• Summary

• Reviews

• News
• Images
• Videos
• Downloads
• Hints & Cheats

By Keith B (23rd Jul 2007)

What makes a good game? A lame, bravado-laden military motif, light on the narrative but heavy on the guns? A franchise concept, subject to instalment after instalment, with only minor additions and improvements year after year? Slow-moving, lumpy, sneering muscleman characters? Or flattened, cartoonish two-dimensional graphics? Some might laud the first; most would impugn the greedy capitalist-pig game producers for the second; while almost all would scoff at the third and the fourth. And I, and the makers of Metal Slug, would disagree with all of you. Prepare for the return of Metal Slug�"all seven in all of their machoman, redundantly produced, two-dimensional glory�"in a single, Wii-ready, perfectly ported arcade-style collection: Metal Slug Anthology.

Plot was never really foregrounded in the series, but it’s well worth an overview, if only to garner a sense of the game’s laughably lame, late-‘90s futurism. Set in 2028, Metal Slug, the first game released in the series, pits the uninventively named Regular Army, led by a bungling gaggle of corrupt politicos, against Rebellion Army. General Morden, the leader of the Regular Army, returns in MS2, in an attempt at world domination. The Peregrine Falcon squad is there to stop him, though this time they must also stop (err...) aliens. MSX was more or less just a revised MS2, but with more enemies. The aliens return in MS3, having made a Morden-capture switcheroo. Enter Falcons to crush rebel uprising, return of aliens. MS4 goes computer-virus crazy, as a terrorist group attacks the internet (I think the group’s name is SPAM), hoping to seize the world’s armies. MS5 has R&D at the Metal Slug offices ransacked, requiring you to get the top-secret disc back. Finally, MS6 brings everyone together for a dysfunctional family reunion, pitting them against a new, even more evil alien group fighting for world domination.

Graphically the game is exactly as we might in 2007 expect: terrible. But everything has its niche and every man is top of his own monkey troop; Metal Slug never really broke down graphic walls, and it never really intended to. For the same reason that Arnold Schwarzenegger films and Wham! albums were never compared to Orson Welles or early Beatles, Metal Slug was always really good, even great, for what it was�"a tongue-in-cheek, two-dimensional run-and-gun game�"rather than what it wasn’t. It never went in for big, important, complex narratives, and it never forced us to rethink visually our gaming world. So while the game is graphically pretty lumpy, and almost laughably two-dimensional, it is also really great, classic arcade-style animation, which couples well with the compilation format and the attempt at more or less picture-perfect replication. Sound, as well, is true to form. The screams and groans, the occasionally foul-mouthed voice-overs, the guns firing, the bombs detonating, and the epic military-style music: it’s all there, it’s all over the top, and it’s exactly as it should be.

The biggest challenge faced here, though, like almost all ported games, is obviously controller adaptation. Little effort need be put in to port old-school graphics and sound to any recently produced system. But matching the old toggle and button hammer of the arcade to the motion-sensitivity of the Wiimote requires some painstaking work. The laudable efforts of the developers are, thankfully, evident�"though not always. Metal Slug uses a bevy of different controller combos (unfortunately, though, the Wii classic controller is out, while the GameCube controller is in): the tilted Wiimote (left to right titling determines direction); the horizontal Wiimote (D-pad in tandem with buttons); Nunchuk-only play; Nunchuk combined with the control stick; and full-fledged, Nunchuk and Wiimote arcade play. The ability to play the games in so many different styles is both good and bad: good because you find your controller sweet spot after some tentative playing around, but bad because there’s a world of shakes and gestures to be mastered and memorized with each. This is in part both improved and worsened by your ability to fuss with controller settings: once again, good because it helps you personalize the game, but bad because no memory could possibly hold all of the original and changed settings. Best to find your control system of choice, mod it out, and stick with it. Generally the controllers function well. In practice, though, most will just give up on the Wii controllers and opt for the simple, self-explanatory GameCube controller. This, though instantaneously easier to use, is a shame: once you master the Wiimote-Nunchuk combo, gameplay becomes quite vigorous and active; using the GameCube controller seems just plain lazy.

Gameplay is generally excellent (minor controller complaints aside). The only thing better than fighting off or teaming with alien group after alien group, militia after militia, by yourself, is killing with your friends. Multiplayer mode is near flawless. Unfortunately, though, these games are brutally repetitive, even when coupled with the semblance of a plot twist. Layout is more or less identical, level to level, game to game. Undoubtedly everyone should give a each game a try in sequence�"it’s actually pretty cool to see how the series developed�"but few will have the patience to master each level and each game before moving on, and no one should. The game, like marmalade, is good in proportionate doses; consuming the entire jar or series in one go will only leave you nauseated.

And yet for all that good, a few minor complaints remain. With the continual and seemingly endless loading breaks, more than once I though the console had crashed or the game was broken. These are grossly unreasonable for a game that relies heavily on already-mastered, dated gameplay designs. Likewise, human lives possess little intrinsic value in the future: death is frequent, even taken for granted, so prepare to be somewhat frustrated by your inability to stay alive and the little care given for your many meaningless deaths. Menu screens are similarly pretty poorly constructed. Aesthetics aside, this means tedious screens and a hell of a time going from one game to another. Add-ons are likewise pretty lame: the original game designs are trotted out and are the worse for wear; the unlockable interview is text- rather than video-based (acceptable when the game was first released in ‘96, but untenable by today’s console capabilities); while the cutscenes and inter-game material appear lazily patched together

Overall, though, Metal Slug Anthology is a great buy. More attention should obviously have been paid to inter-game material, but the games themselves are true to past form: lotsa guns, lotsa death, lotsa great memories.