14m 33s | 45665 view | 255 rating

Difficulty: Level 8. No cheats used. Apologies for the scratchy sound at certain points of the video. For some reason Fraps just does that when it records from Kawaks and I have no idea what's causing it. Also, my laptop is a load of crap, so there will be noticeable lags in the recording at some points. Again, apologies. FAINARU MISHION, SUTAATO! And, trust me, if I could hum out Assault Theme in text, I'd be doing just that right now. This mission has been made CAKEWALK in Metal Slug X, in comparison to the no holds barred, screw-you-because-fuck-you stage that was Metal Slug 2's Final Mission. The Iron Lizard has never been so indispensable in any game, and made the stage doable. Not to mention, Morden's missiles had their HP values drastically decreased, to the point where they're easily destroyable with a Heavy Machine Gun, whereas in Metal Slug 2 they could withstand GRENADES! Yes, plural! And I think morality finally found the stage designers when they were developing Metal Slug X, and hence the mooks at the wavy bridge part now can only throw rolling bombs, whereas in Metal Slug 2 they could throw those, firecracker rockets, and grenades... AND switch between them as they pleased! AND they had paratroopers with Bazookas to back them up! Oh, right, have I mentioned? You only had a damn pistol to tackle that section with in Metal Slug 2. Think about that for a second. As much as I like the Metal Slug series, Metal Slug X pissed me the hell off when doing this run. The game engine is super wonky, and you can even animation cancel yourself out of a life or death attack just by your character taking a drink or sneezing, or animation cancelling yourself turning around by firing in the completely wrong direction. And then the final bosses of the game rely SOLELY on cheap attacks that travel faster than your character can RUN, AND is aimed directly at you ALL THE TIME. Some minions the bosses spawn have more HP than a Metal Slug Attack can deal, which is simply mind blowing when: a) The kamikaze-ing Slug can't reach them b) you don't have a Slug The only way to survive is to conserve ALL the grenades from the stage prior, and spam them on minions even before they get a chance to act. Simply horrible design by SNK. It's almost like they haven't playtested it on the highest difficulty. I know the whole point of an arcade game is to try to kill you as much as possible, but I think they should've at least made it fair. I'm not ashamed to admit that to beat the final bosses in 1 life, I do need a fair share of luck, and I've had to redo this run a lot of times BECAUSE of the final boss. And because you've already faced the Martians in prior stages with the Metal Slug before, you don't get this surge of prevalence when the Metal Slug finally arrives in this stage, and get that "EAT SLUG POWER ALIENS!" feelings you'd otherwise get in Metal Slug 2, after the intense struggle to get there. And because the minions spawned are so threatening, you'd pretty much HAVE to stay on top of the left platform and blast them as they spawn. The Metal Slug could even ride the shield soldier's shield when raised. One thing I can't understand is how a single Metal Slug cannon shell (which deals 20HP damage) can take out the Martian UFO in 1 shot, whereas the stick hand grenades (which deal 10HP damage each) destroys the UFOs with 4 grenades. It's almost like they made the Martians have less HP when you're in a Slug, which... erm... okay. Kinda wish we would stay in control and blast the Rugname as the Rebel Soldier makes the kamikaze attack though. It makes no sense to just hop out of the Slug and stand there like an idiot as the Rugname prepares for another laser blast. But that's just a minor complaint I have. The credits roll however, is leaps and bounds better than Metal Slug 2's simply WTF one. The ending theme is a weird version of the Main Theme of Metal Slug. Kinda makes me think that Metal Slug X initially was supposed to be a remake of Metal Slug 1 instead of 2. Anyway, this concludes my long ramblings about the game. All in all, I'm just glad to have cleared this game in 1 life, since this WAS the first Metal Slug game I've played, and the only one I have multiplayer memories of with my sister.