Bandai Namco has released Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle for PS4.
It wasn’t too long ago that I decided to scratch a nostalgic itch and watch the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on Netflix. As a kid, Power Rangers could do no wrong. This was a show where dinosaur robots turned into an even bigger robot that sliced up crazy monsters with a sword. For several years my brain was dazzled by the show until I eventually grew up and it became a passing fad.
You might expect that 20 years and a slight increase in maturity would mean that Power Rangers lost all luster. Instead, my Power Rangers marathon made me smile and laugh at how absurd and somewhat brilliant the show actually was. I recognized the massive plot holes and how many jumps in logic were required to process what was really unfolding in the town of Angel Grove. But like the best kind of bad movies, I relished in how delightfully fun it was to soak up.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle makes a stumbling attempt to capture the nostalgia of the show’s original feel, quickly devolving into a hollow attempt as a likely cash-in to the upcoming Power Rangers reboot. Using the original six rangers and other familiar characters from the first couple seasons isn’t enough to make up for painfully repetitive gameplay and a lackluster experience.
Power Rangers games have never been known as a hallmark of television-to-gaming excellence. Nearly every memorable game based on the series lived its life as a side-scrolling beat ‘em up. And I get it, it was often the easiest solution. Power Rangers’ gallery of monsters is one of the most extensive ever considering every week usually meant a new kind of bizarre looking foe to combat with. Slap a different colored skin on your fighter, call them rangers, and have them fight said monsters on a vertical plane. The genre is ripe with cheap tricks that can be applied to nearly any concept or IP.
Twenty years ago it was excusable to brand a game with the Power Rangers name, have it be mildly fun, and sell a decent amount of copies. That was how licensed games worked back then. Fortunately we’ve come a long way from those days and standards have drastically been raised. The Double Dragons and Final Fights and Batmans transformed into Castle Crashers and Viewtiful Joe and Mother Russia Bleeds. Punching and kicking enemies from every side of the screen has evolved in creatively brilliant ways. Rather than borrow an idea from the last decade, developer Bamtang copied and pasted the most general concepts the genre can offer. Players choose their “teenager with attitude” and go to work relentlessly pummeling wave after wave of Putties, the series’ cannon fodder. With only a few combos initially unlocked, these fights take far much longer than they should. After a few hits a Putty Patroller will fall to the ground and take seconds to get back up. And with only a few Putties on screen at a time to beat, levels can slow to a crawl.
Mega Battle makes an initial attempt at diversity by giving each Ranger a handful of stats that differentiate them from one another. Each stage you start out as one of the Angel Grove youths and, after beating some foes, can morph into Ranger form which instantly refills your health, gives you a blaster and a weapon, and not much else. Though different skills and combos can be unlocked for human and Ranger forms, you’re still just mashing one or two buttons to plow through Rita Repulsa’s minions like a bulldozer.
If it was 1994 this kind of gameplay would have felt somewhat inspired. But it’s not. At its core, Mega Battle is just plain repetitive when duking it out with most of the foes players will encounter. Outside of the Putties there are larger enemies that require a slight twist in strategy to defeat but ultimately boil down to the same button mashing. I would have loved to see more of the villains from some of the nearly 100 episodes worth of content that I saw as a kid. These monsters would have looked great in HD and could have added something of a challenge outside of easily disposable grunts.
Near the ends of levels players will encounter a boss, which is one of the few times a recognizable foe comes into play. First it was King Sphinx. However, instead of fighting him head on as a Ranger—much like they did on the show—he had already been grown to massive size by Rita’s ludicrous magic. Okay, so we’re skipping that well-used part of a Power Rangers episode? Everyone knows that the Rangers have to get a taste of a monster at its normal size before it grows to the size of a skyscraper. So the first boss fight of the game lets players fight King Sphinx’s foot and his staff. This is probably one of the most underwhelming ways to kick off a level-ending fight in both a Power Rangers game and any game. His only other attack during this phase is retreating into the background and spewing some kind of harmful energy on the ground. You’ve seen this before of course: dodge the shadows on the ground and you won’t get hit. Well, King Sphinx’s harmful vomit only falls in one place without tracking you, making this attack laughably easy and dull.
Repeat this process for every level in the game and you’ve just about summed up the entirety of Mega Battle. There are times when you won’t actually fight a boss’ appendage but a smaller version of it. Unfortunately, they are still repetitive in their attacks and methods. After the first phase the Rangers summon their Zords into the joined tank mode and must attack a boss’ weakpoints. This could have been a cool shooting gallery section or something along the lines of R-Type or Star Fox. Instead, players are in the cockpit of the Megazord and moving their controller around glowing red circles on the boss, mashing buttons to attack the weakpoint, and shooting at boss projectiles to prevent damage. What a shock, it’s not fun.
Next comes the Gundam-like Megazord battle which starts out like a one-on-one fighting game. But there’s no dodging and no strategy. Not even the button mashing from most of the game is present. Instead, a series of button prompts is shown and players must hit those buttons before a small timer runs out. Do this enough times and the boss is no more. There’s no real spectacle, no real satisfaction. It feels like the game is covering your eyes and leading you blindly through accomplishments.
It’s very puzzling to look at all of the pieces of Mega Battle and how they came together so clumsily. Most of the “Go, go Power Rangers!” theme song is preserved. Familiar audio bits come through and it seems like Bamtang is trying to pay respect to a beloved franchise. But even with the most rose tinted glasses, Mega Battle feels like a bargain bin Wii title or an exceptionally made flash game that you could find on Newgrounds. The Megazord sections hint that different mechanics and genre conventions could have been used but it would have costed too much money and time and the easy route was taken. Even as a retelling of the first few seasons of Power Rangers, Mega Battle fails to feel the slightest bit inspired.
What truly seals the concept that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle is a half-baked attempt at making a licensed game is the lack of online multiplayer. The game features local co-op which has the potential to salvage the few threads of enjoyment one can get from the game. Rather than being given one life—which is ridiculous for solo players, because death means starting a level over—friends can revive each other. But during the Megazord fight each player has to nail the button presses or fail the sequence.
Online co-op would have at least given a few friends an excuse to buy the game and mash through some memories. Even the trophy list is one of the most pathetic I’ve ever seen. Maybe Bandai Namco and Bamtang meant well with Mega Battle but it’s really hard to imagine. The game lacks almost everything that made the show such a sensation when I was a kid. Mega Battle is so hindered by mediocrity that I find it hard to say it’s a truly awful or bad game. I was frequently disappointed by the lack of creativity and wasted potential. There are so many games available today that take old concepts and dust them off with love. Mega Battle is not one of those. It’s not Morphenomenal. It’s not Morphenawful. It’s just Meh.
Score: 6.5 out of 10
Reviewed for PS4