The Metal Slug series is a little over a decade old now and have always been fan favorites because of the non-stop action and complete and total annihilation of everything on the screen.  One of the last bastions of 2-D side-scroller gaming engines out there, the gameplay is like a supped up Contra with more blood and more explosions.  One of the key elements that made this series fun was the amount of slugs you can use as weapons, which are different types of assault vehicles, in this game ranging from planes to helicopters to mechwarrior suits.  I have played briefly early incarnations of this series and found them to be mindless fun, but strapping into the Nintendo DS version expecting an action packed shoot-em-up game will leave almost everyone disappointed.

The gameplay is basically this: run through every level going where the arrows point and shoot everything in sight while dodging an onslaught of bullets and lasers and other flashy distracting things that are aiming to take you out.  The levels all play the same, with the same type of enemies (some disguised in different outfits, but they attack the exact same), the backgrounds change and the difficulty is only upped each level by the enormous amount of chaos that happens on this tiny screen which at points is nearly impossible to tell what’s going on.  The back of the game brags that you get to “Play across 7 challenging and varied stages,” maybe… if you consider a different backdrop and just more mindless drones sent in from every direction to shoot at you.  There is not much strategy to this game, you run and shoot, run and shoot, and as the levels progress the main goal seems to be try to die as few times as possible from the crap ton of enemies attacking you that are impossible to avoid.  The bosses are all just giant robotic monsters and take a bunch of shots and then explode and there is a list of six different characters to choose from that I can’t for the life of me tell the difference in how they attack.  They may look different, but each one still shoots and fights the same.  There is really nothing spectacular or exciting about the actual game, if anything it is incredibly repetitive and mindless, even for a Metal Slug game.

My biggest gripe is that the game takes an hour and ten minutes to beat the entire thing!!  There are only seven levels that take about ten minutes each.  I can’t believe this is trying to be passed off as a full-priced game title.  This feels more like a downloadable mini-game than a new addition to the series.  You can extend your gameplay and frustration by adjusting the difficulty from easy where it takes no skill, to normal where the levels take a couple tries, to hard where you may want to break your Nintendo DS because this game is not worth the effort.  A “cool” feature added to the game is Combat School, where there are over 80 training levels.  Guess what?  The level designs and enemies are the exact same as the main missions only there’s even less purpose because it’s just for training.  All these training missions make me wonder what depth this game has that I just can’t see, because apparently I need to learn how to harness multiple combat skills to master this game that I beat in 70 minutes.  Training for this mindless game seems like training so that I can master walking to the mailbox, a really half-assed gimmick.  Not worth your time. 

I would have been okay with the mindlessness and even the repetitive gameplay if the designers had even remotely tried to infuse some sort of story or at least build up for the game.  The levels could have built in skill or weapon use or something! Instead it’s just a slightly different rehashing of the level you just played.  Not to mention you blink and it’s done.  There is nothing more to it.  If you’re a huge Metal Slug fan and have to own every game in the series I guess you could buy this title or if you like games that are under 90 minutes, but for anyone looking for money well spent I would strongly urge you to search elsewhere.  This is not even worth being a lunch break game.

Grade: D plus