Mighty No. 9

There is a germ of a great game at the heart of Mighty No. 9. The central rhythm of barreling through stages and softening up foes with expertly placed shots before zipping in at the perfect moment to collect your reward deserves to be better fleshed out and more thoroughly explored. But it also deserves a game that doesn’t send huge amounts of your progress up the chimney because you got a game-over, a technique that ought to have gone extinct back in the arcade days. It deserves a game that isn’t so tragically generic looking and a soundtrack with at least one song worth whistling.