Quarter munchers are fun. Lucky for me, I'm playing this on a home console.
Brad pretty much sums up the old school appeal of games like Metal Slug X. They're a dying species, and it's a shame because they embody such radically different gaming ideals from the games of today. Most people now would balk at a game that lasted less than ten hours, but folks in my generation dumped rolls of quarters on games that took less than two hours to finish. The majority could probably be finished in less than an hour. But we played them to death. As kids, my friends and I would head to local corner store and play whatever game they had in the back, and would keep playing that game until someone decided to replace it. It could be a couple of weeks, or it might be months. We weren't picky. Games then weren't hard to figure out either. A quick look at the buttons was enough of an instruction manual. A precious few minutes were all it took to learn how things worked—the ultimate in pick up and play.
Tearing through a level in Metal Slug X brings back a lot of memories for me. Like Contra and Mercs it has a medley of weapons to choose from, and they all wreak a different sort of havoc on the screen. The great part is that a huge variety of weapons are dropped quite often, and I love the grab and go kind of action this has. I also loved its simplicity. Just go from left to right and blast everything that's slows you down. That's twitch and instinct at it's purest.
Unlike Brad though, I was pretty upset to see spurts of white replacing the blood. But I was glad to see that you could still set an enemy on fire and he'd run a bit before crumpling to the ground. I also smirked at the how soldiers disintegrated as they took blast after blast from the shotgun. The game is unbelievably violent at times, even for its cartoonish look. It's sad to see that the censors kept a few things out of the game, but overall, it came through on the PlayStation more intact than I had thought it might.
Otherwise, I absolutely agree on everything down to the "Another Mission" mini-games and the art gallery. I haven't unlocked much of the art gallery, but to be honest I don't care much. This is not a thinking man's game and I don't need incentives to keep playing. Shut down the brain functions and just shoot, shoot, shoot. That's the best way to enjoy Metal Slug X.
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