It's Metal Slug, but on DS! On a gameplay level, there's not really too much more to say about this one. It's a unique Metal Slug adventure on DS, with it being somewhere between the arcade games and the other portable games with the fact that you no longer have a health bar like the other portable games had, but you do have the collectable POW's just like Metal Slug Advance did.
The two biggest additions to this game are the playable characters and the training school. The training school is run by a very tsundere anime girl army officer, and allows you to practice specific and certain things in regards to every level you beat on arcade mode. This is a fantastic way to practice going through each stage so you can wreck arcade mode, as there are missions that scale up from just beating a level within one continue, to beating it without getting hit with only your pistol, to practicing specifically hunting for POWs, specifically just fighting the boss, and even special stages dedicated to navigating the unique eccentricities of each level's static obstacles. The better you do on these challenge/practice stages, the higher rank you will get on them. The more high ranks you get, the deeper your relationship(?) with the tsundere girl gets (you can see both her dialogue and thoughts), and the weird sort of crush she develops for you had me giggling quite a lot whenever I used the option to specifically chat with her.
The game and these training missions are enhanced by the fact that there are six playable characters in the game. Now, Metal Slug usually has at least a few, but these guys are actually STATISTICALLY DIFFERENT!!! For example, Marco's pistol bullets are twice as powerful as everyone else's, Tarma's Slugs have twice as much health, Ralf can knife twice as fast and more powerfully, etc. This really adds a well needed level of customization to the runs, and makes your choice of character really feel a lot more important than just petty cosmetics.
Verdict: $30 is a bit steep of a price for just another Metal Slug game, but if you've played the Anthology to death and you absolutely still need more Metal Slug in your life, then this is a great pick up to seek out. In a sentence: This game does for the Metal Slug series what Contra 4 did for the Contra series (a fantastic farewell game on DS with a great final campaign and tons of challenge stages).
The two biggest additions to this game are the playable characters and the training school. The training school is run by a very tsundere anime girl army officer, and allows you to practice specific and certain things in regards to every level you beat on arcade mode. This is a fantastic way to practice going through each stage so you can wreck arcade mode, as there are missions that scale up from just beating a level within one continue, to beating it without getting hit with only your pistol, to practicing specifically hunting for POWs, specifically just fighting the boss, and even special stages dedicated to navigating the unique eccentricities of each level's static obstacles. The better you do on these challenge/practice stages, the higher rank you will get on them. The more high ranks you get, the deeper your relationship(?) with the tsundere girl gets (you can see both her dialogue and thoughts), and the weird sort of crush she develops for you had me giggling quite a lot whenever I used the option to specifically chat with her.
The game and these training missions are enhanced by the fact that there are six playable characters in the game. Now, Metal Slug usually has at least a few, but these guys are actually STATISTICALLY DIFFERENT!!! For example, Marco's pistol bullets are twice as powerful as everyone else's, Tarma's Slugs have twice as much health, Ralf can knife twice as fast and more powerfully, etc. This really adds a well needed level of customization to the runs, and makes your choice of character really feel a lot more important than just petty cosmetics.
Verdict: $30 is a bit steep of a price for just another Metal Slug game, but if you've played the Anthology to death and you absolutely still need more Metal Slug in your life, then this is a great pick up to seek out. In a sentence: This game does for the Metal Slug series what Contra 4 did for the Contra series (a fantastic farewell game on DS with a great final campaign and tons of challenge stages).