Metal Slug

Synopsis

by Kyle Knight

An evil army is out to take over the world, and has captured some of your soldiers. You have to go in as a one-man army, defeat the entire evil army and all its high tech weapons, and rescue your soldiers. Best of all, you only have a pistol. That's the plot for most military based side scrolling shooters, and that's the plot for Metal Slug.

Metal Slug is a 2D scrolling shooter game in which one or two players must progress through the stages shooting anything that moves, and many things that don't. In the case of enemies particularly close by the player's character will slash at them with knives rather than shoot them. Along the way players may encounter friendly prisoners of war or even the Metal Slug tank.

Prisoners of war are tied up at various parts of stages, and players have to shoot them or slash them to undo their bonds. Once they're released they start wandering around near where they were tied up. Players then must touch them to free them. When that happens the prisoners of war will thank the player and leave an item behind to be collected. Some items are point increases, but most are weapons.

The Metal Slug, after which the game is named, is a tank that's equipped with a main gun and a standard rifle on a turret. It can take a number of hits before being destroyed, keeping the character inside safe from danger. When it loses all its hit points the tank will flash red, prompt the character to jump out, then explode. Players can also opt to send the tank rolling into enemies in a suicide attack that does massive damage.

Besides the regular pistol, the game's characters can use a variety of weapons like rifles, flame guns, shotguns, and rocket launchers. These weapons must be collected, and have a finite amount of ammunition to them. Once the ammunition is expended the player loses that weapon. In addition to these special weapons players can also collect a stash of grenades, which then can be thrown to explode.

Extra Credits

by Kyle Knight

After the advent of platform games, it was a logical step to add guns and allow players to shoot their way through. Konami took that step with their great shooting game Contra. Metal Slug retains the polished gameplay of the early Contra series while injecting its own personality into the game.

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