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Unbelievably hard, surprisingly short

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: July 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The Metal Slug games are famous for their button-bashing action, slapstick humor and white-knuckle difficulty. Not surprising that they are so hard considering they were first made for the arcade and it's a ploy by SNK for you to spend more money playing it.

Now everything you loved about Metal Slug is on the Gameboy Advance, with a few new bonuses. One of them is the card system, which I cared not for, which you are awarded for rescuing certain prisoners or destroying certain bosses. Personally, I didn't think this changed the game much at all. Second is that you can save your progress in Metal Slug Advance, which will comes as a huge relief to anyone who's just defeated a near-impossible boss and doesn't think they'll be able to do so again.

There are only five (very hard) levels in this game and you'll get through them in a week. Yes, at some points you'll want to hurl your GBA at the wall in frustration but stick at it and you'll learn certain patterns in which to get through the levels. And after you complete it you'll more than likely never play it again, no matter what cheap rubbish SNK have put in there to make you go through it again. There's just no enough variety for it to pay off.

Graphics A
Sound A
Gameplay B
Lasting Appeal C

Metal Slug for GBA?! COOL!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Metal Slug is by far the greatest run and gun game ever. Growing up my mom worked at a bowlling alley and my family was to poor to hier a baby sitter for me. So my mom would take me to work with her and leave me in the arcade at the bowlling alley. She would give me $5.00 in quarters to play the arcade games each time I came to work with her. While I was looking around the arcade I came across "Metal Slug 3". My eyes opened wide as I saw a preview of the soldier Marco running around killing off armies and armies of bad guys. The moment I saw that I started playing it non-stop until my pockets were empty of quarters. Now several years later they come out with "Metal Slug Advance" a game worthy of the great Metal Slug name. Now I dont have to spend quaters playing it at an arcade. I recommend this game to all Metal Slug fans.

Run 'n gun action? Here ya go.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: June 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Metal Slug- possibly one of the most addictive, and difficult, game series out there. Now that the games have been getting somewhat popularized on other systems, it was only a matter of time before handheld versions of it showed up. And no disrespect to the NeoGeo Pocket Color, but we needed it on a more mainstream system that was easily accessable. And we got one here on the GBA finally, and it's pretty cool. While I'm sick of people going on and on about the "sacrifices in animation", there isn't much else wrong with the game. It's not nearly as hard as say, Metal Slug 3, but there's always the hard mode that sits and waits.

Metal Slug is about nothing but fun. Not some deep storyline. You select one of two characters in this- Walter or Tyra, and run around shooting soldiers and whatever else may be in your way. They've been placed on a remote island as part of their training drill, which is also their first taste of real combat. You'll cap enemies, take leaps of faith over pits, fly jets and shoot down parachute squads, hop in the Metal Slug tank and mow down foes, and of course, pick up a variety of different guns to help make things easier. Along the way, you'll rescue prisoners like in the other games, but also pick up cards. Don't misunderstand me there though, collecting cards doesn't become a necessity. In fact, they're really just for added replay. Some prisoners and some crates will have cards that do a number of things. Some upgrade your tank's armor, some recover your health, some are character cards, and some let you take more hits. Yeah, you read correctly there- you now have a health bar. No more one-hit kills (unless you fall in a pit), your character can take 3 or 4 hits before kicking the bucket and having to start over. While this system is very nice, and something I wish MS3 had, it's also slighly annoying since you don't have any lives. And once you get hit, you're invincible for -maybe- 2 seconds before you're back to normal. This is a problem in the later stages where enemy fire is all over the place, and you could get hit immediately after you stop flashing. Also, once you die, all cards you earned in previous sections are lost, and when you come back, you start in the area you died in. This is, again, nice that you get to start back in the same section, but annoying in that you just got a ton of cards and more than likely, will start the level all over again. But you'll get used to it- the game's fun enough to warrant starting levels from the beginning if you die at a boss.

You want weapons? You got 'em. All the MS classics are here. Your basic handgun now has a rapid-fire feature if you select it from the options menu. This makes gameplay much easier. For some odd reason, you shoot faster in this mode if you're ducking. There's a big hint on how to take down heavily armored enemies quicker. Grenades are tossed via the R shoulder button, and blow up enemies just as good as they ever have. You still have your knife for attacking enemies up-close, and even get a boxing glove on a spring if you duck and attack enemies close up too. I got a kick out of that. The heavy machine gun, enemy chaser, drop shot, shotgun, laser beam, and others return too, as does that great voice that says the name of the weapon you got. My favorite being for the rocket launcher where he goes "RAWKET LAOUNCHAIR". There's only one Slug in the game- the Metal Slug, no animal buddies here unfortuantely. And blood didn't make it into the game for some reason. Here it's already rated Teen, yet the blood's gone. Eh, no big loss, but it added comedic value in the other games. Oh, and there's no score here either. While I don't care about that, NeoGeo purists will be freaking out when they realize this.

The graphics look identical to the other MS games in every way except for your character's running animation. Their legs aren't animated as well as the rest of them, but it doesn't matter. Everything looks fantastic. There's no slowdown to be found regardless of how many enemies are on screen or shooting at you. Backgrounds look great too. Check out the waterfalls. I have no complaints in this department, or the next. The music and sound effects of the game are equally good. Plug in the headphones to get the full effect of the music if you have a basic GBA since that single speaker doesn't allow you to hear everything. Knife-stabbing still sounds great, as does the screams of troops when you gun 'em down. And of course, explosions don't have any static in their sounds. It's all good here. RAWKET LAOUNCHAIR!

Metal Slug Advance isn't some cheap game they threw together in order to get somehing by SNK on the GBA. It holds its own, and feels like it should get its own number in the series. While it's only 5 levels, it took me a few days before I could really beat the game and have a good number of cards/prisoners saved. Again, it's not required, but that's where a lot of the replay lies. After beating the game, try it on hard mode without the rapid fire on and see how far you get. But if all else fails, try getting all the cards and prisoners. Some of them are harder to find than it seems. Get Metal Slug Advance while you still can. We all know how SNK's games are.

something the GBA needed a long time ago...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: May 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This sort of shooter has long been among my favorite types of games, dating back specifically to since I first played Gunstar Heroes. The Metal Slugs have always been the biggest quarter-eaters to me at the arcade machines, and I've really fallen in love with the comical commando approach that these games have mixed in with the variety that all the levels have to offer. Metal Slug Advance does a good job of holding up these much-beloved parts of the series.

As with all the other Metal Slugs, you run around levels blasting the heck out of any and every enemy while rescuing hostages. The gameplay in this one is great, and the control, collision detection, etc. are all excellent quality. The graphics are on par with the arcade games--beatifully simple, yet well-animated pixel graphics. The music is typical for Metal Slugs, very well-fit to the game, but far from anything that was designed to sell soundtracks.

There are a few points about this game that bothered me, though:
(1) The game felt really short for a game that you don't play at the arcade. The "normal" mode has five levels plus the additional bonus dungeon that you get to mindlessly wander around while searching for cards.
(2) This game gives your character a health bar, which when reduced to zero kills your character. I personally am more used to Metal Slug X's one-hit death style and felt that the health bar allowed for some lousier level design and some accidental "cheap shots" on your character without developers worried about players getting irritated with cheap shots equalling death. This kinda detracted from the arcade-ish feel, and
(3) I found it particularly annoying that the game starts you back at the beginning of the section of the level you were playing when you died, rather than the beginning of the level. In other words, you get to take as many cracks as you want in a row at a boss until it is beaten. This took away from a lot of the challenge the game should offer
(4) There are only five bosses in this game (and I know at least one of them is borrowed from MSX), whereas similar games in the genre (see "Alien Hominid" and Treasure's upcoming "Gunstar Heroes Advance") are chock-full of fun bosses and minibosses.
(5) The power-up weapons don't do all that much for your character. There are plenty in this game, but I find that about half of them to be worth avoiding. In particular, I cannot think of any part of the game where either the drop shots or flame thrower were worth picking up.

But despite how much I wrote about the game's vices, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable and would recommend it to any fan of the series or genre.

Metal Slug on the GBA

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

One of the most fun and challenging games to play in the arcade way back when was SNK's Metal Slug. A 2-D side scroller similar to the old Contra games, you run and gun your way past hordes of challenging tanks and enemies until you reach a level boss. The game mechanics are almost identical to the classic game, as are the graphics despite instances of slowdown and a few drops in frame rate. The biggest con of Metal Slug Advance is what players new to the game will automatically notice. The learning curve is far from forgiving, as things go from easy to very, very hard rather quickly. Boss battles are the most challenging, and the most frustrating as new players will soon learn. Not to mention, the game is pretty short, but other than that you'll find some addictive and fun playability with Metal Slug. All in all, this is one classic game you really can't go too wrong with, but those new to the game should take fair warning before diving in.

Metal Slug for anywhere

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

let me just say I love metal slug and game retains the basic feel of it. I got this on Christmas at first though I didn't even know they had a game like this out for GBA. I love this game though so let me get those gripes out. When you die the people you killed respon, and also the game is just to short. Now let's talk about good stuff the character model match the arcade version pretty good. I like the the metal slugs[metal slugs are the tanks can even be a air plane] there's only 3 so as for my favorite I don't have one. I love the story, but the game can become easy to hard. I like the collectible cards that change your attributes. So my advice is if you wan't to take metal slug on the road and you see this in the store get, but if you see the legend of Zelda and the minish cap choose wisely. other wise get this.

Great game, but sometimes a bit frustrating

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is absolutely great. Its extremely fun running around and shooting and grenading and blowing things up all throughout the level. And although sometimes the levels are hard, they usually become quite easy to beat once you play them a few times. but them comes the tricky part. You spent a lot of time and effort to get to the boss. your doing just fine and it looks like you just might beat the boss. Then, when it looks like you've won, the boss goes wacko and promptly attempts a series of attacks which are practicly imposible to dodge. You die, the Mission Failed screen comes up, and you have to go through the level all over again.

This is what makes the game really frustrating for me and why I rated it a 4 even though it is exellent in every way.

Metal Slug advance

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Metal slug is a great game with good graphics, and music. It's an action packed shooter, with cool enimeis and great expsoshins. i reccomend this game for a metal slug fan, or a shoot em up fan. The only reason i gave this game 4 stars is because you die to easily and the bosses can get a little annoying.

A great addition to the series

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Metal Slug Advance is the best possible realization of SNK's run-and-shoot series on the GBA. It is a technical marvel; the rich, over-exaggerated animation that made the series stand out in arcades is achieved with vastly inferior hardware. This portable entry in the series suffers only rare slowdown and a few lost frames of animation.

While the game looks like the early arcade entries, the gameplay is modified to fit a handheld. A health bar replaces the arcade's one-hit death system. The arcade versions of Metal Slug can be conquered in less than an hour given a few pockets full of quarters. (Or a PC capable of emulating the hardware.) Metal Slug Advance addresses the inherent brevity of their rich worlds with an adroit card collection system. Cards are hidden throughout the game worlds. Most of the cards are trinkets, but others provide benefits like increasing the armor for your vehicles or doubling your ammo supply for a weapon. The catch is that in order to keep the cards you collect in a level, you must complete that level without continuing. For the first time in the series I'm forced to consider the best approach to surviving levels and I end up appreciating the game mechanics more than my virtual quarter-munching practices allowed before. Less obsessive-compulsive players can abandon card collecting and leverage an infinite number of continues to power through the game, but the benefits from the power-up cards can make an aggressively challenging experience more approachable.

There are small aggravations that reveal some shortcomings in the design. While the health bar is a welcome addition, falling into a pit still causes an automatic death; it feels a bit unfair when you're "juggled" into a pit after being hit by an enemy attack. The frequency that the enemies respawn can be quite troubling when you're dodging enemy attacks by moving to the left and right, only to re-introduce defeated enemies as you scroll the screen. Without careful play, you can end up facing a never ending barrage of foes in some areas.

Metal Slug Advance does not stray far from familiar ground, but it is the only handheld version of the series that approaches the wacky, chaotic bliss that imbues the arcade editions. SNK demonstrated with the Neo Geo Pocket Color that it understands handheld game design at least as well as Nintendo. Metal Slug Advance is their first title on Nintendo hardware to continue that legacy.

True to Metal Slug

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a Metal Slug game and everything that comes with that. Insane shooting, non stop action and zany humour. I've been a Metal Slug fan for a years and this game lives up to the Metal Slug name.

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