I have a fondness for games where simple, focused gameplay takes precedence over other aspects of a game. It's a trademark of DMA where graphics, sound and even plot take a backseat to the gameplay. One of my favorite games is a DMA title that was released on the Super Nintendo called Uniracers. There was no premise or plot, instead the whole objective was to race against other unicycles while performing tricks (similar to Nintendos Excitebike), and I loved it. However, I do have my limits. First and foremost, the gameplay must be fun and engaging to carry the rest of the game, and that isn't always a given no matter how talented a developer may be. In the case with Wild Metal, DMA missed their target by a mile.
All there is to Wild Metals gameplay is moving from point A to point B, collecting power cores and then blowing up whatever happens to be in your way. It gets no more complicated than that, and I am fine with that. What hurts Wild Metal is its painfully slow pace. For the first time in a long time, I felt asleep while playing this game it was so boring. More time is spent looking for power cores or enemies to battle than actually fighting. With the huge assortment of weapons at your disposal, I figured this would be one game that would be heavy in the confrontation department. Its one redeeming quality is its multiplayer mode. Here in a vertically-split screen, I could take on a buddy in some deathmatch action. However, DMA screwed up this mode by not varying the different multiplayer modes beyond that of repetitive fragging. It would have been nice to be given the option to defend a base or something from an intruder, or maybe get a co-operative mode and not the ordinary modes that DMA supplied.
As I said, I am a fan of games that focus less on the frills and simply try to supply gamers with solid gameplay, but Wild Metal shows up with nothing to offer. It's the sort of game that will make you wish you were playing something else after the first few minutes of playing. It offers nothing in terms of graphics to catch your eye, there isn't even background music during most of the game and it offers nothing redeemable in the gameplay department. It's just a horrid waste of time.
- Extra Credits: Differences in Scale vs Differences in Kind - May 15, 2013
- Extra Credits: Why Console Specs Don’t Matter - May 3, 2013
- Extra Credits:Intrinsic vs Extrinsic - April 27, 2013
