20XX. A Mega Man inspiration

20XX is a action platformer developed by ‘BatteryStaple Games‘. It’s coming out on the Xbox One the 11th of July, PS4 and Nintendo Switch the 10th of July but already out on PC. Now 20XX has been heavily inspired by Mega Man and it’s clear but do they have more to offer? let’s take a look.

There isn’t much of a story in 20XX. Basically players are fighting to save the human race (maybe). We say maybe because that what the developers keep putting after that sentence. So are we the good guys? What’s really going on here? Guess you’ll have to play to find out. Just like Mega Man X players must run, jump, shoot and blast their way through enemies and levels. 20XX does offer gamers a bit more though.

20XX is also rougelike. You know what that means. Yes, the levels are all random and always changing. 20XX uses procedural level generation algorithm that combines different game mechanics to also change  how players handle each level. Some levels will have more emphasis on combat while another may be heavy in platforming like timing jumps. The more difficult ones will be the combination of heavy platforming and dangerous combat. 

Like any good rough like game there are many power ups and all are random as well. There are over 100 power ups. As you play through 20XX players will earn soul chips, which can be used to expand the pool of items you can find and get powerful upgrades which are permanent. You can also buy upgrades back at your HQ to make future runs easier. By way did we mention ‘die’?

Dying is the last thing you want to do in 20XX (duh) because there is permanent death too. Once you die, yes you go back to HQ for the opportunity to buy upgrades but you will have to start again. Like Spelunky. It gets better. Players have the options of playing different modes and there are difficulty modifiers too. So like with the skulls in Halo players can really change up the game to some extend to make things easier or super challenging. 

20XX’s biggest feature and the thing that gets people’s attention is it’s multiplayer. Yep. Full co-op for all gameplay features both locally and online. So get that gaming couch out and call that friend over. You have some blasting and jumping to do together. Lastly to keep things flowing and give players objectives there are weekly and daily challenges. 

We checked out some gameplay and it’s what we thought it would be. We do love the power ups though. like the sharp sharp spear which has more range and damage. The Pollster boss looks simple and dumb at first but then things escalate real fast with him killing first time players almost too quickly. It’s all good and done very well. 20XX definitely got the Mega Man look and feeling down and as it’s more modern looks like it did a better job than Mega Man its self.

Overall 20XX looks like an awesome game. If you are a fan of Mega Man then you will love 20XX. The graphics and sounds are excellent. The game flows smoothly and the controls are said to be very good indeed. The level designs are quite clever with platforming, enemies and even traps. The developers ‘BatteryStaple Games’ did an fantastic job with this game. We at X345 Earthwalker look forward to seeing this come to consoles. Now 20XX may have been inspired but way more have been inspired by… the ‘Earth Walk!’