Metal Slug: 1st Mission review by Jason Starnes

Graphics - 9
Metal Slug is a good looking game. The characters are cartoony and fun, and they a nice variety of animations. The backgrounds are usually colorful and impressive, and they occasionally use parallax backgrounds to give it a nice feeling of depth. The only complaint I have is graphical slowdowns that seem to occur a bit too often. This shouldn't make the game any more difficult though.

Sound - 7
The music in Metal Slug, while not terrible, has way too many irritating whistles and repetitive riffs to keep you from turning the sound down low on the game. It would have been nice if there were a way to adjust the volume levels on the music. SNK should also pay more attention to how loudly certain pitches project from the little speaker. The music sounds fine at some points in the songs, but when that loud squealing whistle kicks in it's time to start thumbing for that little volume wheel (this was a problem with SS2 as well). The overall volume level of the music drowns out most of the sound effects, so it's hard to appreciate them as much. The sounds that I did manage to here were certainly acceptable. Pretty much what you'd expect from an NES game.

Gameplay - 7
The control scheme on Metal Slug works perfectly, and it's fairly easy to switch back and forth between weapons while bouncing around shooting everything. However, for some strange reason you can't shoot diagonally. This was probably a carry-over from previous Metal Slug games, and it's certainly not a gameplay killer (even the great Metroid had this limitation), but in this day and age the omission of the feature seems pointless, adding a bit of frustration, especially when you are trying to shoot through the air to look for secrets.

Metal Slug loses points in the gameplay department for being too simplistic. Basically just run around shooting randomly until the level is over, then start it all over again on the next level. The objectives are vague and you usually accomplish them by accident. There is no character building process so each level pretty much relies on heavy action and pretty sights, both of which are naturally going to be a bit scarce in a handheld game.

Lastly the weapons were a bit weak, with the exception of the machine gun.

Overall - 8
Metal Slug is fun, but it's almost a total no-brainer. If you get lost in a level just keep running around and you will eventually find your way out. Even when you are flying in a harrier, jumping around in a tank, or freefalling from the sky the gameplay never changes enough to keep you interested for long. Basically just dodge, shoot, and jump up to the next ledge. Classics like Contra were able to get away with this by having impressive music and quick, exciting graphics, but with Metal Slug it's just not enough to make it great.

Despite all this, as I said, the game is fun. The control is great and the graphics are nice for a handheld. The levels are packed with little secret items and secret doors for you to discover. If you really get into the game there will be a lot to bring you back to it.