There was an age when games could be mastered with the use of merely three buttons. There was an age when games did not have stunning cut scenes that propelled the storyline. This was the age of arcade games, where a quarter or two would buy you several minutes worth of engaging action. Over the years arcades have lost popularity due to the emerging popularity of home consoles, but several classic arcade game franchises just won’t go away. One such franchise is SNK’s Metal Slug series, arguably the most recognizable 2D side-scrolling action series of all-time. Following the release of Metal Slug 3 for the Xbox in 2004, SNK has delivered another portion of Metal Slug goodness with the release of Metal Slug 4 & 5.
Metal Slug 4 and Metal Slug 5 are two entirely different games, each on a separate disc, yet SNK has bundled the two titles together. In Metal Slug 4, the cyber-terrorists group Amadeus is about to unleash an internet virus that will take control of numerous military systems across the world. It is your duty to halt the distribution of the virus and take out Amadeus at once. In Metal Slug 5, the Ptolemaic Army has stolen a disc full of Metal Slug secrets from a research facility that is developing the newest Metal Slugs. You must regain the Metal Slug secrets and destroy the Ptolemaic Army before it is too late. In all honesty, however, the storyline does not matter much in this type of game.
The Metal Slug series is all about simplicity, as evidenced by the straightforward control scheme. The X button is used for firing weapons, the B button is used for throwing grenades, A is for jumping, Y is for the Metal Slug Attack that applies only to vehicles, while the directional pad or the left analog stick can be used for moving left/right, crouching and aiming in a certain direction. In both games, you simply pick one of four characters (they differ only by appearance), select a stage, and the run-and-gun mayhem ensues.
The Metal Slug games have always been 2D side-scrolling shooters, and a shooter is exactly what this is. If you see something that is moving on the screen, I recommend you shoot it… quickly. Enemies appear out of everywhere and come in all shapes and sizes. From pirates to mummies to snow monsters to zombies to militia to tanks helicopters, nothing should surprise you. The further you progress, the more enemies there are until eventually you come face-to-face with the stage boss. Boss fights are epic and make certain stages stand out more than others. Throughout each stage, you will also come across numerous upgrades. At the outset of every level, you start off with a simple handgun, which turns into a bayonet if an enemy is very close to you, along with 10 grenades. But as you encounter Prisoners of War, men with scraggly beards clothed in diapers, and as you defeat certain enemies, upgrades and items will come to your possession. Items generally only add a few thousand points to your score, while upgrades will temporarily enhance your weapon from a handgun to a shotgun, heavy machine gun, rocket launcher, or a myriad of other weapons or provide you with more projectile weapons.
To mix things up a bit, at various points in the games there are Metal Slugs, which are vehicles that you can operate. These vehicles dole out a lot of damage and can withstand three direct hits, but after that you will have to evacuate right away. By pressing the A button and the left trigger, you will shoot out of the metal and your Slug will perform suicide by blowing itself up and doing massive damage to the enemy that it was directed to. Metal Slug 4 & 5 have a few subtle differences, with different Metal Slugs being one of them. As a matter of fact, it seems that enemies and items are more varied and interesting in Metal Slug 5 altogether. Although unfortunately, Metal Slug 5 consists of five stages, which is one less than Metal Slug 4’s six challenging stages. Another difference is that in Metal Slug 5, you are able to perform the slide and the sliding shot, which come in quite useful at times. Despite Metal Slug 5 being the better portion of the bundle, I thoroughly enjoyed the zombie portions of Metal Slug 4, as you yourself could be turned into a zombie and are forced to projectile-vomit blood as your weapon.
It is also possible to have the double the fun, as both games have a co-op mode. At any point in the game, a second player can join in on the action for some multi-player mayhem. When I saw the Xbox Live online enabled sign on the game’s cover, I was excited at the thought of being able to play through the games in co-op mode via Xbox Live. Alas, it isn’t so. The only Xbox Live feature is the ability to post your high scores to the Xbox Live leader boards to see where you rank. The lack of an online mode really hurts the replay value of this game. The real problem with Metal Slug 4 & 5 is the unlimited continue system. Metal Slug 3 for the Xbox was a very challenging game because you were only given five continues after you had lost all of your lives. After the five continues, it was game over. Since stages are very long, Metal Slug 3 was an insanely challenging game. You had to be cautious, you had to memorize enemy attack patterns and you had to have a strategy when you reached the boss fights. In a way this made the game too much of a challenge for many people and complaints about this echoed. This time around, SNK decided to have an unlimited amount of continues. Consequently, you can blast through each of the two games in roughly one hour maximum. What’s the point of crouching and being careful to conserve lives if you can now blast through the game with unlimited lives? This really detracts from the essence of the Metal Slug series, making it way too easy and repetitive. Most gamers will blaze through the two games within two hours and will feel that they do not wish to play through it again. Only Metal Slug purists will choose to replay through the games numerous times, searching for alternate paths and high scores.
Graphically, Metal Slug 4 & 5 is very different from what current-generation gamers are used to. For their time, the graphics in these games were state-of-the-art. But unlike Metal Slug 3, which was enhanced for the Xbox, Metal Slug 4 & 5 have been left unaltered. Some of the sprites are quite visibly pixelated, especially on larger screens. It is obviously unfair to compare the graphics in these two games to titles such as Halo 2, hence these games are in a league of their own. The various locales, ranging from a snowy mountain to a jungle, are all very colorful and generally serve as pleasing backgrounds. The character animations are clearly articulated and comical at times. And what is most amazing is the fact that even when there are dozens of enemies and explosions on the screen, there is no trace of slowdown throughout the games at all.
From an audio perspective, you can’t expect too much from these games. The background music is full of repetitive synthesized beats along with several guitar riffs, archaic by today’s standards. Dialogue is limited to on-screen text, so the only audio featured other than the background music are the silly sound effects. And, boy, do you hear the same sound effects over and over since they are limited mainly to the death shrieks, various explosions and gun shots. Yet although the audio is very basic, it is perfect for this type of game.
Overall, Metal Slug 4 &5 is part of a dying breed. Most gamers these days will choose a game such as Halo 2 over a 2D side-scrolling shooter without hesitation. Yet there certain people out there that loved their arcade games and playing Metal Slug 4 & 5 will bring back a certain sense of nostalgia that will keep them happy for days. Since this bundle includes two games that have been unaltered since their original release years ago, it is difficult to recommend this game to the majority of the gamer population. Metal Slug series fans and arcade game fans will probably track this bundle down and will gladly add it to their collection without hesitation, while those that have never experienced such a game should rent it first to see if it suits their taste.
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