Metal Slug 3

The Xbox (The one that works. Not the 360) isn't home to many good shmups, so as far as MS' first console goes, this should be considered a diamond in the rough, a rare specimen of quality sidescrolling action.

Everyone's familiar with the genre, and the Metal Slug series. This one maintains a high standard throughout, being insanely fun, very funny, beautiful, well-animated, and highly replayable. And, of course, it's completely off-the-wall when it comes to plot, humour, and enemy designs.

There are lots of great things about this game. Multiple paths through each level, great vehicles and transformations (Including loads of new ones), cool weapons, weird enemies... Basically, this game is insane, packed with variety and violence, yet it all hangs together brilliantly (Take a lesson, Metal Slug 4). Not only that, it's all done in a light-hearted style, which gives this game - and the series in general - quite a unique take on the genre, without losing any purity in the gameplay.

The best things about MS3, though, are the bosses. Every one is well-conceived and batsh*t insane (The first boss, for instance, is a giant fireball-firing cyborg crab), providing an enjoyable challenge. Once you've learnt the patterns, of course, they're all easy to defeat, but they still require skill and timing, for the most part, so they're still enjoyable.

The reason I mention bosses, though, is because the final boss is one massive let-down. It really is terrible. For one thing, it's stupidly easy, and for another, it's unimaginative, which you don't expect in a Metal Slug game.

Maybe the designers ran out of whatever drugs they were on, leaving the last boss to be created by a bunch of vomiting addicts on a severe comedown in no mood to be flamboyant or funny. In fact, the latter parts of the final level do generally seem to be a bit less fun and more of a chore than the rest of the game. But I'm only talking about the final few minutes of gameplay; the rest is very close to perfection.

Despite all the crazy sh*t going on all around you, whether you're vomiting blood after being turned into a zombie or blasting asteroids apart with the shotgun attachment on your astro slug, the game still boils down to a bullet-dodging test of memory and dexterity. In other words, if you like shmups, you'll like Metal Slug 3. But then, if you like shmups, you'll already know that you like Metal Slug 3.

4.5 star(s) out of 5

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