Mega Man 10 - Beat this.
Overall I find myself less enamoured of it than MM9? I'm not entirely sure why, the obvious reason is that the weapons are just less fun, though. Otherwise the stage design is certainly pretty good, as is boss design (Wily boss design less so, outside the archive bosses and the first stage of the Wily Machine). So it's good overall, but I sorta feel it's more around MM1/4/5 level than the MM2/3/8 level I was willing to put 9 on. On the other hand it does have more options than those (thinking of Hard Mode, Proto Man, challenges...)... but less fun weapons? Eh. Well. For other things, plot is a step back from 9 (but MEGA MAN PLOT), needed boss Roll. Music is okay, nothing special overall.
On the weapons, ranked by how useful they are!
The good:
Wheel Cutter: WTF, the second coming of the weapon of the legendary WHEEL GATOR, not to mention the game's freaking groundcrawler (how often are they any good?) is the game's best weapon. Anyway, it's solid and versatile: reasonable damage and cheap, can be used as a shield and is good at getting things up walls or below you.
Triple Blade: Well, maybe this is the best. Only real weakness is the one per screen limit; otherwise it gets solid wide coverage and decent offence for only 1 WE.
The okay:
Chill Spike: Freezes things so you can kill them safely. Works, and what it does to hoppers in particular is enough to merit its #3 ranking here. Also killing that annoying groundcrawler which no other weapon does.
Rebound Striker: The directability of the weapon is handy, but the power:price ratio is low enough to make it rarely a mainstay. Still, invaluable in a few situations.
Water Shield: Not exactly the best shield in the series. Its method of firing is interesting but ultimately not too useful, and besides that it isn't overly damaging and dissipates as piecewise as it is hit. Still, it serves its job as a shield well enough, it's just not a killing machine like Jewel Satellite and Leaf Shield.
Solar Blaze: Really didn't need to be 2 WE. Kinda boring otherwise, goes forward, then eventually back and forward at the same time, decent size and piercing at least.
Commando Bomb: Crash Bomb which HAS to not be a direct hit to do anything approaching real damage. Except you can direct it. Obviously a losing trade, but it's not useless or anything.
The "at least it's not Hyper Bomb":
Thunder Wool: lulz. 4 WE for a weapon that deals sucky damage unless you're willing to wait for it to turn into a thunderbolt which is just way too cumbersome.
Bosses as far as bustering goes, since I've gotten them all now...
Solar >> Chill >> Nitro > Commando > Sheep > Pump > Strike. Blade fits in... somewhere. He's probably the easiest one to me now but I had a lot of resets on him at first, just need to figure him out and he's ultra-patterned after that, but figuring him out isn't easy.
Not much else to say, about 3 hours on second playthrough, 55 minutes on second. 7/12 challenges so far, will nail the others soon enough no doubt. Hard Mode soon, then maybe Proto Man eventually. Or something.
Ace Attorney Investigations: Onto 5-4. 5-1 and 5-2 were both rather brilliantly plotted, and I'll forgive 5-1 bringing back Maggey because it had Jacques Portsman who is my hero. 5-3 was... not so brilliantly plotted. I liked the core ideas of the case but they really bungled the execution, it felt like the case kept pulling pieces of evidence or soap opera twists out of its ass to keep going and the ultimate chain of events was possibly the least believable thing since 1-5. Oh well, at least it had some awesome characters, and Lang ended up making a hell of a lot more sense than I expected (kinda funny making an antagonist out of a sentiment the player was probably feeling rather strongly in PW1!). 5-4 is looking good so far but I'm early.
