Metal Slug 3

"Metal Slug has the hit the Xbox"

Summary
SNK's popular arcade game Metal Slug has finally come home to consoles of this generation with some good additions boot. How well will it perform on the Xbox in the midst of other shooters?

Storyline
You play as one of four soldier: Eri, Fio, Tarma, or Marco. These four were the original fighters that stopped General Morden's coup d'etat in both Metal Slug and Metal Slug 2. With Morden defeated, they go about defeating his remnant from the world where they are spread all over. The government's intelligent division felt that someone else was behind Morden's attacks and did research and came to only one conclusion: alien intelligence. Marco, Tarma, and crew must now all go back to war to defeat their alien visitors. Sadly, the only story in this game comes through the manual, with the story being three pages of it, it's pretty good but you won't see it in the game at all.

Gameplay - 8
The gameplay of Metal Slug 3 is exactly the same as the first two. If you've never played them, you basically run through "Missions" shooting whoever is in your path and defeating a boss at the end. There are POWs to rescue along the way who either give you weapon power-ups or items to increase your score. The button layout is pretty simple to use, with X being shoot, A to jump, and B to throw grenades. Along your way through the missions, you will come across multiple paths (some being harder than others) and various vehicles that you can use, including an Elephant, a tank, and a submersible. The enemies in the game are widely divided up and you'll be fighting Morden's men on one mission, with Zombies on the next, followed by oversized crustaceans and insects for example. Your weapons can include a machine gun, shotgun, flamethrower, and a laser gun. All these however have a bullet count and you can only use one at a time. Once you run out of ammo though, you'll switch back to your trusty pistol. Another thing that can happen is your character will change form. If you eat too many watermelons, you will turn Big and move slower and barely able to jump. Get hit by a zombie's attack and you will turn into one, which makes you invincible to human attacks. The game can get pretty hard early on though and what makes it worse is the fact that the continue system from the arcade has been edited so that you start back at the beginning of the mission instead of where you died at which makes things very hard and will push newcomers to quit pretty early on instead of going through the games five missions and one bonus one.

Graphics - 8
The graphics of the game are in 2D, exactly as they were back in 2000, but due to the Xbox's hardware, the game now has a better framerate. The game looks nice, with a lot of details on the characters and enemies, and all the explosions just look neat. The characters show good reactions too, depending on what happened. For example, say you shoot your pistol really fast and then stop, you'll see your character reload the clip and toss aside the old one, and depending on if you have changed shape (like Big for example), you'll see that the character uses a bigger gun and instead of a knife, they'll stab the enemies with kitchen utensils. The downside to this is that most players these days skip over 2D games and so Metal Slug and others get pushed aside.

Audio - 8
The audio of the game sounds as nice at it looks, with most of the sound effects like the announcer, weapon shots, enemy cries and the like coming from previous Slug games, but they still sound good to this day. The background music includes songs from previous Metal Slug games and brings new ones to the front that sound nice and never get annoying.

Replay - 8
Along with the port of the arcade game, you now have two bonus levels once you beat the arcade. "Storming the UFO Mothership" has you playing as one of Morden's soldiers as you run through rescuing other fellow soldiers and fighting aliens as you go. Morden's solders however aren't nearly as strong as Marco and crew, so they take longer to kill enemies and once you die, you don't get to continue. The other bonus level is "Fat Island", which involves you eating as much food as you can while you defeat your enemies. "Fat Island" also includes a 2 player competitive mode. Metal Slug 3 supports the Xbox Live scoreboard to host your high scores. A Co-Op mode would've been nice, but you can still play two player with a friend.

Overall - 8
Overall, the game is fun to play yet gets hard to play with the way the continue system is set up. With the game costing $40 however, the only real reason to pick it up is if you are either a Metal Slug fan or are looking for a worthwhile arcade game that is fun to play over and over.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/30/04