Okay so I am a HUGE Neo Geo/SNK nerd to the point that I own 2 home systems and several Neo arcade cabinets. This being said I of course love Metal Slug. The MS series is a 2D fan's wet dream. Great animation, arcade action and awesome humor. Metal Slug 3 is my favorite in the series. It is hard to explain but there are just so many "wow moments". Turning into a zombie and projectile vomiting blood to clear the screen, the vertical shooter section of the last mission, all the awesome weapons (THUNDER CLOUD!) and so many other things. Even though I own the game on the Neo I still bought it for live arcade for online co-op. So what do I find when I download the game and fire up a co-op game with my man
CronosBlade......
Rant on
....... God damn fucking laziness that is what I found.
First of all there is graphics smoothing. This is fine lots of games have this SOTN, Contra and others. The difference is these games have the option to turn it the fuck off. Kind of lazy huh devs.
The online play was less than optimal. It wasn't unplayable but over broadband this is unacceptable. I can play a pretty solid match of Virtua Fighter 4 the "devs" should be able to get this right.
Previous ports of Slug 3 had mission select so I just assumed this would. Nope sure didn't.
The last and worst sin of all is that the game is fucking censored. You heard me right. When you shoot the enemy a little white splatter shoots out. Of course the splatter should be red blood. The zombie projectile blood vomit is still there, being eaten alive by plants is still there, but no god damned blood from bullets. You might ask "why the fuck would they do that?" Well it isn't what they did it is what they didn't do. Many U.S. home versions of Neo Geo games had some censorship MS3 was one of them. It was easy to get around this - by having a Japanese system or getting your system modded so you could switch the region. So the lazy ass fucks at SNK Playmore just dumped the code of the English home version of the game and didn't change this. Even though they could have used one of the other ports that has blood. FUCK!
Rant off
Listen the beauty of Metal Slug is much more than blood from bullets and mission select. It is just this lazy dumping of a great game really sucks. I am still going to play the hell out of it with friends online. Just last night with Cronos we ended up taking a path I hadn't played in years. I'd also still recommend the game to someone that has no other way to play it.
Man I am nervous as fuck about Samurai Shodown II on XBLA.
Hitogoroshi's blog
follow this blog
subscribe via RSS
send message
invite to meetup+play
Good times, and I agree with everything said above.
This was indeed a lazy port, and you didn't even mention the mislabeling that atheistium did with the 2-6 coop, which the game has never supported.
I had no lag since I was hosting, but I can imagine how it was from the other side of the fence.
Still a great game, but I am disappointed a bit.
I WAS hosting, with Bahamut, and the LAG IS TERRIBLE.
We also noticed no 4-6 player co-op AND THE FUCKING CENSORSHIP! Replacing blood with sweat ? LAME!
Snaileb - Depends. Lag or slowdown? Hito and I are in agreement that the slowdown experienced ingame is par with the original arcade release. So if you were hosting, you should have no lag, just the game slowdown, like in the NES days.
Wow. Do not want, especially when Metal Slug Anthology is available for Wii.
I only played the demo and I noticed that just in the single player the frame rate dropped constantly. That was bad enough, I didn't bother buying it.
@Necros I would recomend getting Anthology for something other than the Wii. Every control scheme on the Wii forces you to use motion.
Glad i read this before i bought it...got 1600 points for xmas, and i've been deciding on wether to buy this, pick up omega V next week, or wait and hold out hope for the eventual releases of Ikaruga and Rez...
@Hitogoroshi:
False, you can use a GameCube controller. That being said, I still thought Anthology sucked. I'd say the best way to play Metal Slug (from what I can tell) is with a GameTap subscription.
I bought it with out trying it first, BAD CHOICE.
Yeah, kinda sucks.
yeah consider me pissed. Most of all at sweat blood it takes a lot of the fun out. Not to mention the lazy fucking achievements too.
A) what the fuck is a "miss"? does this mean the achievements are for NOT DYING IN A LEVEL? because that is nearly impossible, especially considering that you can't select the levels like you said. So I'll never be able to get even half the achievements in this game
This is the last time I buy a live arcade game the first day.
Hippie : It's without dying. It's been confirmed by other message baords. BASTARDS
Fucking hell.. fuck you XBLA.
That's insane.
That's like asking you to beat level 3 in Battletoads, while trying.
that sucks dude, I was thinking of getting this. I just downloaded Alien Hominid to get my 2D shooter fix. It's old, but I'd heard good things. I'll tell you this: It's fucking hard.
I didn’t get to play it for very long, but I’m disappointed as well.
THE BLOOD CAN BE PUT BACK IN
Turn your console language to Japanese, and it will be bloody. If you get an achievement though, the achievement will be saved in japanese..
that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life.
BZ - That's how the original Neo game worked - like Hito said. You had to change the system country to get blood in the game. I think they dumped the Neo Geo rom at this point since this worked.
I was pretty mad at the lack of blood. Whatever, I had the highest score on my friends list leaderboard for offline play as of last night, so eat it, bitches!
I understand that, I have neorageX etc, but I'm saying the fact there's NO FUCKING SWITCH IN THE OPTIONS TO DO THIS is just, as hito said, fucking lazy.
grim, I don't eat anything suggested by people with bags on their head who want to chainsaw me. just on principle.
BZ - Yes I agree with you completely on that. My apologies for misunderstanding.
Luckily I could configure the grenade button elsewhere. I wanted to hit B all the time last night and kept blowing up vehicles.
Censored Metal Slug? IN MY XBOX?
hmmm..i'm iffy on getting this now. I don't mind a few missing red sprites, but such shit should already be included. But if I do download it, free achievements and a nice little online co op that isn't a emulator.
gimme MSX and we'll pick thi up too.
I'm just not interested in these ports any longer. I'm starting to get really sick of these companies who just don't get it.
Like I said before, any kind of texture smoothing or anti-aliasing is the greatest form of disrespect possible to a port.