Metal Slug 3

"2D shooting at it's finest... for Contra fans it's a must."

The arcade series known as Metal Slug has made its way to the Xbox. It's not new or inventive, it's just the developers successfully managed to create the best damn game of its type, which is the 2D shoot ‘em up style. Sort of like Halo in that respect.

Gameplay (9/10): The games controls are nice and easy so that anyone can pick them up. It shouldn't take long before joe shmoe can move around with ease. Personally I believe the characters controls could be a little bit nicer, but oh well. You always start off with a hand gun and a slew of grenades. You'll find various power-ups throughout each stage ranging from rocket launchers to machine guns, and to even ground scurrying metal lizards. The game is very fast paced and is prone to make your hand hurt from the constant pressing of buttons on the more difficult modes. But with a little bit of practice anyone should be moving along through the stages.

Although there are only five stages, each level in itself has many different paths for you to take. Some are much more difficult than others. All of the bosses and enemies have fairly simple strategies that can be figured out with just a couple of run-ins. But once you there are a dozen enemies swarming all over the screen it's easy to get lost and to make simple mistakes that get yourself killed. In the final stage you'll see this happen a hell of a lot.

And the co-op is a blast, you won't have truly played this game until you have done it with a friend. Remember trying to beat Contra two-player? Yeah. It's that fun. However, the developers decided to up the difficulty a bit when there is two of you, but that doesn't really tend to be a problem until you reach the final level.

Graphics (9/10): The game is a 2D sidescroller with a great retro feel to it. It has some of the best graphics of this style of game. The characters, enemies, and backgrounds are all contain vibrant colors and are highly detailed. Pretty much everything in this has a light and humorous look to it. There are a few dark parts, but even they are funny in their own way.

Music/Sound (7/10): The games music has many notable tunes. You find yourself humming them over in your mind subconsciously after every game. Although the music's quality isn't the highest, all of the songs seem to fit whichever area they are playing in.
Then you got the sound, which isn't anything too terribly amazing. The only thing that can get annoying is the constant screaming of the soldiers you're mowing down as you progress along the stages. The game also has a hilarious announcer yelling out the names of the power-ups you just picked up.

Challenge (9/10): Metal Slug 3 is a very difficult game. Those of you who can't stand starting levels over and over time and time again should really stay away from this one. Mainly because of the way the developers decided to set up the game's continue system. Instead of doing the all so common continue system where you start over right where you left off when every life is gone, they decided that it would be better if you have to restart the whole level instead.

You are given a range of difficulties to choose from: easy, normal, hard, and very hard. Even easy will give casual gamers a problem in the later levels. You'll end up finding yourself in about a thousand different situations where the enemies are attacking you from both sides and from above all at the same time. It's not unusual to get lost in the chaos and explosions before realizing you just got tagged in the back by a bullet.

The last level is designed to destroy whatever moral you may have. So if you have a short temper and don't want to get the wonderful black plastic of your Xbox controller smeared over you walls, then don't even try it. I'm not even sure if the last level is even possibly co-op. In co-op you will find more enemies and they take more hits (as stated earlier). You would be lucky to make it half way through the level with two of you.

Story (3/10): If you're playing this game for story, then there's something seriously wrong with you. Luckily enough in games like the story is never the driving force, and I personally think that worse the story the better (maybe that only makes sense to me...).

Anyhow, the evil General Morden has once again called for new world order. Recently many livestock, vegetables, and various other wonderful eats have gone missing. They call in Marco, Tarma, Eri, and Fio to once again put an end to Morden's mischievous plans.

Replayability (6/10): Casual gamers will not find much to keep them coming back to this one. Each level has multiple paths for you to take and explore. And the only real thing that will bring them back is the fast paced action. The more hardcore people will constantly find themselves playing the game over, whether it's to collect treasure, prisoners, set high scores, or just to play the game for fun.

Conclusion: This is a very good game, but with forty dollars as a price tag you might want to rethink buying it just yet. 40 dollars is a lot for a game with five levels, no matter how fun it is. If the game drops down to 30 or 20 bucks then I would buy it in no time (assuming I was you). Unless if you are short tempered or casual gamer, then I would highly recommend this game. Final rating, 8/10 (not an average).

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/04