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I'd say I only recently became a fan of the Metal Slug series, since I had absolutely no exposure to Neo Geo titles outside of Samurai Showdown, King of the Fighters, and whatever other titles would pop up in those 4 in 1 arcade machines that littered the cinema's around my house as a kid. I know I had played a MS game before, but I couldn't tell you which one. However, a few years back a buddy of mine got me to play Metal Slug X, and I was pretty much hooked from the get go. For me, it was Contra on speed, and I absolutely loved the animation, odd humor, and just the overall flow of action in the game. When the Anthology released I picked that up and played thru every single title on the disc, and loved just about every minute of it. Sure, some of the titles are better than others, but for the most part it's damn consistent in content and gameplay. Metal Slug 7 doesn't really break that mold either, offering up 6 playable characters from the series, all of which should be familiar to long time players, a multitude of Slugs to run around in, including a few new ones, all the standard weapon types, grenades, enemies, and POW rescuing that the previous games have had. If it has a major fault to it, for players that have been with the series for a while, it's that it doesn't really innovate anything for the system it's debuting on here, and while I'm never a fan of touch screen controls being tacked on for the sake of having them in a game, it seems like the bottom screen could have been used for a bit more than a mini-map. Still, it's not a major complaint on my end, and I still enjoyed this sequel quite a bit.
The story here picks up sometime after part 4 from what I understand, even though I'm not as well versed in the MS storyline as others. Instead, I prefer to just jump into the mayhem, and Metal Slug 7 provides just as much as the previous games. There are seven different levels, and all the traditional over the top bosses show up here, larger than life with multiple attack patterns, hit spots, and a multitude of weapons. A lot of the enemy types seem to be recycled from previous games as well, so you've got the walkers with shields, guys bunkered up in structures, tanks, cannons, and so on. A lot of the characters can perform special moves, which you'll pull off by holding up on the D-Pad, and holding down the L button and hitting Y, and some of the moves are actually pretty cool, like Clark's continuous throws, which cause score multipliers to kick in if you manage to pull of a series of them fast enough. Along with the special moves, all the characters still have certain strengths and weaknesses to set them apart from one another, and while they don't exactly have the biggest differences between them, it's fun to check them all out at least once or twice. There are three different difficulties to choose from, with different continues allotted between the three, and some other small changes to give each one a noticeable difference. Jumping into the normal difficulty felt pretty spot on to previous titles for me, and I found myself having to use continues a bit more frequently at the third stage, and I'd say I'm a pretty average player when it comes the Slug series at this point. Easy is the way to go if you'd like to see everything the game has to offer in one sitting, which won't take much longer than a couple of hours at best. Outside of the main story mode there's a challenge mode that dictates certain requirements to rack up a passing score. These requirements can be pretty tough for non-vets, like only missing three shots in a level, rescuing all the POW's, and so on, and they'll provide a decent amount of replay value after the main mode is done. However, the lack of any multiplayer options definitely hurt the need to go back thru the game multiple times, and it would have been nice to get some type of local or wi-fi support to give this one a true arcade feel. The visuals on the DS are surprisingly solid, and while they've had to scale down the sprites and backgrounds most of the animation seems to come off intact. There are some small flaws that are only going to be noticeable if you're actually looking for them, and I'm pretty pleased with what the developers were able to pull off here. It's not the best-looking Metal Slug game out there, but it's the best portable version I've seen yet. The soundtrack for Metal Slug 7 is definitely a winner, keeping the trademark rock style music combined with the small sound effects from the soldiers, weapons, and so on that have become familiar to players for quite a while. It's not my favorite soundtrack in the series, but I definitely enjoyed it, and at no point did I feel the need to turn the volume off or down. All together, I really enjoyed Metal Slug 7, and I'm pretty happy we got this DS port prior to the XBLA release that's coming up. I imagine the XBLA release will end up looking pretty solid too, but if you're wanting to play the game now, there's really no reason you shouldn't pick this one, since it's a solid entry into the series, and provides a really satisfying 2D action game on the go.
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