The metal on this slug is beginning to show some rust for its age.
Overview
With the main creator in bankruptcy, several of SNK’s top titles were taken, program, and promoted by different places for a few games. One of them being a company called Mega Enterprises, who was lucky enough to get their hands on the popular 2D shooting franchise, Metal Slug. Mega was able to produce the fourth version of the series, before SNK got back what was rightfully theirs. Did Metal Slug 4 meet the requirements of what the fans want?
Graphics 6/10
When companies do get another company’s project, you will find that they usually end up giving a lower result, trying to capture the essence of what made the game special, especially in the graphics department. Mega Enterprise met that faith easily if you look at the landscapes. If you took everything out and view only the backgrounds, you would confuse some of their artwork coming from a game in the early 90s.
Don’t be surprise they did well on the sprites of soldiers, mummies, gunfire, and items considering they did no work and pasted them in there, the bosses’ details are left a lot to be desired for and I also honestly think Trevor and Nidia did not need to be made whatsoever. The only real effort I saw was the animated intro and ending and they were relativity short. It basically rehash city over here, folks.
Gameplay/Controls 7/10
The stages are in the middle as three of them were worth the time playing because of their area length and the other were left in the dust cause they are forgettable. They don’t have as much different routes to explore around the areas and when you do find them, they are not really that spectacular. All the weaponry of the guns and bombs has been left untouched, which is great. The only add-on is the ability to have two heavy machine guns in both hands. It sort of tells you the company either made a smart choice or they could care less. Aliments, like being a zombie and fat, have not been tampered with as well, but the inclusion of being turned into monkey does have its laughs and advantages like the other before it.
The new tanks have some good range of attacks, but due to their low defense, by the time you get into them, they are already demolish if bad guys are around you. Thankfully, the original Metal Slug tank is still durable. Jumping into carbon copy versions of past slug tanks from past games is a joke in itself. Switching to moments of being in a motorcycle or on top of a truck to me seems too generic. Even worse, is their only one place that’ll let you enter a boss battle with a tank and it happens on stage two where you will definitely lose it.
What I liked was the combo system. When picking up a special emblem, a time meter begins to count down. During this phase, you shot as many enemies in sight and when it’s all over the amount of kills convert into bonus point emblems, if you have them intact at the end of the stage.
With that, rescuing hostages and maintaining your tanks are not the only ways of gaining additional bonus points, but like the others, it’s back to nothing if you lose a life. The controls are still excellent a hundred percent like it predecessors and really don’t need to be talk about. Still, sometimes you will find yourself wanting to jump or throwing grenades and mistakenly hitting the wrong button.
Sound/Music 7/10
Tied with the game play and control, the sound and music portion is one of the most positive things in Metal Slug 4. The sounding effects remain the same with the soldiers groaning of getting shot, stab, or caught on fire is pure comedy to this day. Seeing enemy aircrafts crushing, exploding buildings with your ammunition, and bursting machines with missiles is all good to hear. I don’t know about you, but listening to the player, in zombie form, spewing out blood is a sick delight for me.
Many were expecting the Mega Enterprise people to kill off the musical soundtrack to oblivion. Funny enough, they did it superbly, performing tracks that would fit with the situation at hand that you would find in a live action movie. If it’s about taking names and blowing up stuff, the music goes macho. Going forth into a dark, spooky part of the stage, the music will go creepy and mysterious. Entering the final frontier not knowing what surprises are lurking, the music track will make you feel the anticipation.
Replay Value 5/10
Marco and Fio fully return to active duty with two new recruits, Trevor and Nadia, by their side. Tarma and Emi take a backseat and come in smaller, boring roles. All of them may contain the same skills in battle it gives players a chance to choose how they want to look while kicking butt.
This version does have some dangerous (and sometime lame) bosses so it not a total lose. For being six stages, it is incredibly short when you beat the fourth chapter. Thinking about what you went through, it will have the lowest replay value to go back on up to this point in this series, even in two player mode. Unless you want your name at the top score that badly, the fun stops here.
Overall 5/10
Creatively speaking, many would see this installment as nothing more then milking the cow dry and they were right. To be honest, Metal Slug 4, even with a slew of new features, had no self motivation by Mega Enterprise to even try to make a decent attempt to have its own little cool creations like the first three and “X” edition did.
They tried to bring the game back to just being about humans, machines, and war, but the first Metal Slug already did that, with better executions of fast pace action, I might add. I think the only good parts in Metal Slug 4 was more likely Mega’s leftover stuff done by the former workers of SNK. No doubt, this is the worse Metal Slug in the series’ lifespan and to say this game is average will be the biggest compliment you can give it.
- By Mr. Boombada
