Retro-Review: Metal Slug
Metal Slug has recently been re-released on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. This is kind of a funny thing to do, since Metal Slug was playable on the Wii about since it was released if you bought the Metal Slug Anthology disc, like I have. Well, however it’s been released, Metal Slug is still a classic.
Like games such as Contra, Metal Slug has you running about shooting soldiers, collecting power-ups, and bringing down bosses. Also like Contra, it’s hard as hell. After all, Metal Slug was designed for the arcade, where the cost of a human life was only a quarter, so the game has to make it up in volume. You die a lot. A whole lot. And yet, you’ll come back for more.
Like any shoot’em-up, the appeal in Metal Slug is the overwhelming enemy fire. The fun lies not so much in shooting back, but rather in dodging the rain of bullets. The reward in shooting the enemies is that they’ll no longer shoot at you. The designers of Metal Slug knew what they were doing, as the environments pull together the dodge-and-shoot mechanic of the game excellently. The early levels are somewhat flat, lend a lot of cover, and generally give the player a few good shots before they enemy can get a round off. As the game progresses, the terrain gets rockier, the enemies shoot faster, and it becomes harder to stay safe. There’s a good curve here for difficulty.
This isn’t to say you’ll learn not to die. I already warned you, you’ll die over and over again. And strangely enough, it’s enjoyable. While a large part of Metal Slug is the dodge-and-shoot gameplay, what keeps you coming back is the challenge of staying alive. That sounds either a little strange or a little obvious, but just run with me. When you first pick up Metal Slug, you’ll die so much that you will begin to think of death as the default state in the game. Ten seconds of gameplay, and then you die. Fifteen more, then again. As you keep playing, you’ll get better, and you’ll start to live a little longer. The challenge ceases to be about killing enemies or reaching the end, instead it becomes a test of will. How long can you stick it out? The game challenges you to live through the entire level, as it resets count of how many prisoners of war you’ve rescued each time you die. In Metal Slug, you don’t expect to make it through the entire level on one life, you just try to use as few as possible. Each second alive becomes reward in itself, a sign that you aren’t sucking quite as much as you were earlier.
As for style, Metal Slug won’t fail to toss a lot of detail at you. While the game has a cartoony style, they make it work for them. Enemies and environments are incredibly expressive, and the few enemies trying to run away or sneak off of screen pull you more into the game. Backgrounds are detailed, and you’ll never feel like you’re walking through the same hallway again. It’s a fun style for a fun game.
There’s much more to Metal Slug than all this, but the game is best experienced by playing. Preferably, in an arcade, where the fight to survive is strengthened when the cost of death becomes more than a loss of points, it becomes a quarter as well.