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!

Metal Slug: Super Vehicle - 001

The Short

Pros
- Crazy run 'n gun action with lots of powerups and abilities
- Drive vehicles (aka "Slugs") for more awesome carnage
- Some of the best pixel art in the business, bar none
- Six levels of not-nazi blasting carnage
- Strikes a good arcade balance between skill-based and unfair quarter-stealing
- Quite silly
- Two players
- "RAWKET LAWNCHAIR"

Cons
- Not as silly as later installments, though that might be ok
- Only two characters
- Early ports (Playstation and Saturn) were kind of garbage

Metal Slug: Actually a spiritual sequel to Prometheus? 

The Long

The "run n' gun" genre has been around for a while, but people will argue it really took off with Contra. Combining macho-men with tight control, the "one hit and you're dead" idea, and absurd powerups and tons of action, Contra was pretty kickass. Many games would attempt to emulate Contra's success, some doing great (Alien Hominid), some ok (Cybernater) and some doing not ok (Doom Troopers). But really, when you think of a game series that not only matched but completely outdid Contra, you're thinking about Metal Slug.

SNK and Neo Geo were the kings of the arcade back in the 90s. Even today, they've made games across tons of genres that are memorable, play fantastic, and are just straight awesome. But for me, my absolute favorite SNK arcade game franchise is Metal Slug. There's just something about these games that is so incredibly gratifying it's hard to not just want to sit down and play them for hours.

So...what makes the first one so good? And why should you consider it nearly twenty years later? Grab your Heavy Machine Gun and read on.

Burnin' bridges. 

There isn't much to the story, so we'll just leave it at "Nazi look-alikes." The army of green-clad, lazy soldier jerks is out to take over the world, lead by a Hilter wannabe, and it's your job to take 'em out. Take 'em all out. Be it tanks, helicopters, planes, dudes, boats, military bases, walls; whatever. Enough bullets, and it'll explode in glorious, hand-drawn shrapnel goodness. Thank you, SNK, for completely going over the top.

The gameplay of Metal Slug will be familiar to anyone who has (as stated previously) played Contra. Your character starts with a standard pistol and can shoot in four directions (unlike Contra's starting eight) and can fire as fast as you can mash the arcade button. Of course, power-ups are everywhere, most of them given to you by captured prisoners who all look exactly the same. Save them and then stand next to them for a brief second, and they'll pull out their pants and give you something good. Sometimes it's something awesome ("Shotgun!"), and sometimes it's just stupid (a bone that's worth 50 points? Gee, thanks). 

What makes this game a riot is the previously mentioned carnage. Your dude is a non-stop destruction machine, and with power-ups it only get more ludicrous. The amount of stuff on the screen at once is just staggering (not to mention gorgeous), and as you get more and more insane upgrades, the carnage just increases. And don't let me forget to talk about the tanks (or "Slugs," as they call them) which you can man and can take about 4-5 hits before exploding. These tanks are awesome and can jump, duck, and shoot tons of bullets and shells all over the place. They help give you a sense of empowerment few games can emulate. 

This is paired with incredibly tight controls for jumping, shooting, and tossing grenades. And since enemies are about as quick on the trigger as the cowboys in Sunset Riders, if you play careful you can usually get pretty far without having to put in another quarter. 

Total destruction. Also, those pixelated explosions? Gorgeous. 

That, in truth, is one of the better parts of the Metal Slug games. While it's still an arcade suck (especially on the last final levels and bosses), it's designed in such a way that if you get really good at timing jumps and shots you can last a pretty long time before seeing a Continue screen. The game pushes for your continue quarter by offering a free Heavy Machine Gun power-up on death, and every death also restocks your grenades (a cheap tactic in Free Play to get through some bosses quickly). But even though one little hit will kill you (and cause you to lose whatever powerup you have), you come right back where you left off ready to go.

That isn't to say there aren't cheap deaths. The vertical stage (stage 4 I think?) in the snow is cheap, as bad platforming jumps can cause unnecessary deaths. The later bosses fire so many bullets everywhere it seems impossible to dodge. And if you ever see a mounted gun: ignore it. It's a trap. Standing still where the computer wants you to be is a sure-fire way to get murdered, unless you have a great co-op buddy to cover your butt.

Speaking of co-op, that's by far the funnest way to play these games. While single player is nice because you can hog all the power-ups, the game drops so many that you can tell it's been designed for a co-op experience. Playing with two people can also decrease frustration with bosses and other enemies that take a lot of hits, as having a second hand makes you feel all the more powerful. Absolutely a game to be played with friends.

This has some of the best pixel art and animations in the business. 

The game looks incredible, too. Everything is hand-drawn pixel art, from the backgrounds to the bits that explode off enemies to the blood and effects; everything. The animations are amazingly smooth, the art is jaw-dropping at times, and some of the bosses (while not as totally bananas as the later games) really look impressive. This is combined with a serviceable soundtrack that just exists to get you pumped to shoot a trillion not-nazies, though the little "end level" ditty that they recycle throughout the series will be stuck in my head forever.

So what is bad about Metal Slug? Well...only a few minor nitpicks. As mentioned before, despite the game being quite silly in the amount of damage you can do, it still is pretty straight-laced this early on. While later games introduce zombies, giant hermit-crab tanks, and aliens, this one is just you shooting guys for most of it. Hardly bad, and the six stages offer plenty of scenery variety, but just not quite as memorable as others. 

The only other real issue I have is the general arcade thing of it being designed to eat quarters, especially with the later levels. While skill can take you a certain distance, after a while you're going to have to be tossing quarters in pretty frequently if you want to see the end of the game. This, of course, doesn't matter if you're playing one of the home ports with unlimited continues, though some might argue that takes away the nail-biting stress arcade games are designed to give you. I personally think the game is fun both ways, but I prefer to not have to pay every time I make a bad jump.

You're going down, not-Hitler.

Overall, however, Metal Slug is a classic for a reason. The home ports to the PS1 and Saturn were both pretty bad (the Saturn was better, though you'll need the 1 MB Ram cart), though the PS1 was where I first played this game and I survived. If you want to play it today, the Wii's Virtual Console is a pretty safe bet, though the best way is through the Metal Slug Anthology on either the PSP or PS2. Or just find it in an Arcade; it's still around.

Metal Slug is just straight up fun. Tons of blasting, explosions, bad pronunciation of powerups, and general macho badassness makes it memorable and just a straight up joy to play. I usually get frustrated at most arcade games for being unfair, but I never did with Metal Slug. If you like destruction, then grab a buddy and start blowing up everything. You can't let the not-nazies take over, can you?

Four out of five stars. 

"I eat prisoners for breakfast! Yes, literally!"

Libre Software Meeting Call for Papers

Developers of free and open source games!

The Libre Software Meeting in Brussels is looking for talks about the "Free Gaming World".

An ideal place to introduce your project, talk about how to work with other people on open source game projects and meet other free software developers!


The deadline for submission is 31 March 2013!

Some previous talks, if you're not sure what to expec or what they expect from you:

• How do blind people play (computer) games
• Arthur Huillet: Anatomy of a role playing game (FreedroidRPG)
• Games engines done good

Brood Hunter?

Today I have a real "underground & secret" game: no website, no description, no nothing really... just a forum post and some cool game-play videos:





It seems to be called "Brood Hunter" and is quite obviously a Gloom inspired Quake1 mod.

However given that it most likely used the GPL Darkplaces Engine (same as Xonotic) and since game-play looks great, I have to do some wishful thinking here and hope it will be released as an open-source game so that we can work on replacing the remaining non-free Quake1 content at some point :)

Oh and I also stumbled upon an open-source Daikatana remake, using a heavily modified Quake1 engine. YES, that Daikatana!

Red Eclipse 1.4 and a missed birthday

Good news is that the long awaited Red Eclipse version 1.4 was released yesterday.
Read the announcement (with full change-log) here. Besides general polish the most notable features are:

• Vanity items and improved colours: dress up and frag with style.
• Visible legs in first person: know where you are kicking and parkouring.
• New and revamped maps: bringing you even more variety.
• Better viewing: level flythroughs, improved third and first person cameras.
• Better menus and other HUD elements: easier to see and read at a glance.
• New weapon: Mines add a new dimension to the existing gameplay.
• New mode: attack and defend in Gauntlet, competing for the most laps.
• Automatic demo recording: for those times you just have to watch it again.
• User Accounts: donate or contribute, and wear the in-game supporter badge.
• Improved weapon balance and gameplay rules, bugs fixed, and much more.

Especially the visible legs in 1st person view add to the parcour movements and overall the game feels much more "complete" now. Here are some impressions of a bot-match I had earlier on:

The bad news is  that we missed Xonotic's third birthday, but you can still congratulate here (where you can also read about some pretty cool updates to the game). To celebrate it, kojin made a nice frag movie:


Enjoy!

The Castle Doctrine: New Jason Rohrer MMO

Jason Rohrer is a quite controversial independent game developer with a track record of thought provoking games. His latest offering (in alpha state for 50% off sale with public domain source code included) The Castle Doctrine is a MMO about "burglary and home defense". Better than I could do it here shortly, these two (1, 2) articles give you an idea what the game is about.

Build defenses to protect your family or is it just another puzzle to solve?

The interesting twist is that you are (can be?) both a home intruder and responsible for building defenses for your own home. In a sense it is thus a player created puzzle solving game if you look at it from a more game design (abstract) point of view. It however also rises some ethical questions about how you deal with the theme of the arms race between intruders and home defenders. In either way, it sounds like a fun game though :)

On an unrelated note, one of the guys behind last year's successful FOSS board game Kickstarter project A Las Barricadas, is now looking for financial subscriptions for him to create more FOSS art (CC-by) and to take some art classes the same time. If that sounds like a good way to spend your hard earned cash, check out some of his previous works here.

Are We Alone? Atmospheric 2D

Are We Alone screenshot: Safe on Earth

Let's Play Are We Alone?

Are We Alone - a space game where you travel from planet to planet, between star systems in search of intelligent life - has been released on Github under MIT license.

It was made for Ludum Dare 22 "alone" and is a quite atmospheric piece.

Code License: MIT

Content License: Unknown