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2-D or not 2-D, that is the question. For fifteen years, Mega Man games have delighted kids and adults all over the world. There have been so many Mega Man games that they have branched out into different series. The more serious Mega Man X series of games has offered the same kind of challenging 2-D action as the rest. Now in its first foray on the PlayStation 2, Mega Man X makes the big jump into 3-D!  Actually the big jump into 3-D isnﾒt so big. There are still plenty of 2-D areas to explore, and even the 3-D sections are pretty straightforward corridors for you to fight through. The boss fights and 3-D areas translate pretty well to the Mega Man X style of gameplay, which gives Mega Man X7 a little extra ﾑoomphﾒ that the last couple of game installments have been missing. In this game, the main character X has retired from fighting the ﾑMavericksﾒ to find more peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. So players are forced to start out playing as Mega Man Xﾒs sword wielding pal Zero and newcomer to the series Axl. Eventually, after you rescue enough friendly ﾑreploidsﾒ in the stages, youﾒll be able to play as X also. Axl has run away from the vigilante group Red Alert to join Zero and the Maverick Hunters. When Red Alert starts causing trouble, demanding that Axl return, itﾒs up to Zero and company to fight back. You can switch between Zero and Axl (and eventually X) on the fly to best utilize their special skills, like Zeroﾒs sword and double jump or Axlﾒs lock-on ability. So in traditional Mega Man style, you pick from 8 different stages and defeat a tough boss robot at the end of each stage. Then you can acquire that bossﾒ weapon. The trick is to find the best weapon to use against each boss. Keeping with the Mega Man X series tradition, each boss has some kind of element trait mixed with some kind of animal robot. So youﾒll fight a fire-powered hyena robot, a stone gorilla-bot, and a tornado poweredﾅonion? Yes. The cel-shaded graphics are great and make the game look like a Japanese anime cartoon. Unfortunately the voice acting is horrible. Mega Man games are known for their fantastic music, and while the sounds in X7 arenﾒt annoying, they also are not very catchy and memorable either. 90 percent of the time, the camera angles work fairly well. It kind of stinks that you canﾒt play as the title character right off, and once you do unlock X, heﾒs pretty weak in comparison. Mega Man X7 is pretty challenging in spots, but itﾒs nothing a seasoned Mega Man player couldnﾒt handle. X7 isnﾒt the best Mega Man game in the world, but itﾒs certainly not the worst either. Kid Factor: Simple fact: Kids love Mega Man. With cartoons, toys, action figures, a new comic book by DreamWave--not to mention countless games in the series, itﾒs easy to tell that Mega Man is popular with the kids. Younger gamers (and even adults) may find this game a bit too hard, though. You do fight bad guys with swords and guns, but since all you ﾑkillﾒ are robots that come back to life as soon as you leave the screen, nobody really gets hurt or dies. If your children like Mega Man, or any of those robot cartoons such as Gundam, Zoids, or Transformers, theyﾒll probably enjoy X7. Reviewer Recommended Ages: 10+ Genre: Action ESRB Rating: E for Everyone Reviewer: Cary Woodham Producer: Capcom Developer: Capcom Score: 3 and a half stars 
Simple fact: Kids love Mega Man. With cartoons, toys, action figures, a new comic book by DreamWave--not to mention countless games in the series, itﾒs easy to tell that Mega Man is popular with the kids. Younger gamers (and even adults) may find this game a bit too hard, though. You do fight bad guys with swords and guns, but since all you ﾑkillﾒ are robots that come back to life as soon as you leave the screen, nobody really gets hurt or dies. If your children like Mega Man, or any of those robot cartoons such as Gundam, Zoids, or Transformers, theyﾒll probably enjoy X7.
Kid Factor by Cary Woodham
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