The brand must stop with Metal Slug 3! Why? Read and you'll understand!
A friend of mine (just like me an old SNK fan) often repeat this sentence.
Hard words... but looking the last titles of glorious brands like King of Fighters or, in this case, Metal slug, you cannot overlook how harsh the truth is.
Metal Slug 7 is only another meaningless sequel of a brand that, in my hearth, closed with the fourth episode of the saga: Metal Slug 3.
For those that lived in Shangrila in the late ten years and don't know yet the brand, Metal Slug is a scrolling shooter characterize by frenzied action, permeate of pungent humour, genial level design, and crazy looking bosses.
How said so far it's up only until Metal Slug 3, really a little jewel of creativity and good ideas.
From metal slug 4 to now, Playmore limited itself to recycle sprite and general concept creating, in every title, only a bunch of miserable additional levels.
The story of Metal Slug 7 see the usual quarrel with the same dictator from Metal Slug 1,2,3,4,5,6. For the occasion the villain can count from help directly from the future thanks to a time machine portal. Too bad that the future troopers are the SAME of the present army. The only differences are in the sprite colors (WOW!!!) and in the weaponry (laser instead bullets, but the routines are the usual... DOUBLE WOW!!!).
Playing as one of the veterans: Marco, Tarma, Fio and Eri it's up to you drive out the new menace in the future. A little surprise, among the playable charachters there are also Ralf and Clark from the KoF serie. It's a shame that their sprite was obtained redrawning Tarma and Marco.
The gameplay is the usual: take down every moving things on screen, collect bonuses and weapon, face megalitic end level bosses. Those last, though drew pretty well, lack of inspiration and imagination, either in the aesthetical look then in attack routines (where are the giant crab or the aliens of Metal Slug 3?)
Level design is flat like a salt desert and as much irritating (where are the multi route levels of Metal Slug 3) and for conceal the lack of inspiration the difficult level gone on stellar levels (much more of... guess... Metal Slug 3!)
Obviously in your trip of destruction you could ride a lot of odd vehicles (mostly recycled from prequels too) but there is not left the possibility of morph the main charachters (prequels included various transformation: mummy, zombie, monkey, and the awesome "fat" form)
This game seems obtained by an editor. Playmore took in the levels a lot of enemies in crossing fire toward main charachter. Also, seems that Playmore powered the normal enemies shortening their attack time. Grenades and bullets are now shot more fast than in the past, making even more difficult to avoid them.
But the unbearable is the shameful recycling of enemies sprites from the prequels, putting some of them in improbable context.
In the end the game it's also pretty short, only seven unappealing mission. For encourage the portability of the title you'll choose at every game start one of the levels unlocked previously. There's also a "Combat School Mode" where you can face several missions attempting to achieve the highest rank. Here you'll also speak with the instructor, a blonde cutie (a bit unpleasant, in the truth). Some of the missions you can try in this mode can be a little different from the main game and a bit more entertaining respect this last. But mostly of them require only to retry the main game levels achieving some results like losing no lifes, completing in the minor time possible, ecc.
Useless to say that even this mode is pretty disappointing.
And now we can spare a couple of words on the quality of adaptation of this game for the little-great DS.
Indeed, Playmore with Metal Slug 7 create an useless game; but they adapted the title really well to the hardware. The sprites was resized to the NDS screen resolution, they appear smooth and well animated, the action is fast without any slowing, neither in most convulse situation. Obviously the touch screen was barely used for a map of the levels, but it's no use complain, considering the game style.
Final comment
There's no excuse... Metal Slug is dead long time ago, and this sequel cannot hope in a resurrection. Playmore should dedicate to create new brands... yeah, right!!! (if they was capable of that)
A good adaptation to the hardware it's not enough for a game that simply have no reason to exist.
Good
Well adaptation to the DS capacity.
Bad
Game recycled from prequel for almost 95%. Level design really poor ad flat. Unappealing in every aspect.
Votation 4.5