User Reviews (1 - 11 of 26)

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This game will rock!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: April 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I would paly the first metal Slug a the arcade. I could play all day for free. I hope they keep it 2D, 3D would be nice but I would not know if I would like it. I kinda like old games like this. If you like 2D games you got to like this one. I'm going to get it the day it comes out.

reaalllllly fuuuuuuuuuunny game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 13
Date: April 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have played all the previous tittles about this game, and I have enjoyed. I expect that this new release would keep the esense of the previous. If it keeps, really it will be an excellent notice for all video gamers

Great fun for kids and adults (M Slug 2)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 11
Date: May 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

My 5 year old son has Metal Slug 2 on his old PS1 and he absolutely adores this game! When he saw it for the Xbox, he begged me to get it. We play together on his PS1 for hours and hours and it never gets old. I hope the 3rd edition is just as good as the second.

Finally

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: May 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Finally metal slug 3 is getting an affordable state-side release. its been available on th aes for quite some years now. 5 has just been released. its a straight up port of the arcade version with minor tweaks. its going to have added levels and newer music. As usual you star as either Tarma, Marco, Fio or Eri. It has many fun old levels with many new ones. the gameplay is as solid as it ever has been and just as fun. the braching paths let you play through the same level a different way. again its the co-op that makes the game truly awesome. teamin up and kickin butt in all its glory. you cant go wrong with this game.

This Game is Great!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 14
Date: May 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is an old game yet it is still fun. There are
creatures and you have to use different guns,etc. Another
thing if you like this game or any product, GIVE IT A RATING!!!
If you don't, the product will get a bad rating and no one
will want it! Sheesh!

this is the BEST!!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 12
Date: May 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I love it!!! its the best it mixes old school 2d graphics with awesome gameplay. And its sortof challenging so it makes it an all around AWESOME game.....I RATE IT A FIVE STAR

Some of the best side-scrolling action you can get

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: May 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is incredibly fun, and I'm happy that the arcade game I hold so dearly in my heart is finally being ported to console. Unfortunately, I do not have an X-Box, but I might have to get one. I'm writing this review because everyone is giving it rave reviews, but NOT RATING it! People write "5 stars" but give it none. It deserves better than a 1 1/2 star rating when people have only good things to say.

Solid good old skool arcade fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: June 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game represents what classic gaming used to be, gameplay! This game is similar to contra, streets of rage, double dragon, castlevania, and ghost and goblins. Its got the best of all these games and more! You shoot to kill. There are tons of enemies, huge variety, huge bosses, and non-stop killing/shooting action. Lots of different weapons and power ups. This game is not all walk and shoot, you get to operate many different machines during your adventure. Then you can rescue hostages, get a monkey that works like a familiar, and many other things. Sometimes you get transformed into a zombie and the zombie can be powerful too with its own attacks, you might not want to pick up the medicine which heals you back to normal. Just one of the many fun piece of this game.

Graphic was good but not awesome. Its only little better than Metal Slug X for Playstation One but without the choppy animation. Metal Slug 3 runs super smooth at all times. The sound is excellent, just like the arcade. There are only 5 levels but 2 extra levels were made for the Xbox version, pretty cool here. The stages are medium sized in my opinion, could be bigger.... There are usually 2 alternate path you can choose during each "1/3" of the stage, but they all lead to the same boss stage. There all 4 characters to choose from, they all have the same abilites.... 2 players can play this game together, multi-player makes this shine! Game is rather short, you can blast thru it probably in an hour or two, but the 2 extra stages is there for you. This is one of those game after you finish you would like to play again.

Overall this is a golden classic arcade style game, it represents the zenith of 2-D action era. A must buy for all Xbox owners.

Hardcore/old school gamers need apply only

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

NOTE: For some reason every review on here as of this date says this game is awesome, but since a couple of people don't know how to use a drop down menu next to the "HOW MUCH FUN IS THIS GAME?" section the average rating is like 2.5 stars before this review. I guess before I make fun of the reviewer who criticized people for not posting a rating while not posting one him/herself, my review is four stars ;)

My heading is serious. To the uninitiated, this game will seem to be one of the dumbest looking things to ever surface for any modern day video game system. I should note that the exact opposite is true. This game is a gracious delight to those of us who grew up without 3D games and played 2D side scroller shoot-em 'ups like Contra. Back in the day (1990s) we didn't have any 3D bump mapping, texturing, line drawing distance, polygon count, and the dreaded LOADING screens; this is what video games were all about back then...simple and fun as hell.

GAME DESIGN/CONCEPT: Metal Slug 3 is a sidescroller shooter similar to Contra games of old; there are many weapons that you can get via icons dropped from dead guys, there are TONS of enemies, there are few levels (like five, I think) and you die from one hit (unless against zombies, where you turn into a zombie and then die if hit again). This is a classic gaming concept that has been succesful and will prove to bring back fond memories to those of us who have wasted many hours playing games like this. But I must forewarn those who think that this childish looking "T" rated game with only five levels will be beaten in 20 minutes; this game is friggin' hard.

I can't count how many times the screen is filled with deadly-to-the-touch objects that leave almost no room to move. There is no continuing midlevel, even in co-op mode, so if you lose all your lives, it's back to the beginning of the stage (and that's a real bummer for the longer than life last level). When you first play this game and realize you are getting your a$$ kicked left and right, chances are it's not you. This game makes Contra: Shattered Soldier for the PS2 look like "Play with the Teletubbies". You will find yourself constantly playing the levels over and over again to master them, but rest assured that you'll have fun replaying them; besides, that's how we've always beat these kinds of games. If you find yourself somehow getting bored of getting your hindside handed to you, get a buddy and play co-op! This is the most fun I've had playing co-op since Halo, believe it or not. This brought me back to the days of playing these kinds of games in the arcade with a buddy, kicking butt and spending money fast. I really wish there were more games out there with co-op play, and I don't mean the weak co-op like in James Bond: Everything or Nothing, but Brute Force/Halo/Mario Kart Double Dash co-op that detracts from the conglomeration of deathmatch games out there.

This concept may sound like blasphemy to those "game enthusiasts" of today (if you can call them that), by having a game that has you replaying the levels just to get by them and where logic and smarts means nothing to a good-ol' trigger finger that can shoot thirty bullets in five seconds. Believe me though that this game is fun as can be and is a wonderful homage to 2D sidescrollers of the past.

GRAPHICS: If my rating was based on technologically astounding graphics, this game would get a single star. However, video games are meant to be a form of interactive entertainment, not works of aesthetic pleasure to be looked at passively. The graphics look like something from the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis ages, but that's not a bad thing...the graphics fit the game, and that's all that matters.

MUSIC/SOUND: Again, this review is not based on technical merit. The audio in this game is cheesy as can be, and it perfectly fits the silly nature of the game.

CONTROL: The controls are about as simple as they get; a button to jump, a button to shoot, a button for grenades, and your standard pause. Doesn't get much simpler than that. I could care less that this game doesn't have a ten button sequence to do a running ninja stabbing head decapitation barbeque cookout trolly. The controls are so simple that reading the instructions is not necessary.

OVERALL: This game is great, but an insane difficulty level may be too much for all but the most hardcore gamer (why I docked a star); perhaps more lives than the maximum 5 or perhaps midlevel checkpoints like Contra SS for the PS2 could have helped (I dont agree with the choice to omit mid level continuing; that would have made this game infinitely more playable). Many video game hobbyists will clearly be turned off by the graphics and sound; to them I say at least rent this game and try to enjoy it. You'll be surprised at how much fun this game is.

The Legend

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you're reading this, you fall into one of two camps; those who love Metal Slug 3, and those who haven't played it.

If you belong to group 1, buy it. You know the drill regarding Metal Slug, and if you didn't already import the PS2 release, here's your chance to grab it for less money. In addition, you're supporting SNK's stateside buisness, and that's always a good thing. C'mon. It's SNK, for God's sake.

If you belong to group 2, then sit back and let me see how much of this game's history I can pack into 1,000 words.

Despite the name, Metal Slug has nothing to do with the animal, or even really the type of ammunition, which you'd think would make sense. Back in the arcade days of 1996, a group of laid-off Irem staffers (the company responsible for the immortal R-Type) got together and kicked out a game by the name of Metal Slug for the Neo Geo MVS/AES system. The concept was the same as any basic Contra-style shooter. You moved from left to right on the screen, jumping on platforms and shooting anything that shot back at you.

Like R-Type, Metal Slug had a "gimmick" that set it apart from other, similar shooters, and that was the Metal Slug itself; a cute, almost anthropomorphic mini tank that could jump and crouch. The player could find the Slug in the game's levels and it allowed a huge boost in power. That was really the whole concept.

It's also *not* the defining point of Metal Slug, merely it's namesake. Less memorable than the mechanic of the vehicles was the game's presentation, pacing, and level of fun. See, the thing about Metal Slug was not so much the raw game mechanics as the amount of obvious love that was poured into it. At a time when the Neo Geo was still the undisputed king of 2D graphics, Metal Slug reigned king as a pinnacle of what could be achieved artistically with supposedly "primitive" 2D graphics.

It's a little like the Color vs. Black and White debate with films. There's no denying that color is the way of the future, and it certaintly allows for a comparable amount of artistic expression, but B&W enables certain things that color does not, and a skilled director can make the most of these things in a way that color will never be able to reach. Apply the same argument to 2D vs. 3D, and you get what's so special about Metal Slug. Little touches like the hand-drawn cell animation in every single moving object in the game (and *everything* is animated in some way) allow for a remarkable amount of character, and it shines through in everything from the standing animation of the player's character to the facial reactions of the enemy troops when your character comes back from the dead after you put another quarter into the machine.

Anyway, Metal Slug went through two more arcade versions: Metal Slug 2, and Metal Slug X (basically a revamped version of MS2, which also landed on the Playstation 1 in the U.S., so grab it if you can find it). When Metal Slug 3 came out in 2000, it quickly became apparent that this was the zenith of arcade shooters. If you're a Led Zeppelin fan, here's an easy comparison: Metal Slug 3 is like the game version of Led Zep 4. It's that turning point when the end product becomes aware of it's own mystique and uses that knowledge to take things to a whole new level. Metal Slug 3 is a game that's aware of it's own following, and it manages the rarely accomplished task of giving the fans what they want, and giving them something entirely new at the same time.

Even if you're not familiar with the previous games in the series, Metal Slug 3 still has that aura of a game that's legendary and knows it, and is therefore unafraid to try things that it would have stopped short of in previous installments. This is hard to explain properly in few words without having some kind of visual aide, so you're just going to have to trust me when I say that this game reaches the level of inspired art, and there are several occasions where you'll grin while playing it, and probably mutter to yourself "Oh, man, that's really cool."

Well, okay, here's a "quick" example. The final stage in the game starts out with your character in a flying Slug -- an evolution of the tank from the first game. It then mimicks other spaceship-themed side-scrolling shooters (like R-Type) until you wind up on the ground, where it re-creates the final level from the original Metal Slug. Then, the alien enemies from Metal Slug X make an appearance, capture your character, and abscond back to their mothership. You then get a different character (of the 4 selectable) and, combined with the forces of the soldiers you fought in the first game, get into spaceships and rocket off to go fight the aliens. From there, the game becomes a vertically-scrolling shooter (like Ikaruga) until you finally make it onto the mothership, where it's classic Metal Slug until you finally rescue your originally selected character...And by then, you're about halfway through the level.

See what I mean? It's self-referencing, well constructed, funny as hell, and just all-around amazing.

Also, unlike many other games of this nature, Metal Slug 3 is for the casual and hardcore alike. It's graphics aren't so poor that they'll turn anyone off (in fact, they've held up very well) and the concept is so simple that anyone can pick up and play. The one caveat is that the game is quite hard, but there's selectable difficulty and enough leeway that, even if you can't make it all the way through, there's a good chance one of your buddies can. Expect to spend some time with it, mind you, but it's not so hard that it stops being fun, which is really the most important thing of all.

This is an excellent chance to grab the Holy Grail of 2D games. Don't miss it; you won't regret it.

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