Lovely, addictive gameplay, perfect for on the toilet or a car journey...
Gameplay is just brilliant. The grahics are old-school but they complement perfectly the run, gun and jump style of gameplay. You run through the levels shooting men, tanks and aliens, rescuing PoWs and jumping over obstacles, lobbing grenades. It never gets boring as there are a lot of types of opponents and allies, ranging from the basic bazooka soldier to kamikaze arabs; the game is just amazing. It's also nice to see that MS:A is not for little kiddies. When you shoot people, blood, guts and limbs go flying all over the place, leaving carnage in your wake.
The weapons and controls are also very easy to use. You have your basic pistol and 10 grenades but by rescuing PoWs who sometimes give you new weapons, you can have guns ranging from your good ol' heavy machine gun to the flame thrower and iron lizard. Very wacky. There are essentially 8 characters bt the last lot come in the last few games. It doesn't matter though as they all have the same health (one hit and you die) and same bullet damage. This only changes slighty in metal slug 6.
What was also great is that you can't die. You die, you respawn exactly where you fell. If you die five times, a continue screen appears ( like in the arcades where you would usually put in money) but you just press start and pick a person and your back on your way again, all in about three seconds. This removes the uttlerly annoying element of going back to checkpoints.
The bosses are all completely unique with their own attacks, once again ranging from giant chinese dragon head spewing death to a sneaky and cruel professer and his deadly contraptions. This just tips off a perfect gfame. Yes loading times are slightly long but they are few and far between and don't ruin the experience one bit. A must buy for PSP and platform gamers alike.