Okay, okay. Stop the train, put on the breaks. This podcast listening experience cannot continue until I have spoken my mind. I ended up deciding not to post the "Fez is boring trite" post, but James Jones, you have spoken the fightin' words.
For what had to be worked with, Mega Man X8 is pretty awesome. I'd say it's better than X2 or X3, even. yeah, that's right. Crystal Snail and Magna Centipede can go **** themselves.
Mega Man X8 was Inafune coming back to a house the rest of Capcom fucked straight in the ass for two games and having to fix the mess, and it worked pretty well. they limited anything having to actually do with 3D to something that essentially equated to Space Harrier and had solid 2D gameplay where Axl didn't feel like a complete waste of space like he did in X7.
Network Transmission, however, is a game I cannot come to it's defense, as it is a game I bought when I sold Animal Crossing when I realized I had given away one of my best Yugioh cards to my friend for 7.5 million bells and that all it did was eliminate any and all purpose from the game. I saw Network Transmission in a bargain bin at Gamestop and gave it a shot, as an online friend convinced me that Battle networks 1, 2, and 3 were worth a damn.
Network Transmission was most certainly not, as it was far stiffer and slower paced then it's NES bretheren, and the buster wasn't worth **** so they could promote you using your chips, which often meant downtime while you wait for your custom gauge to fill. not downtime while dodging enemies, just... sitting around with your thumb up your ass. doubly so if you didn't hit the elemental weakness of the boss you're coming up to in your chip deck... I got stuck at Fireman.exe for hours because I couldn't figure out what the hell was with the hitbox on his flamethrower attack, and I didn't think to just wait in front of his boss door until I got a lucky shot and ended up getting bubbler chips on my custom screen to go in with and try to just brute force the boss.
but yeah, Mighty No. 9 is actually looking pretty good, in all honesty. it's got a bit of what you're talking about with Azure Striker Gunvolt where you're not so much shooting enemies as you're tagging them... the only difference is that the tagged enemies in Mighty no. 9 need only be dashed into to instantly killed rather than electrocuted for a period of time.