A Review of Metal Slug 4&5

A videogame by SNK Playmore for the Playstation 2
An Evan Kaigle review thing

1/2

London, 1780. The height of the Industrial Revolution. New technology gives way to previously unknown levels of economic prosperity. The world is changing.

The effects of this newfound prosperity are devastating on the environment.

The smoke produced by the burning of mass amounts of coal drifts into the countryside. The bark on forests of previously light-colored trees turns darker.

1850, four years before Japan is forced to open trade with the West by Matthew C. Perry. British entomologists have made a strange discovery in the population of Peppered Moths. The moths, while once light in color, have turned dark. Theories abound as to why the moths changed to a darker color. The most popular theory being that the moths adopted the darker color as a survival mechanism; able to blend in with the dark trees, they avoid potential extinction at the hands of predators.

2005, major advances in micro-processing technology allow polygons to be displayed with almost photo-realistic quality, and yet??

I?? eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

A lot of people have never really seemed to ??et??the Metal Slug series. They??e probably never been to an arcade, I take it. In high school I would sometimes go to peoples??houses who I wasn?? close friends with, but got along with well enough. Sometimes I?? bring a little black CD case that????about five feet away from me right now. I?? bring this case; its insides filled with Playstation games. I?? ask the person I was hanging out with if they wanted to play anything specific from my collection; they?? of course tell me to choose anything I wanted. Inevitably, I?? put in a game like G Darius. That game was always a hit, G Darius. When I say that it was a hit, I mean like, one person who I ever hung out with liked it.

Most people didn?? get G Darius though. It was weird enough so that they would play it to the point where they?? encounter the first boss, Eclipse Eye. It was all over after that. People freak the fuck out when they start fighting a giant fish. It doesn?? make sense to them. They need a really good reason as to why they??e fighting that giant fish. When people are playing through the first level of their first shooter, they always ask the-the most logical questions, which??doesn?? make sense.

The second we started fighting fish-shaped robots, all logic was thrown out the door.

Yet they still ask questions, and I have to answer them.

"Where are all these spaceships coming from?"

"I don?? know. The mothership."

"Why don?? the good guys just send like a whole shitload of ships to help you?"

"Because you??e the last surviving member of a planet/best pilot in the universe/a small ship is needed to slip between enemy lines."

"Why don?? I run out of fuel?"

"I??because your ship uses a dual-ultra-high-efficiency-meta-carbon-turbo-plutonium fuel cell."

"Did you just make that up?"

"No."

"Oh, cool."

You can?? let people like this back you into a corner; they??e like fucking hyenas. You can?? just tell them that shooting waves of enemies ??ometimes shaped like fish- is fun. You sometimes have to lie to them, not that that keeps them from putting down the controller when Eclipse Eye appears and attacks.

Then again, these people probably don?? go to arcades. It?? like when I played a game of Street Fighter Alpha 2 with some fans of the series, only to see that they used their thumbs to press the buttons. They looked at they way I held the controller and went

"Holy shit! You??e holding the controller all weird!!"

"Um."

"Why do you do that?"

"Ever played Street Fighter, or wait, ever played any game in an arcade?"

"Yeah, once."

"Do you use your thumbs to press the buttons?"

"!!!"

"Exactly."

I?? not going to berate these people, that?? something that an asshole does. They have the right spirit. At least they??e playing the game, they??e not all like "what are the political implications of Ryu?? victory over M. Bison?"

I?? tempted to say that people don?? get games that are born into arcades, but people like Time Crisis, because people like guns, and??I like Time Crisis, because it?? fun. People also like Big Game Hunter, and those games where you sit on a big plastic dirt bike, or stand on a fake skateboard. There?? nothing better than watching some asshole walk up to the Big Game Hunter machine, slowly take the Creamsicle colored shotgun out of its holster like it weighs twenty pounds, and then pump the reloading mechanism even though they haven?? even put a token into the machine yet. When they do finally put a token in there, and the first level starts, they become very serious, very intense. The pixilated deer or whatever will walk out from behind a tree and the person playing will shoot at it and hit it in the face. They??l be informed that they??e just lost the level, and to insert another token. You have to shoot the deer in the heart. The player will throw the Creamsicle colored shotgun into the holster and then stomp off, usually while putting their girlfriend into a headlock. That Creamsicle colored shotgun is rigged to aim half an inch upward.

The Metal Slug 5 machine is right next to the Big Game Hunter machine.

The only time I??e ever had a random stranger start playing Metal Slug 5 with me, he didn?? know how to throw grenades. No, seriously, look at what I just wrote. He didn?? know how to throw grenades. He could shoot! He could jump! Yet He refused to press that third button! I mean, the guy saw my Eri throwing grenades all over the place. Yet he just ran around helplessly shooting things with the pistol, and when I used a continue (which was a lot with this guy getting in my way) he would take my continue machinegun! Quite rude!

"Hey man," I said after dying for like the twenty seventh time. "Just press this button to throw grenades, it??l help out a lot."

He started jamming on the grenade button before I had time to warn him that he only had a limited amount. Seriously, he must??e hit that button a good sixty times in the space of five seconds; all of his grenades exploded harmlessly on the floor of the level.

"Um, you??you might want to wait until we fight a tank or something until you use those."

He looked at me like I had just told him that I?? fucked his dad.

"Wha??" He was having a hard time reacting.

"I??"

He stopped playing and walked away.

Looking back on this, I have to ask

Have we reached the point where people expect all games to be complicated?

People are afraid to press buttons. This is what I think. People are afraid to press buttons because they expect to be told how to do everything. No one knows how to react to four buttons anymore.

To put peoples??fears at rest, and assure the world that Metal Slug 5 is complex, the development team added a "slide" maneuver. To execute the slide maneuver, we have to press the jump button while ducking. This throws everything off, because when we to try to jump straight from a ducking position, we??l sometimes slide by accident, and sliding by accident means that we??l of course slide right into an enemy and die. We??e really only required to use the slide maneuver twice during the whole game. Once in the first level, where we have to slide under small openings in rock walls while the ceiling closes in from above, and the second time during the last boss fight. To avoid the attacks of the last boss, ?? colossal demon- we have to use a move that we??e only been forced to use once before.

In the first level.

We don?? even really beat the last boss; after we do enough damage to him, he kind of just flies off in a way that doesn?? even imply that he?? hurt, just bored. That?? one way to make the players hate you; have the last boss fly away in boredom.

Metal Slug 5 isn?? a bad game, though. In fact, I could probably call it a damn good game and not regret saying it.

It?? a good game and??it?? made by people who love Metal Slug, that much is apparent, and it?? fun too, but??

I thought about eating raspberry chocolate chip ice cream.

Metal Slug 2 is a game in which a man is eaten by a killer whale after being shot hundreds of times. In a room full of people who "get" the game, this causes an explosion of cheering and laughter.

Is it any wonder why the cords on Neo-Geo CD controllers are so short? It might seem like an inconvenience; it?? not, however! They made the controllers that way on purpose, you see. They want us to have to sit two feet away from the television screen, and they want us to have to sit right next to the person we??e playing King of Fighters against. Our mortal enemy. They want us to think of nothing other than the buttons we??e pressing, the television screen we??e looking at, the person sitting next to us. This is the part of the arcade that SNK wanted to come home with us when they designed the Neo-Geo.

Observe two people fighting the last boss of Metal Slug 2 together on a Neo-Geo CD home system. Hunched over, elbows planted firmly on knees, eyes glimmering with anticipation, possibly perspiring. Now look at the other people in the room; hunched over, elbows planted firmly on knees??

That room of people feels it. They feel it, and they??e cheering, on the inside or otherwise, for the people playing. They??e cheering when they see Morden?? soldiers help the players defeat the mothership. They??e cheering because they know that the bullets those soldiers are shooting are actually helping; they??e doing damage to the boss.

Metal Slug 2 is a game best experienced communally. It?? exciting for the player because, well, it?? a perfect shooter, and it?? exciting for the spectators, because there?? always action on the screen, and it?? funny. The game is a study in excess. It rewards us for everything us do. It rewards us for killing an enemy soldier by making him gush blood, or explode, or catch on fire in such a satisfying way. It rewards us for blowing up tanks, houses, aliens. It?? not a tangible reward, however; we aren?? rewarded for the destruction itself, rather, the destruction is the reward.

Is it any wonder that Metal Slug 3 runs at a slower pace? That it has us taking our time in a level filled with zombies? It?? a welcome change for sure, but it might not cause a whole room of people to be hunched over, sweating, and maybe thinking about making something that they love, and that others will love. While it is an incredible game, full of soul and charm, it lacks that blast of youthful energy, that kind of genius that?? born out of spur of the moment passion. Metal Slug 3 was born in the aftermath of the passion. It was created by people who realized they had to do something different, while keeping the soul intact.

Like a good punk-rock album, beating a Metal Slug game should leave us exhausted, exhilarated, and with a renewed love for that title of "gamer" that we??e carried around with us for so long. "This is why I play videogames," we will think to ourselves.

We play these new games man, these new Metal Slug games, and all we do is pine for the past. This is nostalgia, this is good times with friends, this is Terry Bogard and Rock Howard on a road trip through middle America.

This is something that doesn?? exist.

It?? never going to get better than Metal Slug 2. We know this, yet??are we failing to adapt? Are we buying new games only to think about the past? We??e merely food for predators looking for their next fifty bucks.

Right?

I don?? think so. We may pine for lost youth, but we see the good in the here and now. Maybe we never really adapted; maybe we??e the ones who got lucky.

Maybe those entomologists in 1850 were wrong. Maybe those light colored moths flew far away. They flew away from the smog and the predators. They flew away and never came back. Except for short visits, from time to time.

-Evan Kaigle

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