ACA NEOGEO Metal Slug 2

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Metal Slug 2 (sometimes bearing the subtitle Super Vehicle-001/II) is an Action-Platformer released in 1998 in arcades, the NEOGEO AES home console, and the NEOGEO CD. This is the second in a series that would come to be one of the pinnacles of the “run and gun”-style Action-Platformers, well-known for its unique art style with beautiful fluid animation and massive, complex war machines, with this release of the game on Nintendo Switch coming out in 2017.

The second Metal Slug game seems to have improved the controls and adds new selectable characters, a ton of new power-ups, vehicles to ride in, and even depowering statuses (such as the “mummy” status).

However, all of this comes at a price – the slowdown in this game is absolutely horrendous, and even early into the game it’s so bad that it’s almost constant. This was such a terrible issue that this game was followed up by Metal Slug X, an alternate version of Metal Slug 2 that changes around the game’s enemies and levels, but was created largely to address this game’s horrible slowdown issues.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

Overall, Metal Slug 2’s improvements sorta’ balance out with its massive slowdown issues. This is still a great game, but it’s debatable whether you should get it when you could get Metal Slug X instead. If you’re a series fan, there are enough differences that Metal Slug 2 is still a must-have, but for more casual players you may want to skip this game and go straight to Metal Slug X.

tl;dr – Metal Slug 2 is an Action-Platformer that improves on its predecessor with better controls, plenty of new options, new weapons, and new vehicles, but these improvements are balanced out by massive, near-constant slowdown. It’s still an excellent game, but unless you’re a diehard series fan or a collector, you’ll want to skip this game and go straight to Metal Slug X, a remix of Metal Slug 2 that largely fixes this game’s slowdown issues.

Grade: B

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