Many of us have fond memories playing arcade games during our childhood. Whether we played them in a game room at a pizza place or in our local arcade, these classics stuck with us. I distinctly remeber going to our local Round Table Pizza with my cousin and playing Metal Slug there. Metal Slug XX is a remake of Metal Slug 7 for the Nintendo DS but with added missions to keep you hooked.
The story revolves around the characters chasing down General Mordin and capturing him in the 1st level. After General Morden is defeated and captured, a mysterious army arrives from the future to save him. They reveal themselves to be the Mars People and their goal is to provide their future leader with special advanced weaponry to take on his enemies in the present. Classic Metal Slug characters Marco, Tarma, Fio, Eri, Ralf, and Clark return once again to take on General Morden and his new and improved Rebel Army.
So does this remake of a childhood classic have enough fun factor to hook us all in once again? Lets take a look at the HOTs and NOTs of this side scrolling shooter.
HOT
Retro Feel
As soon as you start up this game and hear the familiar announcer you immidiately get flashbacks to the past. The nostalgia kicks in again once you pick your first character and get the game going. The game looks and feels jsut as it should, which is, like the original. The announcer even calls out the weapon you switched to or just picked up.
This game does an excellent job of catching the classic feel of the series while also making it fun an entertaining for everyone. That certainly is quite a feat to achieve in a world dominated today by bigger, newer titles. Its nice to see that a classic such as Metal Slug can still shine bright even today.
Controls
Metal Slug XX has a feature that not many games today have, fully customizable controls. You can map any button you want to any of the corresponding actions. Want fire to be on R instead of Square? Go ahead and put it there. Don’t like where your switch weapon option is? Feel free to change it. And no matter what way you configure it, you know the controls will be easy to pick up because you tailor them to your liking. A welcome feature nowadays. Aiming and movement will always be mapped on the analog stick or d-pad but as bad as that sounds, it works out really well.
Variety
For a PSP game, Metal SLug XX has alot of variety to it. There are 7 missions total in the main story but each playthrough with each of the six characters is as unique as the last. Each character has their own unique abilities between each one. For example, Fio starts out with a heavy machine gun instead of just the standard pistol due to her preference for heavy ordinance, while Tarma starts out with the pistol but does more damage with it. Each character has their own perks that you will discover over the course of the game.
There is also a wide variety of weapon types at your disposal in this game. Most are aquired from rescuing the P.O.W.s in the game. after rescuing them, they will give you whatever they have stashed which most of the time is a weapon. The weapons range from the standard machine gun, shotgun and rocket launcher, to the crazy and out of this world thunderbolt gun and classic enemy chaser. Every single one of them is fun to mess around with and gives a fun and carefree feel to this side scrolling shooter.
Combat School
Along with your purchase of the game comes an extra 70 missions in the Combat School section. These levels can all be unlocked after your first playthrough of the story. They vary from the standard eliminate all enemies in the level to the random defend your base or shoot the ball into the goal. All of the levels are entertaining and a challenge in themselves. There’s also a progressive ranking system based on how many points you earn throughout the levels. It all adds fresh paint to this game and adds on more play time aside from the main story.
NOT
Repetitive Design
Although there is alot of content in the game, you will see repeated backdrops alot. You will end up looking at the same levels over an over again until you memorize them by heart, and that wont take you very long. The enemy models are re-used alot as well. You will either see the standard rebel in green, rebel tank or helicopter, or the future blue rebels, tanks and helicopters. Although this is only a minor problem, it would have been nice to see more variety between the enemies such as more weapon carriers and such.
$19.99?
Although the game comes with 7 story levels and 70 Combat School missions, I don’t think this game should have a price that high on it. dropping it five dollars maybe even ten would be a more reasonable price. There just is not enough content in the game to justify a near twenty dollar price tag in my opinion.
VERDICT
Overall, Metal Slug XX is a game that really digs deep into it’s roots to bring players a bit of the past in the palm of their hands. It’s a fun, portable, and addicting side scrolling shooter that reminds us why we fell in love with the original. Although it suffers from a bit of repetition and the price is a bit too high, those of you looking to revisit your past and have a bit of spare change in your pocket should definitely pick up or download this title.