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Metal Slug Advance Review - GBA

Nintendo has never really had any competition in the handheld market (up until now - but that's another story altogether). One of the few competitors that tried to steal some of the Gameboy's market was the NeoGeo Pocket Colour. It didn't succeed, and SNK retreated from the handheld arena. One of the more popular games for the system was Metal Slug, and now a spin-off has hit the GBA.

In previous Metal Slug games, you raced through the environment blasting baddies and dodging bullets. One hit resulted in death, so you had to learn where everyone was and shoot them before they shot you. For the Advance version, however, things have changed. You now have a health bar that can take about 6-8 shots. You have only one life, but you can grab food items dropped from enemies to regain some health. There are only five missions total, but each is broken up into individual sections. If (read: when) you die, you respawn at the beginning of the section, so it's not so much of a hassle when you get stuck on a boss. These checkpoints are removed when you turn the system off, so it's only really useful for straight playthroughs.

The game throws tons of baddies at you. You'll blast through wave upon wave of soldiers, tanks and helicopters just to pass one subsection of the game. You have unlimited fire of your basic gun, and there isn't anything you're not meant to hit, so you can just rapid fire all you want. You will pick up machine guns and bombs throughout the course, of which you have a limited amount. At the end of each mission, you'll fight menacing boss characters. The very first boss took me about twenty tries to beat, as the game does a poor job of gradually increasing the difficulty level. It starts off easy, but then you're hit by a horribly difficult boss. Eventually youlll learn that a yellow bullet precedes a painful barrage, so you can take the time to quickly jump up and over into temporary safety, but it's frustrating.

The level designs are straightforward. You move to the right. Occasionally you may be required to stretch yourself and jump up a few ledges. But this is part of its charm. It's pick-up-and-playable, so you can decimate enemy ranks while you're on the bus. You're able to get into tanks (with their own health bar) and plough through enemies that way too.

The GBA cart doesn't, unfortunately, save a score or keep a tally of how you went. It notes what hostages you saved, and what 'cards' you've collected. If you die in the middle of a mission, however, all collectibles you grabbed in the previous subsections of the mission disappear - encouraging perfect playthroughs. You can play as second character too - another reason to replay. It's purely cosmetic, though. They don't play all that differently.

Graphics

The game retains the NeoGeo ... (continued next page)