Metagal review for PS Vita, PS4, Xbox One, Switch

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Metagal is about a android cyborg girl out to rescue her creator, Dr. Light Ray, who?s been kidnapped by his enemy, Dr. Wily General Creeper. To do so, she has to to fight her way through a series of robot bosses.

In other words, the only thing here that isn?t completely ripped off from Mega Man is that the game has a female main character. And while I get that representation matters…somehow, a thinly veiled reskin doesn?t feel much like progress.

That?s not to say that Metagal is a bad game or anything. It plays exactly as you?d expect Mega Man — or a reasonably close facsimile — to play. It?s a platformer with lots of shooting, with the occasional massive difficulty spike, and with a bunch of differently-themed levels. You can play the first couple of levels in whatever order you want — though if you?re just in it for a Platinum or two (since the PS4 and Vita have separate trophy lists), you can get that in one level and well under half an hour.

But again, the cost of all that is that you?re playing a game that adds pretty much nothing to the Mega Man formula. It?s hardly the worst thing in the world to be a reasonably okay Mega Man clone, but given that the originals are readily available on most platforms, it?s hard to know why you?d want to play Metagal over any of those.

Ratalaika Games provided us with a Metagal PS4/Vita code for review purposes.