Jack Red reviews Metal Slug 1-3

Hi everyone I'm Jack Red, I knew about Metal Slug series for a long time. I probably known about Contra much longer. I always wondered how fun are those games. When I saw a sale at GOG I figured why not go for all Metal Slug games they had. I also ended up getting King of the Monsters which is getting it's own review.

1. Metal Slug

Metal Slug is such an addicting run & gun game. Do I even need to say it's action packed like no tomorrow. If you love explosions, ridiculous amount of enemies & crazy power ups. Then you will be at home with this game. You can save the POWS for power ups. There isn't much variety in vehicles but what you get works.

You get some crazy, intense boss fights. Trust me you will die a lot trying to get use to it. Thankfully there is infinite continues but you do have the option to limit them. Of course there's two player coop for more fun. Yes just like Contra, it is one hit deaths but you do get additional hits in vehicles. There's a good variety of everything.

I absolutely love the music of this game. The sound effects is what really made this such an enjoyable experience. It fits in perfectly that's difficult to do for a run & gun game. Metal Slug has two characters but you can easily tell them apart. I also like I have multiple ways of playing this either with my controller or keyboard.

2. Metal Slug 2

Metal Slug 2 is a good game but there's a few things that doesn't make it as enjoyable. For starters it can be tricky to notice among first playing it. There's some notable lack during the game play. Some of my favorite levels are present in this game. This game adds two playable female characters. This entry introduces some character transformations as in game jokes.

For example you can become a zombie, mummy or over time eating food getting fatter. Which all of them do greatly affect the game play in their own right. I really like they recreated one of my favorite death scenes in any movie. In Independence Day, Russell Casse rams his plane into the part of the spaceship that fires beams.

I honestly was very surprised seeing this cut scene the first time. Oh yeah late in the game you fight against aliens. Shortly afterwards the army you been fighting against helps you during the final boss fight. I would say in some ways it's better than the original but it sorta leaves you kinda wanting more too.

3. Metal Slug X

I am not going to say much since Metal Slug X is the updated version of Metal Slug 2. SNK heard the complaints of Metal Slug 2 to quickly go back to the drawing board creating this master piece. I am not even going to hide this is my favorite Metal Slug game. A lot of clever changes made the experience a lot better.

I would even say this is the best SNK game I played in my entire life I'm not kidding. In fact one night I played through it around three straight times with little to no breaks. Metal Slug X is truly an amazing game that went beyond it's original goal. We have what could be one of the best alternate versions of video games.

Trust me if you want a solid Metal Slug experience. You really need to go play some Metal Slug X. This game really does make up for Metal Slug 2 as well as topping the original much more. Honestly it really is a very solid game of it's genre that I highly recommend to people. I should mention parts of levels are altered with very few being colored differently.

4. Metal Slug 3

Metal Slug 3 comes up gun blazing with multiple paths. I felt this did a great job using multiple paths since it does sometimes alter which boss you could be facing. Some of my favorite vehicles are in this game. The final level is simply too much in many areas. I do like the jokes they attempted. But it went like multiple levels are put together to keep the game going.

I am not saying it ruins the experience it just starts killing your mood by that point. Metal Slug 3 has a new POW you can save. Would you ever guess you get to save the president? There's some crazy boss fights in this game too. Trust me when I say attempting to go through in one life is much harder due to how long the final level ends up being.

Despite that, Metal Slug 3 is notably better than Metal Slug 2 while being slightly better in some ways to the original. There's a great variety of locations to keep the game fresh. This also has the most achievements out of these games on Steam & GOG. Metal Slug 3 does many things right especially in the audio department.