Metal Slug

Metal Slug: Rated T
Developers: Nazca Corporation and SNK
Publishers: Nazca Corporation and SNK


Story:

Usually with old games like these, you wait until the title screen shows up and wait a little while for the story to come up. So I waited and it only did the intro again and again. So I went into the Operations Guild to see if it was there.

In the year 20XX, General Morden enacts his plan to seize control of the world in a global military coup. Morden accomplish his goal in about 170 hours. The major cities of the world are subjected. The army was destroyed by a surprise attack, but a few soldiers survived and decided to form a resistance. They started building their military strength while trying to find an opportunity to strike back.

But one day, Morden’s troops found where these people were hiding and were attacked. Morden’s troops confiscated several prototypes of the new secret weapon the army was building, Super Vehicle 001, or Metal Slug.

There could be no further delay. The army deployed it’s elite commando squad, The Peregrine Falcons, and gave them a mission: Retrieve the stolen secret Metal Slug prototypes or, should the need arise, destroy them.

For this critical mission, two soldiers named Marco and Tarma were selected.


Graphics:

The graphics are really good for a Neo Geo game. Neo Geo had about 16 – 32 bits of Graphics for the console. The colors are very bright, colorful and actually very detailed. I’m not sure how else to explain the graphics. It’s very cartoon-like, if you like that kinda stuff, the expressions on peoples faces and the way they move are the way a cartoonish shooter should be like and it’s very smooth.


Music/Sound:

The music in this game is alright. It’s nothing special, it won’t be one OST’s that catch your attention and get’s stuck in your head, but it’s very fitting. The only one that stands out to me is the final stage, but that’s only because the Final Stage is so hard that you’ll be listening to it for so long until you actually beat the level. But the Final Stage Music is nothing that I’d put on my iPod or anything, it has a nice beat to it, but that’s about it.

It’s hard to describe what kind of music this game uses. To me it’s kind of a mix between Rock and Techno. But what I really like about the music is that it’s very fitting with the game and it’ll get you excited to play this game. It is very fitting for a War game. Sound in this game is good, Gun shots are realistic, people scream in pain when you shoot them, if you slash them with a knife, you can hear the blood gushing out, ect. But because there is so much stuff going on in this game, it’ll be a lot louder than any normal game. It isn’t really a bad thing, I’d just turn my TV down.


Controls/Gameplay:

The controls are simple. (VC controller) B is to Shoot (Or knife someone if they’re close), A is to jump, Y is to throw grenades, Left and Right on the D-Pad do what you would expect, and Up and Down are to shoot in those directions. Usually in Run and Gun games, you’d just press a direction on the D-Pad and hold down the shoot button and Jump, Aim in another direction, or Throw an item when necessary. In this game, however, there are enemies EVERYWHERE! You can’t afford to just keep running in one direction; you have to make sure everything is dead on the screen or you’ll die. It’s so much fun NS:)

I do have a slight problem with the aiming in this game though. You know how in Metroid games you can press R, or even press Up and Left/Right at the same time, and it would aim diagonally? In this game you can only aim Sideways and up, and down if you’re in the air. If it’s too dangerous to go under some guy above the ground to shoot him because of something he’s doing, you have to press B as fast as you can and press up and hopefully a single bullet will shoot diagonally and hit him.

And, like almost everything Run and Gun game, the game has Multiplayer. Multiplayer makes the game so much easier since there are so many enemies in this game trying to kill you. But this isn’t saying much because the game is still very hard, even with 2 people. I played this game alone and only got to about the 4th level before giving up and asking LaTerry if he wanted to play the game with me. After playing alone and with somebody else, I can confidently say that the game is a lot more enjoyable with Multiplayer. We probably would have played the game for a few more hours if it weren’t for the length of this game.


Misc:

The biggest problem I have with this game is its’ length. There are only 6 Stages in this game, with a checkpoint in each level, a Mini boss in some levels, and a Boss at the end of every level. It’s a shame because LaTerry and I were having so much fun and were starting to get really into it before beating it. With only 6 Stages, it makes you wonder if this game is worth 9 bucks.

There aren’t many options or modes in this game. At the title screen you can go into options. There, you can choose the level of difficulty you want (Easy, Normal, Hard, and MVS, whatever that is). Below difficulty settings in how many lives you want, making the game even easier if you suck at it, you can have up to 5 lives.

As for difficulty: you’ve read already in my review that even with 2 players it’s very hard. Well, I’ve only played this game on the Easy difficulty setting, and LaTerry and I got over 5 game overs, which is a lot considering that we had 5 lives and 5 continues. A few hours ago I tried on the hardest difficulty. I was afraid I was going to die if I even blinked there were so many things trying to kill me! There were 3 times as many enemies, grenades flying from everywhere, bullets coming from every direction, it was just a mess. I’d like to see someone doing this, because it’s just plain impossible.

I have a mixed opinion about Replay Value. I haven’t seriously played it since the day I bought it and beat it. But I partially blame Brawl for that. I could see myself playing it again sometime in the near future and having a ton of fun with it. It’s just that when I feel like playing a game that involves shooting things, I’d rather play Mega Man or Contra, but that’s just me.

Score: 8.2