Metal Slug 3 Review

Metal Slug 3

Publisher: SNK Playmore Developer: SNK Playmore / Hamster (Switch) Platform: Switch Release: 2000 Genre: 2D Shooter / 2D Platformer Rating: 9.1 \ 10.0: Outstanding

Above are two players fighting mutant crabs.

I adore every mainline game in the Metal Slug series, and ever since I first played it, I have regarded Metal Slug 3 as not only franchise's best entry but as the best arcade game I have ever played. When I noticed that only the first three Metal Slug titles had been ported to Switch rather then the Metal Slug Anthology compilation which had been ported to the PS4 only month's before the Switch's release, I was disappointed, but still excited to play them on the go.

For those unaware, Metal Slug is a series of run-and-gun arcade platformers best known for its punishing difficulty and its top notch spritework. Most of the games are aggressively linear, which detracts from their replay value, but Metal Slug 3 has numerous hidden shortcuts and alternative routes - so many, in fact, that I have played through this game at least ten times and am fairly sure I haven't discovered all of them. Each entry features numerous vehicles and weapons, and a mix of soldiers and supernatural creatures to fight. With few exceptions, attacks will kill you instantly and you therefore must be wary of gunfire.  but the game will often place powerful weapons and vehicles in locations that allow you to go on a temporary power trip in which you can cause significant environment destruction while mowing down dozens of enemies. The game is consistently fun, but moments such as these were especially exhilarating. MS3 leans more heavily on the aforementioned supernatural aspect which, in conjunction with the branching pathways and over-the-top scenarios ensure that it never gets stale. Throughout the adventure you'll battle massive mutant crabs, zombies, Martians, and, depending on what paths you choose, yetis, flesh-eating slugs, mummies, and anthropomorphic Venus flytraps. The zombies are especially noteworthy, as they can infect you and greatly modify the gameplay. As a zombie, you move slowly, jump slowly, and cannot use special weapons, but there are two major advantages: You are invulnerable to attacks from all non-zombies and your grenades are replaced with streams of blood vomit that can nearly clear the entire screen. This is a massive step up from other transformations in the series such as mummification, which is an objective downgrade from human form. The fifth and final mission features some phenomenal setpieces, including a jetpack-based pursuit of a military convoy and a vertically-scrolling shootout with in space with UFOs, and it's easily the pinnacle of the series.

The presentation of each Metal Slug game is top notch, and 3 is certainly no exception. Every sprite and animation was crafted with incredible detail, and small visual touches such as soldiers jumping in the air with shocked expressions when they first notice you and sticking white surrender flags out of the hatches of their tanks when you destroy them add immensely to the game's charm. Anyone will tell you these games look fantastic, but their music is unfortunately far less frequently discussed. The instruments may be synthetic, but they still sound great; the electric guitar pieces that play during the zombie, underwater, and outer-space missions and the brass-heavy pieces from the jungle mission, final boss, and credits are particularly memorable. My one gripe with the presentation is one that's the fault not of the game, but the port: Slowdown. I experienced semi-regular performance drops that caused the game to slow down, and while they never rendered the game unplayable, they were quite annoying at times. Metal Slug 3 is a strictly sprite-based arcade game from 2000 that runs without a hitch on far weaker consoles (even handhelds), and although this is not a deal breaking issue, it's certainly worth noting and quite puzzling given that the Switch is the most powerful handheld console ever released.

The performance issues are disappointing, but this port also has some handy features, including the ability to create and load a single save state, add credits, adjust the time limit (which has never had any impact in the gameplay throughout all of my experience with Metal Slug), customize controls, and adjust the width of the screen if for some reason you're bothered enough by the 4:3 aspect ratio enough to ruin the visual fidelity by stretching it to 16:9. Even without these additions, the Metal Slug games are incredibly well-suited for the Switch. They can all be beaten in under 90 minutes which allowed me to easily play through them in one sitting when on the go, and this pairs excellently with the possibility for a second player to drop in or out at any time. I had played through this game many times before buying it on my Switch, and in the several months since then I've played through it nearly ten times. each time with a different friend when away from my home and I never got tired of it. Unfortunately, this version does not have online co-op, but this a nitpick, as I would not have used this feature frequently.

Despite this port’s flaws, it is still well worth buying. Most people probably won’t be able to get as much value out of it as I have which can make the $8 price tag seem a bit steep, but if you expect to play through it more than once, then I’d say that the price is more than fair. Few other games are as much of a joy for me to play than this one, and I’d highly recommend it to any one seeking a short but sweet experience that can be enjoyed even more with a friend.

Originally on the SNK Neo-Geo
Also available on PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable (via Metal Slug Anthology), PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, and PC

Ups
Branching paths add replay value
Amazing pixel art
Great soundtrack
Fantastic variety and final mission
Portability allows for easy co-op
More variety than the rest of the franchise
New options added to Switch port

Downs
Very short
Frequent slowdown
Lack 360  and Steam's online co-op

The System Difference: Most console ports of Metal Slug 3 and the other games in the series also allow for unlimited continues, but lack most of the other options that the Arcade Archives version has. However, unlike in this release of the game, I have never encountered any framerate drops or slowdown when playing Metal Slug Anthology on the Wii. Additionally, this Switch port lacks the online co-op that was added to the version of the game available on all non-Nintendo seventh and eighth-generation consoles and PC, and the port to the original Xbox features two additional modes that are mysteriously not present in any of the numerous releases of the game from the past 15 years.

ESRB: T Content: Blood and Violence Price: $7.99 (Digital)

Halo: The Master Chief Collection Review

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Publisher: Microsoft Developer: 343 Industries Platform: Xbox One Release: 2014 Players: 1-4 (Campaign), 2-16 (Multiplayer)*  Genre: First-Person Shooter Rating: 9.3 \ 10.0: Outstanding

*Player counts vary by each campaign and each multiplayer mode

A scene from the remastered version of the Halo 2 mission Regret.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The aspects of individual games in this compilation will not be thoroughly discussed in this review. Reviews of each game can be found here.

The Halo series has seen a dip in quality ever since 343 Industries became the developer responsible for it. Their original Halo content may not be at the same level of quality as Bungie's work on the franchise, but 343 has done a fantastic job at celebrating the series's history with Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

This compilation includes includes almost all of the content from Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2 (which has been remastered), Halo 3, and Halo 4. Halo 3: ODST's campaign is available a piece of $5 DLC, meaning that Halo: Reach is unfortunately the only Halo FPS released as of 2014 not to receive representation in the collection. Each game now runs at 1080p 60 FPS, a framerate and resolution that none of the games had achieved on their original platforms. I have played MCC exclusively on the original model Xbox One, and the framerate remained mostly stable, but I did experience somewhat frequent drops to about 30 FPS when playing split screen or online. This instability never made the game unplayable, but I was noticeable. This issue is most likely not as prominent on the Xbox One S and X models.

The star of the show is Halo 2. This anthology was released on the game's tenth anniversary, and it received remastered graphics and music, CGI cutscenes done by Blur Studios, and new terminals. The upgraded visuals are absolutely stunning. Halo 2: Anniversary is one of the best-looking games I have ever played and undoubtedly the best-looking on the Xbox One. The incredibly well-detailed textures are an important factor in this, but the beautiful lighting and shading, and the vibrant color palette are what truly sell the look. The new cutscenes look so good that they verge on photorealism,. The human characters did have a slight uncanny valley effect, but to deny the fidelity of the cinematics would be unfair. Halo 2's score is a wonderful mix of epic orchestra and intense rock, and it is easily one of my favorite soundtracks to any piece of media. The remastered tracks are slight improvements in most cases, but choir is used to such an extent in several tracks that it sometimes detracts from the overall quality of the music. The new terminals did provide interesting additional context to the events of the game, but I was unable to view some of them because I would receive errors from the Halo Channel app which opens on your Xbox when you interact with them.

As I mentioned earlier, you can download the campaign of Halo 3: ODST for a mere $4.99. While it is quite short compared to the other Halo titles, but it is easily one of my favorites in the franchise and is well worth purchasing. It's a shame that the Firefight mode from ODST was is not available to purchase, as it is one of my favorite horde modes in any shooter and not seeing it represented in what is supposed to be the ultimate Halo experience feels wrong given the mode's popularity.

Several changes have been made which apply to all of the campaigns, but they do not modify gameplay; any mission can be played at any time regardless of whether you have completed the others, and any skulls can be activated even if you have not collected them in each game. As someone who had completed every Halo game prior to purchasing The Master Chief  Collection, I appreciated these features, as I was able to experience my favorite moments from the franchise without having to replay each game (which, being a huge Halo fan, I eventually did anyways). In fact, no changes whatsoever have been made to the actual gameplay, and I wish that they had been. The Flood missions in the first three games are infamous low points in the series, and shinier graphics don't make them any less tedious. It would have also been appreciated if tweaks had been made to Halo 2's brutal Legendary difficult which is well known for being outright unfair due to the high number of Jackal snipers who can instantly kill the player. All of the games are still incredibly fun without these changes, and these are simply nitpicks.

For those seeking an experience designed strictly for co-op, all 50 chapters of Halo 4's Spartan Ops mode can be played in any order you wish. This mode is worth experiencing, but its repetition of environments, unnecessarily lengthy chapters and sometimes absurd number of enemies make it weak compared to the collection's other PvE offerings. You can create loadouts that can be used both in this mode and Halo 4's PvP multiplayer, and every perk and weapon is available from the start. Given that some of the most powerful items were unlocked far too early in the progression cycle of the original version of Halo 4, it hardly makes a difference that nothing has to be unlocked here. The large number of armor sets from Halo 3 and 4 are also all immediately wearable, but you are unfortunately unable to swap out individual pieces (if, for example, you want to wear the Hayabusa armor in Halo 3, you must wear every single piece of it, you couldn't also have ODST shoulder pads or the MJOLNIR Mk VI chestplate).

When it comes to offline multiplayer, The Master Chief Collection has enough content to stay enjoyable for years. Every single map from the four games, including DLC, is playable (except for several maps exclusive to Gearbox Software's PC port of Combat Evolved which were ripped from the campaign and were mediocre as result). Additionally, the Forge modes for both Halo 3 and 4 are playable, and a new one has been added for Halo 2 Anniversary. Because of the incredible number of options that are available for creating custom maps and gamemodes, I wish that there was a file browser, something that was present in both Halo 3 and Reach, but the only way to share content is to upload it to your profile where friends can then download it.

When this game first launched, its matchmaking was near-unplayable due to terrible servers. This issue has since been resolved, and new playlists have been added. There are playlists for each of the staple gamemodes such as Slayer and Capture the Flag, and each game has its own ranked and unranked playlist with a variety of gamemodes. The game used to allow a vote between potential maps and modes before the match began, but this has strangely been removed and you are now instantly placed in a match without any choices which slightly disappointed me.

Whether you are a Halo veteran or newcomer, The Master Chief Collection is well worth owning and is easily the definitive way to experience each game it includes. The convenience of having a set of some of the greatest shooter campaigns, multiplayer maps, and content creation tools of all time in one package is well worth the price, and the enhanced visuals are the icing on the cake. Several aspects of the original games have been slightly downgraded, but almost all of my issues with this title are nitpicks that can easily be overlooked.

Ups
Phenomenal replay value
All games looks amazing and mostly run at 60 FPS
Halo 2's remastered soundtrack is mostly improved
All missions, skulls, and armor can be accessed from the start
Controls can be changed for each game
New Forge mode added for Halo 2

Downs
No content from Halo: Reach is included
Occasional framerate drops
Halo Channel app rarely works
Gameplay issues left unchanged
Veto system removed from multiplayer
No file browser for Forge creations

ESRB: M Content: Blood & Gore, Language, and Violence Price: $29.99 (Retail / Digital)