I’ll openly admit that as a kid, I was a huge fan of the original Power Rangers TV show. I’ve long since moved on from the series (is it considered a single series if it’s been re-branded 50 million times? Whatever…), but there will always be a nostalgic place in my heart for MMPR. Naturally, when I heard of this game a couple years ago, I immediately took notice. However, a lukewarm to nonexistent reception of the game left me uninterested in picking it up. Until last week, that is, when PlayStation was holding a Spring sale for all PSPlus members, and I saw that this game was given a decent discount. Cheap enough to warrant me checking it out at least, because I used to love the show (and the old SNES video games based on the show) and I enjoy a good brawler game. Unfortunately, this was not a good brawler game. I will say that the game showed promise, design ideas that could have made it something enjoyable, at the very least, but those ideas were plagued with issues. And nostalgia alone couldn’t keep me from seeing the game’s many imperfections.
Saban’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle (SMMPRMB… even the abbreviation is too long…) allows players to take on the role of one of the five (and later on six) original Power Rangers. Each Ranger has their own unique stats. I found this interesting, as they weren’t all just carbon copy characters, picking your Ranger meant picking your strengths and weaknesses. The game allows up to four players at a time, so I’d imagine this character select screen is even more crucial when playing with others. I think the game probably would have been more fun, too, but as it is, I played through it solo. Once you’ve got your Ranger(s), the game begins. It plays out much like any fan of the show would expect. A group of “teenagers with attitude” suddenly stumble upon something bigger than themselves, they fight monsters, and then become selected to be the Power Rangers. I will note that the writing in this game is just as bad and as corny as the original show. I suppose that is either a good thing or a bad thing, considering your stance. But this is a game analysis, so I won’t touch much on the narrative.
SMMPRMB wastes no time in deterring the player from playing the game. The very first level is a pain to play through. It is immediately apparent that movement and combat are not at all fluid or smooth. The characters move and attack with slow, stilted action. And there were times where input lag was a serious issue. If it wasn’t bad enough that the combat was janky, it was also incredibly boring (at first). In non-morphed normal human mode, the only attack players could do was basic light punches. That was pretty much it. I will also note, that in that form, your attacks are weaker, along with the added bonus of having less health. There’s pretty much no reason to ever want to play as a normal human. But in this first part of the game, there was no choice.
Add in the fact that the only enemies that the player could punch, in that first section were the iconic minions of the show, the Putties, and you’ve got a recipe for boredom. I might add that these Putties took forever to kill. I’d punch them three times, then they’d fall over. There is no ground attack, so I would have to wait for the Putty to get back up to it’s feet, then I’d punch it three more times, and so on and so on. Progress in level one was painfully slow, and not remotely fun. Sure, there were different colors of Putties, indicating different abilities. Some charged, some jumped, some shot guns (all of them would telegraph their attack with the iconic noise they make), so at least there was variation there. But the fact that they took so freaking long to kill just killed my desire to even bother. But bother I did.
Once I got to the section where “morphing” (i.e. putting on the costume) was allowed, things got slightly better, but not by much. Health and power would increase slightly in morph mode. And the Rangers would get access to new abilities. At the start, these abilities were limited to a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. Both of these new abilities, however, were limited by way of energy bars.
I’m not normally one to gripe about non-game mechanic issues (such as art direction, UI, narrative, technical issues, etc.) on these posts, because (again) it’s gameplay analysis with which I am most concerned. However, when it’s this bad, it needs to be addressed. As I said, melee and ranged weapons are limited by energy bars. But so are a few other things. There is a green bar for health, and can be refilled by green orb pick ups. That’s pretty straightforward.
There is a yellow bar that displays energy for using melee weapons. Melee weapons are considerably stronger (heavy attack vs light attack), so the developers decided to put a limit on how much you can use a melee weapon by way of the yellow energy bar. The yellow energy bar is depleted when you hit an enemy with your weapon. It refills automatically. However this was not in any way made apparent to me and confused me to no end, as there are yellow orb pickups that are the same color as the yellow energy bar. However, these are not for the yellow bar, they are XP pickups, used for leveling your Ranger (much more on that in a bit). This is represented by a very difficult to read, circular bar surrounding your character’s portrait.
And finally, there is the blue bar. You’d think, by way of deduction that this bar is used for the ranged weapon, yes? Yes. And no. This single blue bar is used for so many different things, it is laughable. In human mode, this bar represents how long it takes until you can morph. In all instances, it is filled by either blue orb pick ups, or by attacking enemies. So basically, when in human mode, attack enough enemies, and “it’s morphin’ time.” Thankfully, this never takes too long. In fact, it almost seems pointless to have a human mode at all. It’s almost as if the mechanic was put in for sheer narrative purposes and nothing more.
But that’s not all the blue bar does! As I said before, it also gives “ammo” for the ranged weapon. Each shot of the gun depletes some of the blue bar. No blue bar, no gun ammo. But that’s not all! It’s also used for a number of “special” abilities. Once unlocked, a player can use the full blue bar to enter “super power mode.” In this mode, a Ranger’s attacks are performed at a much faster rate, making combat a much more enjoyable experience. Of course, this mode only lasts as long as a player has blue bar, and the bar continually depletes once this mode is activated. But that’s not all! The blue bar is also used for other special abilities, such as firing a massive, screen covering weapon blast or using cooperative team abilities. Yes, all of these wonderful mechanics, all assigned to a single, confusing blue bar. Truly, a triumph of UI design…
But enough on that. As I’ve been mentioning, there is the ability to level up your Ranger, and gain access to new abilities. This almost would have made the game fun. Leveling up a character gives “Ranger Coins” which can be spent to unlock abilities via a tech tree. A fairly standard video game trope, but not one often seen in a Brawler. I actually thought this was a rather fun touch, and if it wasn’t plagued with issues, I would have really liked it.
The first problem with leveling is that it takes an eternity to even get to level two. There are only six stages in the game. It’s not a large game. And the max character level is eleven. For such a small game, leveling should have been easy. But no, it is a painful slog. Defeated enemies drop XP orbs (as stated before), these XP orbs fill up the XP bar at such a slow pace, that I didn’t even know what the XP bar was until I was roughly 1/4 of the way to level two. And had it not been for two secret areas that I found, that gave an inexplicably large amount of XP in the game, I never would have even reached max level before the game had finished. Most bizarrely of all though, once max level is reached, the level resets to level one! There is no explanation or reasoning behind this. No progress is lost, the tech tree is still full, but your level is no longer at its max. And it makes no sense…
Make no mistake about it, leveling is crucial. Given the tech trees, you are given a choice of what to level first. However, that choice is sort of made for you, as the game can get very hard if you don’t first level up your attack power, health, and defense. Leaving all the “fun” level abilities (like new combo attacks and special moves) locked until much later. Of course, once you do unlock those new abilities, it doesn’t change the fact that they’ll most often not work as intended, because combat and movement will forever be slow and stilted.
And then of course, perhaps the most baffling design decision of all: You can’t access the tech tree’s whenever it’s convenient. The only way to access the tech tree, to make use of the levels you’ve gained, is by randomly stumbling upon Alpha 5, located in the game’s various stages… Who on earth thought that this was a good decision? The tech tree could have and should have just been something accessible from the pause menu. But no, instead, you have to play through a portion of a random stage, and hope that you can make use of Alpha 5 when you find him…
This is all truly a shame, because underneath all this garbage, I can see hints of a game that would have been a lot of fun, had it received a little more polish and good ol’ iteration. There are times when the level design is fun, and is reminiscent of some of gaming’s best Brawlers. When new enemies finally do show up, their designs are varied and unique. Each one has a different approach to taking them out (some are weak only to aerial attacks, while some can only be taken down by counter attacks, for example), and I found it actually kind of fun to learn these tactics.
The boss fights were especially well designed. Each boss had a set pattern of attacks, and while never overly challenging, it still took a bit of learning before I could properly mount an offensive. They were, more often than not, clever and fun. Until they grew, that is. Yes in true Power Rangers fashion, after fighting a boss in Ranger mode, the monster would grow to ridiculous size. Cue the Megazord! Unfortunately this is where the boss fights fell flat. Because they all boiled down to the same thing. First, the Rangers would fight the now giant boss in the Megazord’s “tank mode.” This played out like a very boring, non moving version of Star Fox. Armed with a targeting reticle, the player would need to shoot “weak points” while destroying energy blasts aimed at the Megazord.
Once the enemy’s health bar was depleted in this section, it would then switch to the Megazord’s “battle mode.” This left the player facing off against the monster, set up like a 2D fighter. Only there would be no fighting in that sense. Instead, all action is relegated to quick time events. Yup… How exciting… Enough successful inputs, and the monster is defeated, the stage completed.
I mourn this game. Because it could have been so much better than it was. The evidence is there. It’s just buried under baffling design decisions and bad implementation.
