Mega Man X7 brings what should be a breath of fresh air to the series, with the addition of 3D sequences and a new playable character, while tossing out some of the annoying "features" added to previous Mega Man X titles, like random stages and time limits. Unfortunately, the move to 3D comes with pop-up, a wonky lock-on system, gummy controls, and some abysmal hit detection.

The story is pretty thin, but this isn't exactly a surprise. Axl, the new guy, is fleeing his old organization, Red Alert, after it inexplicably turned to evil. The leader of Red Alert, creatively named "Red," challenges Zero and Axl to defeat...wait for it...eight rogue Reploids, as part of an exceedingly poorly-worded challenge. Of course, the recent strange actions on the part of Red Alert might be being caused by a familiar face from the other six games in the series...

In Mega Man tradition, the intrepid heroes need to go through eight pretty standard platformer stages to defeat the eight different bosses, each of whom has a poorly-translated name like Tornado Tonion or Splash Warfly. After defeating a boss, the heroes gain a new weapon, which (theoretically) will be useful for defeating a different boss.

All in all, the story isn't delivered terribly effectively and has no surprises at all in store. What's more, it is diluted further by horrible scripting and horrible voice-acting. Not only are the cut-scenes unnecessary to understand the story, but they actively ruin the mood, doing a lot to sabotage any sense of immersion. While this shouldn't come as any surprise to those who have played previous Mega Man titles (particularly Mega Man 8), MMX7 is even more invasive, as many of the bosses yell out obnoxious things as they attack.

One story quirk is that X, the titular hero, isn't playable until a quarter of the way into the game. One he is added, the player chooses two of the three heroes, and can switch between those two on the fly. X is much like X has always been with his charge-up X Buster and the ability to use defeated enemies' weapons, Zero has his (totally useless; more on this below) saber and some Mega Man X4-style moves, Axl has a full-auto handgun supplemented with new guns gained from defeated enemies and the (useless) ability to steal the appearance of certain rank-and-file enemies.

While X and Zero are much like their previous incarnations, Axl is a breath of fresh air, despite being inconsistently implemented. Axl lends himself to a run-and-gun playing style, and will definitely appeal to any player who ever played a previous Mega Man title with a turbo controller for shooting. Everything else about him is a mishmash of poorly implemented ideas, though. For example, when Axl equips some weapons, his handgun is replaced with a new weapon, like a heavy sidearm or a raygun. For some reason, only some weapons change his handgun, with no rhyme or reason to the choices. This could've made Axl stand out more (as X can upgrade his X Buster to full-auto), but Capcom failed to deliver.

Additionally, Axl has the ability to steal the appearance of rank-and-file enemies, but to do this he needs to kill them with a weak, slow-to-charge attack, then grab a glowing power-up. After doing all this, Axl gets...basically nothing. In copy mode, he loses any real ability to attack, and most of the copy forms have annoying limitations like slow movement, no ability to dash, short jumps, etc. Only two stages ever use copy form for anything important, and it isn't much needed to finish the game.

The Mega Man X series' tradition of power-ups hidden in every stage is back, in a slightly different form. While the heart tanks, sub-tanks, X's body part capsules are back, every stage also has hostage Reploids who need rescuing. Rescuing Reploids gives the player power-ups after the battle, including increases in the size of the life and weapon energy bars, 1-ups, and chips (which give various customizable powerups.) Mega Man X7 is, unfortunately, missing a very good difficulty curve because of the power-ups this time around; the beginning is punishingly hard, but about halfway through, everything starts getting very, very easy, until the punishingly hard final area.

While taking the series to 3D would normally be a good way to shake up this stagnant series, Mega Man X7 brings back flaws that were put to rest with the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. For one, the camera is a joke, even in 2D. The camera has a tendency to not center on the player, even in 2D or 3D fixed-camera mode, making it hard to tell what might be coming up. Even worse, the camera focuses in too close in both 3D modes, leading to lots of accidental contact with enemies, energy blasts from off screen, and, worst of all, unseen pits. There isn't even a first-person mode to look around or look ahead.

On the rare occasion the camera does allow a decent look ahead, it's useless. All enemies, powerups, and hostages(!) teleport into the stage as soon as Zero, X, or Axl gets close. (If the hostages are teleporting in, why can't they just teleport out?) This is clearly an attempt to deal with pop-up, and it's exceedingly annoying, as enemies can teleport in above or even on top of the player, making it very difficult to avoid getting hurt.

While the new elements only hurt X7, the things the Mega Man series is known for are out the door, as well. Out the door is the series' pixel-perfect play control. Trying to control X, Axl, or Zero is an exercise in frustration; it's easy to accidentally run off a cliff, and difficult to try to wall-jump or keep a gun locked onto an enemy. Trying to use Zero is especially infuriating, as the abysmal hit detection mean that it's practically impossible to get close enough to an enemy to attack with Zero's saber without getting hit, assuming Zero even reacts to the command to attack.

The attractive, iconic character sprites Capcom's 2D games have been known for in the past are also gone, out the window as part of the move to 3D. The main characters, X, Zero, and Axl, are decent, as such things go; some effort was expended to make them look like the hand-drawn cel-style characters from the cut-scenes. (Only a handful of scenes have FMV cut-scenes; the rest of them, done as slideshows, could easily have been executed on the PSX.) That's the only good-looking part of X7, though, as the enemies blur together and blur into the background. Even worse, at least two stages have Reploids in need of rescue that look exactly like the enemies, leading to not-so-fun trial and error to tell what should be tagged and what should be shot.

Mega Man X7 has some normally-tolerable flaws that have no place in such an undemanding game. The stages are short and undetailed, the music loops quickly, and there aren't many different enemies. Why on earth is there as much as a full minute of load time before some stages? Even worse, why is there load time before some menus? This is acceptable for games using 2D graphics, large stages, or other major memory drains, but MMX7 shouldn't have any load time.

Even worse than the load time are the framedrops. Many boss fights degenerate into slideshows, especially when using Axl. This compounds the iffy controls already plaguing X7, and makes several fights unreasonably unfair. If this were a PC title or X7 pushed the envelope graphically, this could be brushed off, but X7 is an ugly, simple game. Why does it run so poorly?

While there are lots of major screwups, there are lots of minor ones, too. Text scrolls too slowly. It's not possible to dash-jump and gain any height when wall-jumping. Some walls are wall-jumpable and some aren't, with no clear difference. The enemies drop power-ups very rarely, making it difficult to recharge or fill a subtank. Hostage reploids frequently teleport directly into a dire situation, requiring that the player already know where they appear to have any chance of rescuing them. The bosses' weaknesses aren't very significant, so there is no need to finish the stages in any kind of order. There's probably more, as well. Mega Man X7 has more flaws than could ever be fit into one review. With all that against it, why on earth would anyone, the most diehard of Mega Man fans included, want to play it?