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Short but Sweet!!! | | TMN from Tuscon, AZ says (9/Sep/2004): | This game is probably one of the best 2d games around.IT has everthing you need, many types of weapons, vehicles, and alternate routes in each level. My point is that this is a great game!, but the one problem is it's is way TO SHORT it is only about 5 levels long it will only take a day if not 2, to beat it. The only good thing is that it is really hard so it will take some getting use to. Plus it cost way to much. I think you should rent it, but if you love the metal slug series and you have $40 bucks then buy it and knock yourself out.
| The best platform shooters out there. | | KiwiStalk from Reno, USA says (27/May/2004): | Metal Slug has been a very successful series both in the Arcades and on the PlayStation. Since SNK's NeoGeo is dying, and since they need more money, they decided to port the arcade Metal Slug 3 to the Xbox. Their attempts are marvelous, although this is not a "perfect" arcade port. There is now blood instead of sweat when you kill humaniod enemies, no slowdown (the arcade version was loaded with it), and whenever you lose all your lives you have to start at the very beginning of each level. Which brings us to the games only flaw: it's difficulty.
I don't mind difficult games mind you. My favorite game when I was a wee lad was the NES Contra, which is natorious (at the time anyway) for being extremely hard. However, MS3 is near cheap with it's new difficulty. Since, in the arcades, you had to pay for each continue, SNK must've felt that they needed to bring the pain of paying your last quarter only to get mawled to the console version. It's incarnation is that, whenever you lose all your lives, and you need to continue, you continue to the very start of your current level, 2 players or not. When a player loses it all, they have to wait for the other player to die.
While this sounds like a cool concept (all the Contras do this) it makes the game almost unbeatable. When a dead player can't "take" the lives of the other player to get back into the action, you find yourself wishing for a screen nuke. Plus, the levels are quite long, with bosses being very tricky. I don't want to compare games much, but the Metal Slug series is so much like the Contra series I must... In Contra 3 and on, when you both kick the bucket, you can continue at "checkpoints" in the level. In MS3, you die you start over, HA!! So the long levels, and especially the twice as long final level, make this continuing rather punishing.
This is offset by the ability to jump to any mission. You beat a mission, you can start there whenever you want, your progress is saved. You can also change the game's difficulty (most will find "easy" quite challenging) and change how many dudes you start with. However, you will want to beat the game on normal eventually, because that unlocks Fat Island and Storm the Mothership. Both are intruguing mini-games, but not much else. They're fun mind you, but they can get old real fast.
One thing of note to you modern gamers: the game is entirely 2D. There is not 1 polygon in this game. This, children, is how we played games back in the day. And no, this is not a bad game. MS3 looks better in 2D than most games look in 3D. The animations are all very smooth, the explosions are amazing, and there are plenty of enemies to kill, all fluidly animated with at least 2 different deaths per enemy. Usually there's 4 deaths per enemy and some explode into lots of bits, like level one's crabs. However, the sound hasn't faired well. It's true to the arcade game, but arcade games are never known for their high-quality sounds. You get Stereo, and Mono, and it's all lowish quality. This never bothered me though. The sound effects are appropriately loud and explodey, and each level's music fits the theme of that level (yes, each level is VASTLY different than the last).
All in all, you get a dense 5 1/2 missions with alternate routes in missions 1 - 4 (the final mission, mission 5, is really, REALLY long and linear), 4 characters to choose from (they only change the animations of the chars), around 7 weapons (each with "big" versions), 3 or 4 status effects (getting too fat when you collect too much food, turning into a zombie, turning into a snow man, and one other...I think), 10 different Metal Slugs (tank-like vehicles for which the games are named after. Although there are walkers, planes, elephants, diggers, camels, etc. as well as the tanks), a ton of enemies (my guess is upwards 30 - 50 types), ingenious and fun bosses (giant crabs, floating aliens the size of a build, etc.), Xbox Live Scoreboards (lame unless you're competitive), and two mini-games IF you can beat the Final Mission on Normal.
Overall, a great game for the money. Of note: I think the game was rushed. In the arcade version, when you need to continue, a machine gun power-up drops for you. In MS3 Xbox, it does as well but you ALWAYS start at the beginning of the level. Also, there is no Xbox Live Multiplayer support (officially) but on the back of the manual there is an ad for SVC Chaos, which states that SVC Chaos WILL be Xbox Live MP compatible. Oh well, guess I'll try to beat the Final Mission again...
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