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Metal Slug 3 is a 4 year old port of one of the better remembered arcade games of yesteryear, re-released on the Xbox. While the game surely doesn’t boast anything in the way of visual excitement, or aural excellence, the gameplay is really fun, and that’s all that really matters, right?

As you surely know, Metal Slug 3 was originally released years ago in both the arcades, and on the Neo Geo (haven’t heard of it? You’re not alone…). For those of you unfamiliar with the Metal Slug brand of games: think Contra, but with a more animated feel to it. In Metal Slug 3, you get the option to choose from any of the games 4 heroes/heroines, but don’t expect anything different from any of them, since the different characters are the exact same in every way, save for what they look like, making character selection a cosmetic choice more than anything. The games main campaign boasts a whopping (?) 5 levels, each broken up with various possible paths, and ending with a boss of rather large proportions. Each level has its own theme, the first level is a beach setting, there’s a desert level, etc. The coolest of the levels though (in my humble opinion) is the second level, which sees you shooting up zombies that spew zombie gook at you. If you happen to get hit by the zombie gook, you get turned into a zombie yourself. You move a lot slower, and can hardly get off the ground when you jump, but you become invincible to human attacks, though one hit from another zombie will see you one life less. During your time as a zombie, your grenade command completely changes. When you are a zombie, instead of launching a grenade, you spew out a stream of blood that kills everything in its wake...yummy. You can turn back into a human by picking up med-kits dropped by enemies, but come on, you know you want to be the zombie.

Gameplay in Metal Slug is about as simple as you can get without playing Tetris: you take your character, run him/her from the left side of the screen to the far right of the level, where the boss awaits you, blasting away at all manner of creature in your way, using numerous weapon power-ups, from machine guns to enemy-seeking rockets, and grenades. Getting hit will cost you a life, and losing all your lives will cost you a continue, until all your lives are exhausted and you have to start all over again. This all sounds pretty old-school by today’s standards, and by all means, it is. But the fact that it feels (and is) so old-school is Metal Slugs greatest appeal to Xbox gamers. Metal Slug is a welcome distraction from all the complicated 10,000 button games that we play so often these days. 3 buttons is all you need: jump, shoot, grenade: simple, yet effective. Sure, a lot of people like the complicated games of today, and hell, I do too, I love them, I’m just saying that it’s fun to have something so simple, yet completely fun to play on the side.

5 levels may not sound like a lot, and it’s not, but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up in the time it will take you to beat those 5 levels. Make no mistake about it: Metal Slug is HARD. The first 4 levels in the game are just difficult, something you can make it through with a few tries, but level 5, the final level: wow… That’s all I can really manage to come up with as an accurate description of the final levels difficulty. Sure, you could cheap out and play on easy, but the real accomplishment is playing the game on normal. You want to play on hard? Well, good luck friend… you’re going to need as much of it as possible.

In the event that you have a friend over, or have called one in for backup, you can play Metal Slug on 2-players, and lay waste to the hordes of enemies the game throws at you. There is some Live support, but it’s just scoreboards… you can see/post high scores and times for each level, but nothing outside of that. Some Live multiplayer would have been nice… After you beat the games single player campaign, you will unlock 2 new Xbox exclusive modes for play: Storming the Mother ship is basically a new level for you to play, and Fat Island has you playing competitively as vastly overweight versions of your characters, pretty funny to see.

Obviously, you can’t expect much from a 4 year old arcade/Neo Geo game visually, so it’s really hard to rate the games graphics. Sure, by today’s standards, the game looks like a decent Gameboy Advance game, but this is Xbox: the most technically advance console on the market right now… are we suppose to be able to accept GBA graphics on such a behemoth of graphical prowess? I say forget about the visuals, they’re interesting, animated and at times, amusing. They won’t dazzle your eyes, sure, but you don’t always need eye-catching graphics to have a solid game.

Again, it’s hard to measure the game in terms of sounds too, being such an old game on a new system… the games soundtrack is your expected midi-based tunes meant to help accent the gameplay, and it does. Even though the game is years old, you won’t be reaching for the remote to mute the game. The games sound effects are too, obviously dated, and won’t catch your attention, really. There are a few voice clips in the game, and yes, they all sound low-quality, because that was the norm 4 years ago in the arcades.

Sure, Metal Slug doesn’t have fancy graphics, or an incredible orchestrated soundtrack for the ages, but it has gameplay, more importantly, FUN gameplay. For the gamers that never really liked the run and gun side scrollers of years past, Metal Slug surely won’t change your mind, but for those of you that did enjoy them, and are constantly thinking ‘I miss the good ol’ days when….’ Metal Slug has brought the good ol’ days to Xbox.