I redid my MSX one life game because of audio issues in the original. The older videos are still available, with their privacy set to unlisted. You can find the playlist for the old playthrough here:
• Metal Slug X (Level 8,...
Metal Slug X will forever have a very special place in my heart for being the first Metal Slug game I've ever played. It was released as a "remix" of sorts of Metal Slug 2, which suffered severe slowdown issues during much of the gameplay. Not only did X mostly fix the slowdown issue of 2, it fixed a few bugs and oversights in 2, as well as featuring remixing every musical piece in the game. The series' most popular announcer also debuted in X, and with him, several new weapons, along with variations of old weapons, such as the ability to utilise every power gun in fat mode, and the pulsing, "Super" variations of the Heavy Machine Gun, Rocket Launcher (you gotta mispronounce it like the announcer!), Flame Shot, and Shotgun.
All things considered, while X may look like a close replica of 2, in the hands of the player it really did feel like an entirely different game, a feat which speaks to the creativity of the level designers. Most notably, the final mission was toned down in difficulty significantly, as 2's version of the final mission was... pure bullshit. X also introduced my favourite Slug vehicle in the series, the Metal Slug Type-R.
But in spite of how highly I praise this game and how readily I'd recommend it to anyone new to the series, X is not without its own glaring flaws. Level--8, the game's highest difficulty, feels very untested to me. It feels to me as if the enemy health and speeds are increased arbitrarily with no regard for how it affected gameplay. Some mummies in Mission 2 can take more than one Shotgun blast, the Kessi miniboss in Mission 3 moved so fast and dropped 40HP tanks on you as projectiles, Mission 3's boss, Dragon Nosuke's flaming helicopters also having obscene amounts of HP, making them impossible to shoot down, Mission 5's boss Hozumi is just a mess, and of course, the final bosses continually spawn UFOs each with more HP than a suicide attack can deal.
Ultimately though, I think this is a game best enjoyed casually on the default MVS difficulty, Level-4. On multiplayer this is an absolute blast, and a sad reminder of what Metal Slug games were and could still be.
29 сен 2024
