is honestly how I feel the Doc Robot levels should have been in Mega Man 3, cause at least this "padding" is still all new levels whereas Doc Robot was just hard mode version of four previous levels, with boss patterns you only need to learn once that were taken from a previous game. Score 1 for Mega Man 4!

The big new feature in terms of gameplay is the Mega Buster. Mega Man's basic gun got a boost of power thanks to the charge shot it has in this game. Hold the fire button down for a while and you begin to charge energy. Once released, the shot will deal a lot of damage and pass through a lot of enemies. It makes clearing out your first Robot Master very easy... unless your first Robot Master is the pathetic Toad Man who you can easily get into a pattern reset and unable to actually hit you. No joke, the robots in his stage are harder then Toad Man (one being that second giant toad robot just because of the limited floor space and the flowing water that pushes you around and limits your jump height if you're under it. It really made me wish Mega Man could shoot in 8 directions). The new Robot Master powers are overall situational though, as none of them have more versatility then the Mega Buster does, which is a shame honestly as that's kind of the point to getting the powers in the first place. With the exception of the Robot Masters themselves, there's not much of a point using the powers.

Thankfully sometimes went into the presentation for this game, UI changes, that new intro screen, while the sprites still look the same as the previous games, there's just enough here to give it its own style compared to the other three so far. As for the soundtrack, repeat what I've been saying for the last three, but the new songs I personally enjoyed have been the new Title theme, Bright Man, Toad Man, Pharoh Man and Skull Man's themes. For now, though, its time to call this mini-marathon done, for next week, we hit the Marvel movies again, and on Sunday, the first Lego set to review.