The world is once again on the brink of being taken over by the evil General Donald Morden and his rebel army. Only the Peregrine Falcon forces, led by hero Marco Rossi, stand in the way of the Rebels’ establishment of the New World Order. This could be the plot of any installment of the Metal Slug series, best not taken too seriously. Metal Slug Attack Reloaded, a remake of the mobile microtransaction tower defense Gacha game, does its best to maintain the goofy tone of the series by removing the worst parts of the 2016 version.
At least it tries to remove the frustrating parts. Fortunately, there are no microtransactions in the Switch version – but it still feels like a gacha game where you have to log in every day and fight your way to victory. The result is a game that is asymmetric but still fun and true to its origins
As with most of my series, the story in Metal Slug Attack Reloaded is top notch. Marco Rossi and the Peregrine Falcon Squad lead a mission to stop a rebel force from taking over the world. Whether this is done through expert strategy or brute force is unclear, as the gameplay that follows each short cutscene is an exercise in sending wave after wave of units into the enemy so you can destroy their base. It’s the kind of simple, silly fun that works well for a mobile game but feels lazy when ported to console. Even the addition of a “sequel story” titled “another story” doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t have enough plot to last a dozen or more hours to complete.
In each battle, you buy units with AP (Action Points) and send them across the battlefield, where they destroy enemy bases or die trying. Stronger units cost more AP, but you can upgrade your base to replenish your AP faster, so you can buy stronger units faster. It breaks up basic gameplay when you activate a unit or special move for your base, but you’ll spend a lot of time sending units on a slow death march to the right of the arena.
The little trick that comes into play is actually which unit you choose to go through each level. Selecting a unit that can attack flying enemies is usually not necessary unless the game presents you with a stage almost entirely populated by flying enemies. Each unit can be leveled up, evolved into a more powerful form, and equipped with equipment to improve its stats. This is ostensibly done in the name of customizing your party to your playstyle, but is actually a holdover from Metal Slug Attack Reloaded’s origins as a gacha game.
Every time you complete a mission you get medals and tickets. Tickets are used to improve your unit or base stats and give you an advantage in the next mission. Medals reinforce the game’s gacha mechanics and allow you to acquire a small number of units, which allow you to unlock one of the game’s over 300 characters from the Metal Slug series to fight battles for you. Metal Slug Attack Reloaded is a lot less predatory than most mobile gacha games, but it also shows how shallow and unfair the system is.
This system is at the root of one of Metal Slug Attack Reloaded’s biggest problems – the brutal and often unfair difficulty that occurs throughout the campaign. Sometimes you come across a level that suddenly becomes more difficult than the previous one. No amount of trickery will help you set up your unit. Most of the time it replaces the units in your group with other units that suit the enemy. However, this means trying to get a better, more powerful unit, a long and sometimes frustrating process that is mainly intended to encourage players to collect money to secure a rarer or better unit. However, without microtransactions it feels unnecessarily difficult, making it almost groundbreaking.
Fans of the Metal Slug series will enjoy seeing some more intelligent armies and units in the game. There are the usual rebel and regular army characters, but along the way you’ll quickly see Martian aliens, dog mummies and samurai robots. It lightens up the game’s already threadbare plot of assembling an army made up of all these factions, but you’ll hardly notice it when you’re summoning a giant slug to devour your enemies. The only downside is that the squad is a small fraction of the hundreds of units in the original game.
If the story mode isn’t enough for you, you have the option to play online against local players or with a group of your choice. But be careful – like any other gacha game, there will be people who will work for hours and destroy you and your team. That’s the nature of the game, but luckily online battles can be avoided entirely if you prefer to play more casually.
When Metal Slug Attack’s servers shut down in 2023, fans might have thought their favorite tower defense game was gone forever. Unfortunately, they were half right. At this point, we’re not sure the hours of effort required to develop the plot are really worth it.
