Dust Man

Oh, Dust Man. It starts out innocently enough, I guess. A good example of a 'randomized' stage hazard done well, obstacles can fall in any configuration and the type is chosen randomly as well. Critically, and what keeps it from being Sting Chameleon's asinine attempt at this concept, is that debris will never fall directly above Mega Man's head. This starts off fairly tepid and uninteresting with primarily flat terrain, but it becomes progressively more convoluted with first passive, then aggressive enemy layout, increasing terrain changes and a surprise or two with the conveyor belt. Again, a sadly rare consideration: introducing your hazard before getting complex with it. The types of debris that can fall include explosive carts, regular junk blocks, invincible spiked wheels and, my favorite touch, an exceedingly rare Metal Blade that will instantly kill Mega Man if he's stupid enough to touch it. It's funny and it's so uncommon that you can afford it.

The second screen is a nice idea too; it's just a glorified time bomb but the notion of an incinerator fits the level theme. This is par for the course, but this stage really is well-developed thematically from an aesthetic standpoint. Like Drill Man's stage, it also has its good share of gimmicks that conform to that theme. The difference is one of these gimmicks is absolutely atrocious. For the incinerator, the heat gauge acts as your timer. If it fills, you've got about a five to six second window before Mega Man takes enough damage from the heat to kick the bucket. You're given a generous window to work with, and it ends up leaving the affair feeling half-formed. I think more terrain-based obstacles might've been more interesting than what amount to shot eaters. There's nothing wrong with the section, it just could've had more done with it. Might've benefited from a less vibrant graphic, too. The next screen is an inconsequential segue and nothing more.

This next stretch is another race-the-obstacle affair and more immediately threatening than the incinerator, but it goes too far in its congestion in one manner and its associate obstacles aren't really obstacles at all with a decent trigger finger. One thing that kills the potential here somewhat is the fact that he gave this compactor rubber banding. It should move at a set pace independent of Mega Man, but instead it will only trail a set distance behind him before speeding up to match that distance. It leaves the situation feeling less in your control and as such, the tension feels less authentic. Still, like the last, there's nothing overtly wrong with this section. It serves its purpose and there is a bit of challenge in that you need to watch for projectiles from the totem poles. Where it oversteps somewhat is in the flies that patrol the air, because their projectile drops are randomly distributed, leaving you a bit at the mercy of luck. It's not severe enough to scrap the whole concept, but it doesn't help it, either. If nothing else, I really like that set of crushers for some reason. Something about the look and animation sells me on the sequence.

The next section is interesting enough to excuse the tired doubling back idea. It turns what are at first harmless enemies into progressively bigger threats as you descend each level, including enemies you had just finished mindlessly plowing through. You need to be considered in how you speed through this. Pick a blind rate and run with it and some form of debris is going to hit you. The block summoners in particular need to be taken out quickly, because as soon as they catch one, they're invulnerable until they break it. There's some goodies hidden on the far right but they don't interest me.

Unfortunately nearly everything acceptable or good about this stage is almost totally invalidated by the bad taste left by what's undoubtedly the dumbest thing in this game. These completely random junk blocks fly into the room like Zelda floor tiles from hell, and there are so many misfires in the way this assault is handled it's hard to keep track of them all. One, the blocks are totally invulnerable. Two, though a visual distinction is attempted between ones that will fly straight and ones that will home in on Mega Man (these spin faster), slower spinning ones can become homing ones midflight at random. Three, these homing blocks can lock on Mega Man's position and head his way at random moments within their flight. Four, if you get trapped in a one block space, you are instantly killed. Five, it goes on way too fucking long. Six, the order of placement is haphazard past the point of strategy. One or two of these things might not spell trouble on their own, but combined they spell out "fuck you". There is absolutely no prediction, planning or dependable reaction to be had here, the worst kind of design. Sure, on their own merits these are reasonable to dodge. In fact, if you kept basically every listed misfire and added one caveat - that the blocks continue offscreen after homing in on Mega Man or flying straight - you could have a challenging but doable reflex gauntlet. But you're left at the mercy of pure dumb luck. The only dependable way to handle this room is to dodge what comes your way as best you can and hope the opportunity to get yourself stuck presents itself before the layout of the blocks makes dodging impossible. It's a dreadfully botched execution of not-too-keen an idea to begin with and I'd rather forget it transpired, if it weren't for the pain it provides being a perfect segue to the equally appalling boss.

Dust Man is probably the worst designed Robot Master. Certainly he's the most aggravating and least fun to fight. Dodging this guy's assault is a complete crapshoot, and much like that little trek in Skull Man's stage, the entire fight's quality is upended by one dumb inclusion that shouldn't have been made. His AI is nothing special: he'll fire a dust block, then starting sucking both you and offscreen dust blocks toward him. These come straight, high or low and he always pulls in four before his next attack. Keeping proper distance makes this perfectly reasonable to dodge. Just don't get too close to Dust Man, or he'll quite literally recycle you, releasing you in a tank that you'd better mash quickly to bust out of, or he'll gladly throw you into the fire and kill you outright. I really like that touch, it's amusing.

Dust Man will pause briefly and then start blasting out shards of debris from the blocks he just sucked in, while at the same time pushing you toward the wall with a strong gust of wind. Trying to fight this is basically useless so you'll need to do your dodging from a prone position. The debris comes in semi-random configurations that are selected between a limited number of patterns, but either way you slice it, you have enough time to dodge accordingly. This third attack is creative, involved to dodge and consistent, nothing wrong with this at all. As you can tell from my fight, Dust Man is another boss who's merely an arbiter of his projectiles. His body does nothing to you.

There are a couple of actions Dust Man can choose after he's done blowing out his debris. He can either fire a normal dust block shortly before the attack concludes, which is well telegraphed by his sprite's animations, or he simply can jump to the other side of the screen and either fire a dust block or begin suction again. Once he loses a third of his health, he augments his dust block shots by firing two in short succession, and he can also do this when firing them after a blowing attack, which is really disconcerting. Once he enrages, Dust Man becomes a nightmare.

He now fires three Dust Blocks in quick succession which makes for a nearly unfathomable mess when combined with his blowing, and his suction attack gains a severe boost in strength, meaning you need to be an appropriate distance from him when it begins and be much more deliberate in dodging the four blocks that come in from offscreen, because at your strongest resistance, the suction is still strong enough to gradually pull you toward him.

Now, this sounds like the makings for another high-octane, difficult, developed fight, so what's the kicker? Well, it involves how he's programmed Dust Man's blocks. Unlike the original Dust Man, this one's blocks will not separate when at Mega Man's position, but rather wherever his position was the moment they were fired, regardless of where he travels after this fact. That's fine, in fact, that better services working out a way to dodge them while dealing with his other attacks. The problem is that when these dust blocks split, they split in absolutely arbitrary directions.

This makes the entire battle useless. I cannot wrap my mind around why this was done. It serves to do nothing but invalidate a complex boss fight and transform it into a series of dice rolls. There's no proximity or timing-based trigger to where the split blocks will travel. It's random at its worst, which means you have absolutely zero assured way of dodging them 100% of the time. Now go back and assess the various situations these blocks crop up in, often in quick succession with each other, and you'll quickly start to realize just how monumentally unfun and unworkable this fight becomes.

To work out a strategy that afforded me the best odds took almost two hours of practice, and in that time, dodging his consistent behaviors become muscle memory. In the end, I reasoned that either being near to Dust Man when he fired and sliding away from each dust block gradually or sliding under one with enough clearance between it and the place it would split gave me the best odds of dodging each one's debris. I'd average it at about a 4/5 chance. The only configuration that would guarantee a hit would be if it split in a perfect cross. This requires a bit of reworking when he enrages and fires three blocks at once, and involves a really specific and relatively precise slide, jump, slide maneuver that might've gone properly 1/3rd of the time if I'm generous. It's not the sort of attack that can afford to be seen more than once, which means managing his health to allow him to be killed before he got a chance to fire another set was essential. Of course, the immediately evident problem in all of this optimizing is the fact that the amount of times you'll need to roll the dice against his dust blocks varies depending on how often he decides to volley them off after his blowing attack, or jump and then volley them off, rather than just jump and begin his suction attack again. When it all boils down, I'd say that my numerous practice runs after an approach had been hammered out saw this fight go correctly about 1/4th of the time.

Combine this with the considerable luck needed in the previous room and you have a recipe for most obnoxious segment in the entire challenge, and I doubt this stage would survive scrutiny by people playing it under any metric. These two complete messes in quick succession are junk by any standards, and Dust Man deserves his lackluster title entirely.