CRISIS Command Steam Charts & Stats

I wish I could recommend this one. It is obviously made by someone who was inspired by Mega Man and I love trying fan games. But lacking a neutral review option, the negatives in this one (which hopefully will be fixed) just nudge it to a no on the recommendation. Controls are good, Astra handles really well. OST goes between serviceable to pretty good, and it's pretty cheap. But the level design is atrocious with incredibly longwinded levels. Some the engine struggles to keep up with, including the one with not-quite-instant-deathbeams, others didn't account for players walljumping to the top, making large segments skippable. More have you reset from a fall to a not-safe location (to fall anew, instantly). Hidden passages need certain weapons, but the game does not do a good job of telling you this. Blue-veined rubble needs the first special boss' blade beam (B button on x-box controller), brown doors need the bouncing lightning, but activated right by the door and the bomb-containers need the flame thrower. Switching weapons is a bit of a chore too. Open the menu and the cursor is instantly at the upgrades field rather than the weapons one, and while you can equip one each to the L1&R1 buttons loading from a safe unequips them. Back to the levels... you need to rescue npc's to 'buy' upgrades in the store. But the devs were sadistic in their placements. You need to scour the levels pixel by pixel, wall by wall, ground by ground and with every weapon/upgrade to find them all. Some are beyond where a floor will drop. Others at the bottom of indistinguishable pits. One is behind the chasing mouse tank. The relative blandness of the levels in combination with their length really does make this a chore of chores. Lastly, enemy variety is severely lacking too. Just 8 grunts, a handful of minibosses, the not-robot masters and the last fortress bosses. If these issues are fixed or mitigated somewhat, you'd have a perfectly fun little fan game, but as is only crazy Mega Man fans will have any fun with it. Now excuse me while I go look for lightning lemons.

This game pulls a lot of cool ideas from the Mega Man/X series, including the level-select progress structure, hidden items, and a shop for upgrades. These are great, fun, tried and true features. But of all the ideas that are copied from Mega Man/X, the maneuverability system has been critically borked. The momentum physics are far too loose. You can't halt your momentum during a jump; can't release a direction input in the air and simply drop straight down. This feels bad. You can't cancel a dash, and there is a stark delay between dashes. This feels bad too. All the precision you love about X's movement has been eliminated, while the speed has been increased. Some of the enemy/room set ups require quick and accurate planning and execution. It would feel great if you had perfect control over Astra. There is more breathing room than there really needs to be in levels; the area planning is not nearly as tight as the MM/X classics, nor as good as some other clones like Rozenkreuzestillete and Magnetta. This is okay and not a great bother if you just really like the Mega Man feel, like I do. The wack momentum physics make it hard to enjoy though, because they undermine the main reason to play the game. This would be a +rec except that it handles that much worse than any of the significant number of MM clones you can play.