Metal Slug 2: Super Vehicle - 001/II

The Short

Pros
- Takes the original Metal Slug formula and cranks it up to 11
- More weapons, slugs (vehicles), and enemies
- Fight aliens and mummies, oh my!
- Adds two new playable characters (girls!) and lets you actually pick your character
- Can get "Fat" for more damage and more fatness.
- Some of the best bosses and locations in the series
- Strong balance of skill reward vs coin-pushing

Cons 
- Arcade version and all ports have absolutely crippling slowdown
- Overall mechanics not to different from the original Metal Slug
- Some of the levels (with the exploding Gollum-lookalikes) are a bit cheap
- Enemies don't bleed in the US versions; they "sweat." What.

Uncharted 2 train level, eat your heart out. 

The Long

Considering how successful Metal Slug was, it made sense that SNK would punch out another game. Two years later, with rocket lawnchair and heavy machine gun in hand, Metal Slug 2 hit arcades. Of all the Metal Slug games, this one has always felt to me like the one where the series really took off. It blends just the right about of nazi-slaughter along with killing weird other things (mummies, aliens, and...bats?), as well as allowed you to traverse the entire globe rather than just sort of rustic European-looking townscapes. Combined with new vehicles, characters, and weapons, this was going to be the best Metal Slug yet.

Is it? Well, almost, except for one rather massive flaw. 

This first boss is bigger than any in the original Metal Slug.

Metal Slug 2 takes everything that made the first game great and amps it up. The graphics are prettier, the enemies and bosses larger, and the locations and situations zanier. One minute you'll be fighting your way through an Egyptian village, riding a "Camel Slug" (basically just a camel with a machine gun mounted on the side), the next you'll be raiding tombs with the best of them and fighting mummies (and turning into a mummy if they manage to hit you with their toxic breath). Then you'll be fighting a land-ship-tank-thing, as well as a boss that literally throws tanks at you. After a startling plot twist that aliens are, in fact, behind all of this (spoilers?), you'll have to send E.T. home via flame shots and shotgun blasts before destroying the mothership and rescuing not-Hitler from anal probing. Oh, and did I mention one of the levels requires you to shoot a runaway train so many times it explodes? Four times?!

Metal Slug 2 is everything I love about the Metal Slug series. Tight controls, tons of great power-ups, fantastic boss battles that are just massive, and great graphics and tons of silliness. It was all set to be the best Metal Slug game yet.

But then you start paying it, and you realize something bad: this game has horrible slowdown.

Also, in the US versions of these games they "bleed" sweat. How lame is that?

And I don't just mean the home ports, which at the time were much less powerful systems than dedicated arcade cabinets. I mean, the game itself was slow in the arcades. When stuff really got crazy, which is a Metal Slug staple, things could drag to a downright crawl. While you could argue it isn't gamebreaking, it is extremely frustrating, not to mention lame. One of the staples of the first game was that tons of crazy stuff happened but the game still ran smooth. The slowdown is annoying.

Not just annoying, but it can get you killed! I can't count the number of times I couldn't react with good enough timing to dodge boss attacks or bullets because the game was just chugging along at about half-speed. It takes the wind out of the sales of many of the fantastic-looking (and designed) bosses to have the whole game barely moving half the time. Quite obnoxious.

I blame the mummies. Who live in a "Mummy" house, it seems.

All that aside, this game is gorgeous. The aforementioned huge bosses are all pixelated, glorious pillars of art and animation in a style that people, frankly, think takes too much time these days. The explosions look even better, and the new effects (like how a variety of enemies die differently when being either burned by a flame shot or literally disintegrated by the overpowered shotgun) are delightful to look at. This is really a fun looking game, slowdown be damned.

The music is, as always, catchy and great, but with certain tracks like the mummy level getting stuck in your head something fierce. The sound effects are also fantastic, with the alien and mummy death sounds being personal favorites of mine. 

It also has a great ending that directly references Independence Day, so that's hilarious as well.

I see what you did there, Metal Slug 2.

All in all, Metal Slug 2 does everything that a sequel should do. It ups the ante, jacks everything up to a new level, and looks phenomenal doing it. If it weren't for the awful slowdown, I'd argue that this is the best Metal Slug game ever made. But, to be honest, Metal Slug X (which is basically this game but better and with all the mistakes fixed) makes this game completely obsolete  But that's the topic for the next review.

Point being: Metal Slug 2 is great, and it's unfortunate the slowdown causes so many glaring problems. If you find it in an arcade, you should play it, but if you have it in a collection, play X instead.

Three out of five stars. 

Die, aliens!