Not quite a return to greatness, but still enjoyable.
The Metal Slug series—if you are
unfamiliar—takes the game play of Contra
to comic book extremes. Run to the right shooting everything
that moves, collect better weapons and vehicles along
the way and fight a huge "boss" monster or vehicle.
Rinse and repeat. Oh yeah, and die many, many times!
While that may sound formulaic, what makes Metal
Slug games so much fun is their humor, variety,
crazy over-the-top 2D animation and attention to detail.
Metal Slug 5 is the sixth and final Slug
game on Neo-Geo, so let's see how it compares to its predecessors.
Many of the past Slug games reused character sprites and
backgrounds. So I'm happy to report that Metal
Slug 5 has several all new enemies and environments,
including masked tribemen and some cool "black-ops"
soldiers. However, the backgrounds often lack the little
animations and details of previous games.
The music in this game is excellent, ranging from Heavy
Metal to even cowboy country/western.
One of the highlights of this series has always been the
cool vehicles—or Slugs—your character can
drive. Several of the previous vehicles return (i.e. the
sub, the tank and the jet) as well a few new ones (including
my favorite: the Slug Gunner—a mecha robot tank hybrid).
In terms of game play, A new evasive sliding move has
been added. The branching paths of the previous two games
have been removed making for a shorter more linear experience.
While story has never been a big part of the Metal
Slug games, by the end you often got a good idea
of who you were fighting and why. Sadly, while this game
sets up some interesting story elements like the possessed
mask and the "evil" versions of the Slug vehicles,
the last boss is fun, but really doesn't make much sense.
Overall Metal Slug 5 is fun, but is lacking
some of the variety, depth and attention to detail of
the best Metal Slugs. I recommend getting
either the excellent Metal Slug 3 or
the original Metal Slug first.
2010 ben langberg, all rights reserved.