Don't get me wrong, I love my Mega Man, but he's been through a lot of games over the years.

• Mega Man 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ,7 ,8, and 9.
• Mega Man X, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6, X7, and X8.
• Mega Man Zero, Zero 2, Zero 3, and Zero 4.
• Mega Man Battle Network 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

There are even more I haven't mentioned, but this should serve as enough of an example. So, Mega Man ZX? I was under the impression you play as a fusion of Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero, but this turned out to be a glorified version of another game from the Mega Man Zero series.

I had played the original Zero game during high-school and beat it, but also vowed to never again play a Zero game due to its incredibly huge difficulty. Unfortunately, this game just tricked me into playing one. Even though you start off as a Mega Man X at the beginning of the game, it's not long before you fuse with the Z biometal to become ZX. How does ZX play any different than Zero? I couldn't tell you.

But instead of defeating bosses to obtain their weapon, you now obtain their biometal. Rather than the bosses having ridiculous names such as "Optic Sunflower" and "Bamboo Pandamonium" (I didn't make those up), they now have really original names such as "P" and "L."

Earning their biometal allows you to transform into different X models - each with their own special strengths. There are five total: Zx, Hx, Fx, Lx, and Px. You can switch to these forms on the fly at any time, none of which require ammo unless you specifically use your charged-up weapons.

One of the few times the bottom screen is even used.

Don't be fooled, you only get to play as X for the introduction of the game.

Although it was nice to have multiple forms to take on different situations, I found myself generally only using the same one or two. It was certainly a matter of preference, and no matter how much I wanted to use Fx's guns, I was always stuck with Hx's double swords since its mid-air dash was a must have at any given moment for me.

The bosses were interesting, but there's been so many of them over time in Mega Man games that they're just starting to go numb. None of them seem important anymore, because I know they'll simply fall into the history with the other 200 before them.

The most frustrating aspect of this title was simply getting from area to area. Traditional Mega Man titles have you pick a boss, and then it would dump you in the level. In ZX you accept a "mission" which tells you where to go, M-2 for example. Okay great, I guess I'll just go to M-1 first. Oh wait, I haven't even found an area labeled with an M yet. Well maybe its connected to L? No, because H is connected to C and G is connected to D. So trying to just find where it is I need to go is unnecessarily difficult. All I would tend to do is wander around from area to area looking for that one unlabeled stray door that would take me to where I needed to go. Once I got there though, I could enjoy the game again.

If you're a bigger fan of Zero than X, then this game's for you. What I was hoping for (lots of buster-action) turned out to be dominantly sword play, which isn't quite my style for Mega Man. ZX isn't as hard as I remember Mega Man Zero being, but some of the last battles you have are unbelievably difficult. I don't know how they considered this difficulty correctly labeled as "Normal," but whoever sees it as such must not be very challenged by other games.

Overall I liked it, but it's just not enough of a change for me to consider it a separate series.

Verdict: Fun, but very difficult. Made for Zero fans.