sensibilities off the charts! gun forze II wont stop and cant stop! its metal slug, from the ground-up! love to think, in an alternate universe, this would have been the metal slug we would have had: instead of rescuing hairy old dudes. . . you rescue cheerleading chicks, lots of them, too! shame the game is practically dead, no ports or anything, forever stuck in the mame-zone, perhaps for the better? or worse? who knows, though, i know! that this, rocks.
Explicitly a progenitor to Metal Slug, the gunplay has some overwhelming power and the mech animation is stellar, but it's marred by Irem & Nazca's usual penchant for quarter-munching. Felt like it made all of Metal Slug's problems explicitly worse, and then the first loop didn't even have the decency to give me an ending. Meh.
Definitivamente nem parece que o jogo anterior é terrivel, a evolução disso aqui é monstruosa, consigo comparar até com blazing chrome de tão bom que esse jogo é, misturou melhor dos 2 mundos de metal slug e contra e conseguiu criar sua propia identidade, escalar lugares, andar em fios, veiculos, mechas, a gameplay do jogo é muito boa, descontarei meia estrela pq tem aquele negocio de alguns jogos de arcades de dps que chega no final volta no inicio, não tem um final propiamente dito.
after churning through most of the 90s-00s metal slug entries this week i was taken by two things. first: the games have a hilarious sense of Vonnegutian violence that makes all entries difficult to be mad at even if i found some of them tedious and grueling. in metal slug 1 & 2 in particular you can be killed by all sorts of 'Top 10 Worst WW2 deaths' sketches, like being crushed by a falling tank in disrepair or getting struck with an ejected shell casing from a Comically Large Cannon, as well as dishing out dark comedy of your own like pumping 20 pistol rounds into a suntanning grenadier or instagibbing a riflemen with 5 grenades as he leaves the latrine. it's hard to single out what gives a metal slug game that approachable aura that makes it a hot commodity but i imagine this aesthetic of humor, along with the plainly good slapstick like the inflation sprites and its death animation, has aided in the series' canonization and perpetual status in the zeitgeist.
second, these titles were alot slower than i remember. after perusing for a bit you can find dev interviews that state that metal slug was conceived as being branched off side-scrolling shmups like Irem's own R-TYPE instead of Contra, and its felt in the way hitboxes in the series are meant to imprison a poor position into a guaranteed death as in the shmup's philosophy rather than hitboxes being quick tests to jump or duck as in contra's philosophy. or at least, that's my perusal of the motivation--i'm nothing but a fledgling to both genres really but my main point is that I often "foresaw" my death happening in metal slug in the same way i "foresaw" my deaths in shmups, realizing too late i had put myself in an unwinnable screen position due to prior mistakes in dodging. i learned to accept this sort of difficulty for what it is as i moved on, but i wondered what a metal slug title might look like if it's challenges was more chaotic & reactive rather than guided & premeditated.
thus i have my question answered in gunforce ii, ironically the closest spiritual predecessor to metal slug, which manages to completely invert these two observations and separate itself out as a underplayed gem with its own sensibilities rather than some historical trivia for metal slug fiends. on the first observation, metal slug's wartime clownery is replaced instead with a mostly self-serious aesthetic of metal (in all forms), mecha, and masculinity: gunforce II stands next to SNK's Search and Rescue as perhaps the most attentive arcade title (to my knowledge) towards the late 80s-90s OVA & TV scene of seinen mecha and go nagai-derivated creature horror. the latter shows up only towards the ending stretch of bosses but this game is knee-deep in the bag of the former--the work of that era's staple mech designers like Katoki or Kawamori seemed like go-to references here, and shit like Bubblegum Crisis, 8th MS Team, Dragonar, L-Gaim, and Mellowlink were constantly running through my mind as i replayed this, not necessarily out of any explicit reference but just as being on the same wavelength as the game. its hard to notice this reference point of design at the game's breakneck speed but watching this HD run really honed it in--the sort of Neue Ziel-esque design of many of the common enemies, the power suited mini boss trio that appears in stage 2-1, a skeleton alien centipede demon inside a tekkaman blade-esque suit as the final boss--all of it feels crafted from a shared appreciation & study for that era's ability to engineer sleek instant classics of designs for narratives of dark melodramas and dystopian vignettes. in fact, the game cares so much for rendering these designs, for showing every healthy/damaged/destroyed state between pinion and gear, driver and driven, shear out and tear out that'll you probably spend at least 10% of your run time here in frame spikes of dropping to around 15 fps. while slowdown in metal slug becomes a crucial aid in assessment, gunforce ii never really ascends above being moderately hard for most of the time, so with slowdown often occurring in the denouement or initialization of encounters you'll just accept it for what it is. (tho I do find it really funny that the first 30 seconds of level one has the game's most noticeable slowdown). but it's rather serious passion for mecha without overt recapitulation or veneration makes it at really pretty & unique to look at it motion, and it's hard not to be charitable towards the title when you because of how singular it looks, in spite of its obvious ties to metal slug in user interface.
on the second observation, gunforce ii diverges from metal slug in being explicitly connected with Contra over any shmup, especially in how every platform, ledge, and wire in this game is scalable, similar to the former's platforming. this adds a much needed (for my tastes) dynamism to the greater metal slug encounter philosophy, letting you craft your own screen real-estate and angles of attack rather than following the rules as the encounter lays out for you. frankly, this scaling element is often not really necessary because again the game isn't that hard (stage 2-2 being a great example of where it's absence isn't even noticed), but there is great fun to be had in abusing the protagonists' absurdly double jointed arms to launch 360-degree assaults while hanging from the ceiling or bear hugging a ledge. it also adds a bit of strategy to the vehicular gameplay--since vehicles often aren't capable of switching vertical planes as easily as you are on foot, and because the game's equivalent of metal slug POWs can roam about both above and below your current height, there is some genuine strategy in regards to whether to abuse the hitpoints and firepower of vehicles for greater safety but miss the POWs, or to trust in your parkour skills and aim for saving all POWs even if it means a riskier section, or to mix the two and believe you can dismount & mount with the proper timings. again not every level engages with this idea to its full extent but it complicates the treatment of vehicles as a strict powerup as in metal slug, where losing a vehicle early often meant playing the rest of an encounter out at a tedious disadvantage.
where i fall off the train is unfortunate in that this is just not enough of a good thing--it's shorter than just about every metal slug title I'm sure, and the levels it really clicks on, the third and final levels, just remind me of how elite this or the planned third entry could have been if Irem didn't get the can right after gunforce ii released. but to be clear i think the rest of the levels are great, occasionally dipping into amazing on select sections and bosses, but not a consistent "damn..." like those two. in my opinion it's pretty tied with metal slug X as this dev's team best attempt at the whole idea honestly. also i'm mentioning it again but god these protagonists' arms are so fucking weird, please look at a clip or something it's like addicting-games.com tier in how you can get the arms to go out at weird angles. really endearing tho
second, these titles were alot slower than i remember. after perusing for a bit you can find dev interviews that state that metal slug was conceived as being branched off side-scrolling shmups like Irem's own R-TYPE instead of Contra, and its felt in the way hitboxes in the series are meant to imprison a poor position into a guaranteed death as in the shmup's philosophy rather than hitboxes being quick tests to jump or duck as in contra's philosophy. or at least, that's my perusal of the motivation--i'm nothing but a fledgling to both genres really but my main point is that I often "foresaw" my death happening in metal slug in the same way i "foresaw" my deaths in shmups, realizing too late i had put myself in an unwinnable screen position due to prior mistakes in dodging. i learned to accept this sort of difficulty for what it is as i moved on, but i wondered what a metal slug title might look like if it's challenges was more chaotic & reactive rather than guided & premeditated.
thus i have my question answered in gunforce ii, ironically the closest spiritual predecessor to metal slug, which manages to completely invert these two observations and separate itself out as a underplayed gem with its own sensibilities rather than some historical trivia for metal slug fiends. on the first observation, metal slug's wartime clownery is replaced instead with a mostly self-serious aesthetic of metal (in all forms), mecha, and masculinity: gunforce II stands next to SNK's Search and Rescue as perhaps the most attentive arcade title (to my knowledge) towards the late 80s-90s OVA & TV scene of seinen mecha and go nagai-derivated creature horror. the latter shows up only towards the ending stretch of bosses but this game is knee-deep in the bag of the former--the work of that era's staple mech designers like Katoki or Kawamori seemed like go-to references here, and shit like Bubblegum Crisis, 8th MS Team, Dragonar, L-Gaim, and Mellowlink were constantly running through my mind as i replayed this, not necessarily out of any explicit reference but just as being on the same wavelength as the game. its hard to notice this reference point of design at the game's breakneck speed but watching this HD run really honed it in--the sort of Neue Ziel-esque design of many of the common enemies, the power suited mini boss trio that appears in stage 2-1, a skeleton alien centipede demon inside a tekkaman blade-esque suit as the final boss--all of it feels crafted from a shared appreciation & study for that era's ability to engineer sleek instant classics of designs for narratives of dark melodramas and dystopian vignettes. in fact, the game cares so much for rendering these designs, for showing every healthy/damaged/destroyed state between pinion and gear, driver and driven, shear out and tear out that'll you probably spend at least 10% of your run time here in frame spikes of dropping to around 15 fps. while slowdown in metal slug becomes a crucial aid in assessment, gunforce ii never really ascends above being moderately hard for most of the time, so with slowdown often occurring in the denouement or initialization of encounters you'll just accept it for what it is. (tho I do find it really funny that the first 30 seconds of level one has the game's most noticeable slowdown). but it's rather serious passion for mecha without overt recapitulation or veneration makes it at really pretty & unique to look at it motion, and it's hard not to be charitable towards the title when you because of how singular it looks, in spite of its obvious ties to metal slug in user interface.
on the second observation, gunforce ii diverges from metal slug in being explicitly connected with Contra over any shmup, especially in how every platform, ledge, and wire in this game is scalable, similar to the former's platforming. this adds a much needed (for my tastes) dynamism to the greater metal slug encounter philosophy, letting you craft your own screen real-estate and angles of attack rather than following the rules as the encounter lays out for you. frankly, this scaling element is often not really necessary because again the game isn't that hard (stage 2-2 being a great example of where it's absence isn't even noticed), but there is great fun to be had in abusing the protagonists' absurdly double jointed arms to launch 360-degree assaults while hanging from the ceiling or bear hugging a ledge. it also adds a bit of strategy to the vehicular gameplay--since vehicles often aren't capable of switching vertical planes as easily as you are on foot, and because the game's equivalent of metal slug POWs can roam about both above and below your current height, there is some genuine strategy in regards to whether to abuse the hitpoints and firepower of vehicles for greater safety but miss the POWs, or to trust in your parkour skills and aim for saving all POWs even if it means a riskier section, or to mix the two and believe you can dismount & mount with the proper timings. again not every level engages with this idea to its full extent but it complicates the treatment of vehicles as a strict powerup as in metal slug, where losing a vehicle early often meant playing the rest of an encounter out at a tedious disadvantage.
where i fall off the train is unfortunate in that this is just not enough of a good thing--it's shorter than just about every metal slug title I'm sure, and the levels it really clicks on, the third and final levels, just remind me of how elite this or the planned third entry could have been if Irem didn't get the can right after gunforce ii released. but to be clear i think the rest of the levels are great, occasionally dipping into amazing on select sections and bosses, but not a consistent "damn..." like those two. in my opinion it's pretty tied with metal slug X as this dev's team best attempt at the whole idea honestly. also i'm mentioning it again but god these protagonists' arms are so fucking weird, please look at a clip or something it's like addicting-games.com tier in how you can get the arms to go out at weird angles. really endearing tho
Irem's last game for the arcades—and what an incredible way to bow out.
There’s fabulous maneuverability around the stages: you can climb and attach yourself on almost anything, whether that’s a dodgy looking ceiling or any type of vehicle or machine gun. The game almost begs you to use those as you’re always on your toes, with the enemies shooting left, right and centre from almost anywhere.
In one boss fight, the huge contraption thingy shoots this screen-filling circular ring of death at you, which demands you to constantly switch between a helicopter, a gun-toting jeep and on-foot. Exhilarating stuff.
The graphics engine was used in Irem’s previous games like Undercover Cops, In the Hunt and GunForce I, and it has never looked better. There are detailed animations for almost everything in this game and it’s justchef kiss. The shooting has to be great and it is—there’s a dual gun-combo of a light and heavy and the added power-ups makes it a power fantasy at times.
You don’t get any story beats and there’s also no ending (as I imagine Irem ran out of money), so that sucks. But you do get a performance based scoring system where you’re ranked based on how many hostages you save and medals you collect—all the way from Private to Marshall.
This team went on to form Nazca and create the revered Metal Slug series on the Neo Geo. I’m excited to try those…
There’s fabulous maneuverability around the stages: you can climb and attach yourself on almost anything, whether that’s a dodgy looking ceiling or any type of vehicle or machine gun. The game almost begs you to use those as you’re always on your toes, with the enemies shooting left, right and centre from almost anywhere.
In one boss fight, the huge contraption thingy shoots this screen-filling circular ring of death at you, which demands you to constantly switch between a helicopter, a gun-toting jeep and on-foot. Exhilarating stuff.
The graphics engine was used in Irem’s previous games like Undercover Cops, In the Hunt and GunForce I, and it has never looked better. There are detailed animations for almost everything in this game and it’s justchef kiss. The shooting has to be great and it is—there’s a dual gun-combo of a light and heavy and the added power-ups makes it a power fantasy at times.
You don’t get any story beats and there’s also no ending (as I imagine Irem ran out of money), so that sucks. But you do get a performance based scoring system where you’re ranked based on how many hostages you save and medals you collect—all the way from Private to Marshall.
This team went on to form Nazca and create the revered Metal Slug series on the Neo Geo. I’m excited to try those…
From the same group of people who later went on to create the metal slug series later on.
surprisingly solid run and gun but the best part is all the vehicles you get and their sheer variety. the only metal slug game that can maybe compete in this department is 5.
surprisingly solid run and gun but the best part is all the vehicles you get and their sheer variety. the only metal slug game that can maybe compete in this department is 5.
It's amazing how obvious this is just a prelude to Metal Slug. The latter series would pull so much of its presentation, its mechanics, its explosions and sound effects, its vehicles, its UI and everything from this. A must play for Metallic Slug fans.
Metal Slug meets QWOP.
An improvement over the first game. The action is more hectic, the sprite work is far better and the powerups are fun to use. The vehicles and tools you can mount are also so robust and added so much flare to the gameplay. The pixel work, designs and animation are also on another level compared to the first. The bosses are stellar and the level designs are on point. I also like the ranking system at the end of each level. This is a game that is on par with the quality of Metal Slug games in my opinion it rocks that much. Wish they had kept making more of these
Cadê o final?!?
Imagina o primeiro jogo, agora muda os designs, melhora a "narrativa", melhora a velocida, melhora os veículos, varias seções diferentes como cordas e motos, tem tanta merda voando na tela que o jogo vira um caos, um jogo bem melhor, exceto por um ponto.
Lá vamos nós, grande problema do jogo... ele não tem um final de verdade, e vários momentos dá pra ver que foi "rushado", com excesso de coisas e quedas de frames, e alguns problemas no level design, como a porcaria das reféns nas cordas!
Mesmo com todo esses problemas esse ainda é um jogo muito bom, assim como metal slug 2, e sim esse é jogo antecessor a metal slug, mas estou analisando ele por ele, e o resultado é bom, o estágio introdutório é belo chute na cara de alguns run and gun da época!
Eu também gosto dos chefes, principalmente o ultimo!
Se você quiser jogar vá em frente, tem alguns problemas tem, mas ainda é jogo bem interessante e que vale pelo menos um ficha, ele só precisava de uma polida...
Imagina o primeiro jogo, agora muda os designs, melhora a "narrativa", melhora a velocida, melhora os veículos, varias seções diferentes como cordas e motos, tem tanta merda voando na tela que o jogo vira um caos, um jogo bem melhor, exceto por um ponto.
Lá vamos nós, grande problema do jogo... ele não tem um final de verdade, e vários momentos dá pra ver que foi "rushado", com excesso de coisas e quedas de frames, e alguns problemas no level design, como a porcaria das reféns nas cordas!
Mesmo com todo esses problemas esse ainda é um jogo muito bom, assim como metal slug 2, e sim esse é jogo antecessor a metal slug, mas estou analisando ele por ele, e o resultado é bom, o estágio introdutório é belo chute na cara de alguns run and gun da época!
Eu também gosto dos chefes, principalmente o ultimo!
Se você quiser jogar vá em frente, tem alguns problemas tem, mas ainda é jogo bem interessante e que vale pelo menos um ficha, ele só precisava de uma polida...
The contrarians favorite Metal Slug game. I'm honestly surprised I never heard of this game until picking it at random and I think anyone who enjoys Metal Slug owes it to themselves to play this at some point. Shame about the absence of any sort of story but I imagine Irems withdrawal from making video games hindered development. Very, very good fun.
No fim dos 1980 e início dos 1990 os jogos de Arcade entraram numa disputa tácita para ver quem conseguia levar os o suporte 2D da mídia ao seu extremo. Os jogos de navinha e de tiro foram os maiores expoentes dessa disputa, sempre enchendo a tela com o máximo de inimigos, o máximo de explosões, o máximo de balas, o máximo de tudo, numa sinfonia caótica que era um deleite para os olhos mas nem sempre para as mãos. O importante mesmo era por uma infinidade de coisas na tela; o que fazer com essas coisas e como interagir com elas era secundário. É só atirar até não sobrar nada, certo?
GunForce II cai direitinho nessa armadilha. Seu foco em encher a tela com "o máximo de tudo" é tão grande que nem ele se aguenta - certos momentos sofrem com slowdowns, algo preocupante para uma mídia com hardware de grande desempenho feito sob medida como os Arcades. O resultado não é exatamente desagradável, mas é raso. Depois da impressão inicial de "uau, realmente colocaram um tantão de coisas na tela", não resta muito para te fazer voltar ao game - algo preocupante para uma mídia com foco em partidas curtas e que tenta te incentivar a jogar várias vezes, como os Arcades.
GunForce II cai direitinho nessa armadilha. Seu foco em encher a tela com "o máximo de tudo" é tão grande que nem ele se aguenta - certos momentos sofrem com slowdowns, algo preocupante para uma mídia com hardware de grande desempenho feito sob medida como os Arcades. O resultado não é exatamente desagradável, mas é raso. Depois da impressão inicial de "uau, realmente colocaram um tantão de coisas na tela", não resta muito para te fazer voltar ao game - algo preocupante para uma mídia com foco em partidas curtas e que tenta te incentivar a jogar várias vezes, como os Arcades.