I'm captivated by Mega Man 9.

See, I was expecting good old-fashioned nostalgia wrapped up in an entirely unfair bow, with the name on the gift tag reading "Cheap Cheap Cheap", an experience that I would indulge in for about an hour or two before admitting defeat and refusing to ever play again.

Instead, so far I see extremely well-designed, very difficult but not unsurmountable levels which each come with tricks or gimmicks. There's the teleportation ring -- oh, and the robot that picks you up and forces you in a direction -- in Galaxy Man's level. There are the corkscrew platforms in Tornado Man's level, the bubbles and flying platforms in Splash Woman's level, and the elephants in Concrete Man's level. Each gimmick gives you a very simple, almost harmless taste of what's to come, and then comes back later in the level much tougher than before. It gives you the opportunity to learn and understand what it is you're supposed to do to pass the level, and if you just sit and watch any given situation for 30 seconds, you'll be able to understand exactly what to do.

Now, granted, I've only been to four of the eight stages thus far, but I'm fully liking what I see so far. I do miss the ability to slide, but other than that, the game is gravy. The boss behaviors are excellent -- they have patterns, but they mix them up a bit, so that you can't just exploit one thing over and over. Remember in Mega Man 2 how you could control when Metal Man attacked, because he would never fire until you did? Remember how you could defeat Heat Man without him ever shooting off fireballs, because every single time you shot him, he would just blaze towards you without doing anything else? So far I've not found any kind of exploitation in Mega Man 9. Yet, you can still see every attack coming with split-second's time, so you're given a (barely) fair shot at escaping whatever it is that's coming your way.

It also deviously plays on what you might expect as a Mega Man veteran. Little things like how Tornado Man's air whisps come up at you a split second after you'd expect them to, so all you really have to do is run from one side of the screen to the other and you wouldn't get hit, except you probably wouldn't do that at first because of previous Mega Man bosses whose attacks homed in on you. Or Splash Woman's bolts that come down at you, except they always come at you where you stand, not where you'll be, so all you have to do is wait and then step out of the way, except you normally wouldn't because -- again -- you're accustomed to those bolts anticipating where you'll be. It's a little confusing to explain -- but when you play it, you feel it.

Mega Man 9 is absolutely fantastic so far, and until I meet my 389675th untimely death at the hands of disappearing blocks, I expect it to continue being fantastic.