Hands on Metal Slug 7

Short, but sweet is the best way to describe the Tokyo Game Show demo. Even though Metal Slug’s latest installment moved on to a smaller screen with no arcade counterpart, it’s the same old Metal Slug you have come to love.

The demo took place in a Junkyard level and you could only play as Marco. You use the Y button to fire the machine gun and the A button throw bombs. Like all the other Metal Slug games you moved from left to right shooting all of the inane enemy units that haphazardly walked forward to attack you. Along the way I picked up a laser power up and a handy rocket launcher to spice up gameplay.

Something to note about Metal Slug 7 is it has a score multiplayer meter (a la Metal Slug 6) on the bottom of the screen. Each shot gradually fills the meter and when it’s flashing you get a temporary 16x bonus for each kill. If you stop shooting stuff the meter quickly drops back to zero. I guess this is a way to separate the hardcore from the novice players. Now if only SNK included online leaderboards for the score hungry gamers who want to prove their Metal Slug 7 skills…

I beat the demo in a few minutes and having 99 lives to start with meant it was near impossible to fail. I came away wanting more and I was rather impressed how fluid the short experience was.