by Pete Degrazio
May 21st, 2008 -
Old fans of SNK’s NeoGeo console are in for something special. Microsoft accepted the game and allowed Metal Slug 3 to 'relaunch' on xbox live arcade. Complete with all its original ass kicking power, and a few upgrades to boot.
Metal Slug 3 is a gaming classic, period. The principle is basic, blow shit up, stop the bad guys, and kill everything. What else could you ask for? The game’s five missions are all different with their own unique setting and overall feel to it. You’ll have a too much of a blast shooting things to mind that there is no reason for you to do so.
This basic philosophy carries on over to the visuals, as well. In a graphical sense, Metal Slug 3 isn't going to break barriers or stun us with its beauty. However, the game looked good for its time, and with little improvements on explosions and the characters looks, the Live Arcade version satisfies that retro crave. The backgrounds fit in perfectly with the rest of game, and there isn’t any drop in the frame rate, even when everything is blowing up. Believe me, lots of shit blows up.
As long as you can keep on moving right and shooting everything in sight, you’ll done fine. Along the way you’ll find numerous different enemies to shoot, since all of the levels bring their own unique enemies. You’ll also find tons of weapons at your disposal. Metal Slug 3 also lets you control some vehicles in order to… you guessed it, kill more things.
If you do a really good job you can post your score using Xbox Live’s Leaderboards. If you want you can also play the game through with a friend in the system co-op mode. Once you beat the game you unlock ‘Storming the Mother Ship’ which is essentially a new mission and ‘Fat Island’ where you play as fat little characters, eating everything in sight to see who can get…that's right you guessed again…the fattest.
One caveat is the game’s difficulty. If you mess up, you’ll have to begin from the beginning of the game, unlike the original arcade version which let you play from where you left of. This is particularly annoying since you will lose quite a bit in the various stages.
Metal Slug 3 is a fun little game and it will provide you with several hours of enjoyment thanks to the quirky action. If you’re a SNK NeoGeo fan, go purchase this right now since you’ll enjoy the visual fidelity and bragging rights that come with Xbox Live. Even if you aren’t a fan, playing Metal Slug 3 will remind you of the days where gaming wasn’t all about having the best graphics engine, and more about the massive amount of crap you can shoot at once.
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