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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great addition to the series, December 14, 2004
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Metal Slug Advance is the best possible realization of SNK's run-and-shoot series on the GBA. It is a technical marvel; the rich, over-exaggerated animation that made the series stand out in arcades is achieved with vastly inferior hardware. This portable entry in the series suffers only rare slowdown and a few lost frames of animation.
While the game looks like the early arcade entries, the gameplay is modified to fit a handheld. A health bar replaces the arcade's one-hit death system. The arcade versions of Metal Slug can be conquered in less than an hour given a few pockets full of quarters. (Or a PC capable of emulating the hardware.) Metal Slug Advance addresses the inherent brevity of their rich worlds with an adroit card collection system. Cards are hidden throughout the game worlds. Most of the cards are trinkets, but others provide benefits like increasing the armor for your vehicles or doubling your ammo supply for a weapon. The catch is that in order to keep the cards you collect in a level, you must complete that level without continuing. For the first time in the series I'm forced to consider the best approach to surviving levels and I end up appreciating the game mechanics more than my virtual quarter-munching practices allowed before. Less obsessive-compulsive players can abandon card collecting and leverage an infinite number of continues to power through the game, but the benefits from the power-up cards can make an aggressively challenging experience more approachable.
There are small aggravations that reveal some shortcomings in the design. While the health bar is a welcome addition, falling into a pit still causes an automatic death; it feels a bit unfair when you're "juggled" into a pit after being hit by an enemy attack. The frequency that the enemies respawn can be quite troubling when you're dodging enemy attacks by moving to the left and right, only to re-introduce defeated enemies as you scroll the screen. Without careful play, you can end up facing a never ending barrage of foes in some areas.
Metal Slug Advance does not stray far from familiar ground, but it is the only handheld version of the series that approaches the wacky, chaotic bliss that imbues the arcade editions. SNK demonstrated with the Neo Geo Pocket Color that it understands handheld game design at least as well as Nintendo. Metal Slug Advance is their first title on Nintendo hardware to continue that legacy.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
something the GBA needed a long time ago..., May 30, 2005
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
This sort of shooter has long been among my favorite types of games, dating back specifically to since I first played Gunstar Heroes. The Metal Slugs have always been the biggest quarter-eaters to me at the arcade machines, and I've really fallen in love with the comical commando approach that these games have mixed in with the variety that all the levels have to offer. Metal Slug Advance does a good job of holding up these much-beloved parts of the series.
As with all the other Metal Slugs, you run around levels blasting the heck out of any and every enemy while rescuing hostages. The gameplay in this one is great, and the control, collision detection, etc. are all excellent quality. The graphics are on par with the arcade games--beatifully simple, yet well-animated pixel graphics. The music is typical for Metal Slugs, very well-fit to the game, but far from anything that was designed to sell soundtracks.
There are a few points about this game that bothered me, though:
(1) The game felt really short for a game that you don't play at the arcade. The "normal" mode has five levels plus the additional bonus dungeon that you get to mindlessly wander around while searching for cards.
(2) This game gives your character a health bar, which when reduced to zero kills your character. I personally am more used to Metal Slug X's one-hit death style and felt that the health bar allowed for some lousier level design and some accidental "cheap shots" on your character without developers worried about players getting irritated with cheap shots equalling death. This kinda detracted from the arcade-ish feel, and
(3) I found it particularly annoying that the game starts you back at the beginning of the section of the level you were playing when you died, rather than the beginning of the level. In other words, you get to take as many cracks as you want in a row at a boss until it is beaten. This took away from a lot of the challenge the game should offer
(4) There are only five bosses in this game (and I know at least one of them is borrowed from MSX), whereas similar games in the genre (see "Alien Hominid" and Treasure's upcoming "Gunstar Heroes Advance") are chock-full of fun bosses and minibosses.
(5) The power-up weapons don't do all that much for your character. There are plenty in this game, but I find that about half of them to be worth avoiding. In particular, I cannot think of any part of the game where either the drop shots or flame thrower were worth picking up.
But despite how much I wrote about the game's vices, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable and would recommend it to any fan of the series or genre.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Metal Slug for anywhere, January 16, 2005
A Kid's Review
Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars Educational:1.0 out of 5 stars
let me just say I love metal slug and game retains the basic feel of it. I got this on Christmas at first though I didn't even know they had a game like this out for GBA. I love this game though so let me get those gripes out. When you die the people you killed respon, and also the game is just to short. Now let's talk about good stuff the character model match the arcade version pretty good. I like the the metal slugs[metal slugs are the tanks can even be a air plane] there's only 3 so as for my favorite I don't have one. I love the story, but the game can become easy to hard. I like the collectible cards that change your attributes. So my advice is if you wan't to take metal slug on the road and you see this in the store get, but if you see the legend of Zelda and the minish cap choose wisely. other wise get this.
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