4.5/5 ★ – NiGHTS108's review of Metal Slug 3.

Dude. Metal Slug is, as you might say, the shit. After playing numerous extremely interesting JRPGs and visual novels like Moon and Ghost Trick, I needed something short and sweet as a break, and Metal Slug absolutely did not disappoint. I’m only going to review Metal Slug 3, I’ve played all of Metal Slug 1 through 5 and X, though honestly I think I can review everything I’ve seen under one blanket here. Metal Slug is an extremely fun and visceral Contra-like 2D shooter. I mean, my first thought 5 whole minutes into Metal Slug 1 was “Wow, this is like Contra if it was good”. At least, well, the NES games if they were good, in retrospect. It’s very simple. Your delightfully bouncy character of choice strolls from left to right with a pistol in hand, a one-man-army rampaging through jungles, cities and temples with one goal, to Kill Them All. You shoot countless generic army dudes and their tanks, helicopters and other contraptions this nebulous evil military throws at you. Sometimes you’ll rescue a prisoner as well by cutting the rope their tied to, or somehow shooting it? If you do and talk to them, they’ll give you an item. Usually it’s just more points, this is an arcade game after all, though sometimes you’ll get yourself a new weapon. If I’m not mistaken there were only about 5 in Metal Slug 1, but by the time I got to 5 it had evolved to reach 10 or so. You do die in one hit and lose your weapon when you do, but new weapons are consistently appearing enough so that you’ll never really have to just suffer with the still beefy feeling yet distinctly weakest pistol. I highly dig the general presentation of this game as well. All of the 6 games I played use beautifully expressive 2D sprites with animations almost as fluid as the gameplay itself is. There’s lots of cartoonish and bizarrely exaggerated proportions on stuff. Like other great video games such as Doom II, I feel like Metal Slug not only recognises the caveman-like primal desire in everyone, that being, “Big Strong Man Kills Them All” (even though I played as a girl every time I could because that’s kind of more awesome) but Metal Slug almost makes fun of that desire too. This is actually a really funny game, whenever you pick up weapons, a ridiculous game show announcer voice comes down to yell “ROCKET LAUNCHER” or “HEAVY MACHINE GUN” or “LASER CANNON” or “TWO MACHINE GUNS”. I also love how respawning seems to be canon to the story a little bit. If a soldier dude kills you, which will happen pretty often, usually they’ll all stand there, laugh for a second, do a little Sonic The Hedgehog finger wag while still laughing like some pretentious 10 year old Chess player that’s way too proud of beating their 6 year old little sister at Chess, then when you respawn, immediately scream in terror that You’re Back Somehow as you kill them with your pistol. It’s great stuff. Hell I even love the slowly evolving plot as well, especially in Metal Slug 3, that ends with a final boss fakeout that results in the aliens from the end of the previous game returning with a thirst for blood, and then actually capturing your protagonist, which results in you having to control one of the other guys to get them back. This even concludes with a massive fight against the head alien while plummeting out of the space ship! It’s like, the most generic action movie plot ever but that’s sort of what I love about it. It fits the spirit of the game. Metal Slug is shockingly brilliant. As I called it numerous times while playing, Video Games: The Video Game. 2D sidescroller, fast paced, guns, what else do you need in life? Grade: A