Having fun while raging? Possible? Yeah, that describes my childhood alright as it does now when I played Metal Warriors for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; developed by Lucas Arts and published by Konami. In my own personal opinion, this is has got to be the best mech game for the SNES and within my top 10 of favorite games for the SNES.

The story begins in the 22nd century as you are one of the last survivors of Earth fighting against an evil axis ruled by a dictatorship. You are Lt. Stone and part of team called the Metal Warriors who fly around in mechs or “Space Armors.” You go from mission to mission to stop this evil axis, and you must do it all in one sitting because there aren’t any passwords or save points; you did it all in a single afternoon and you liked it, if not, then I don’t know why you are here – go back to playing your Bejeweled. That’s all there is to say about the story but unless you were playing a RPG, I wouldn’t think most people would care about the story for the majority of SNES games; because back then, all the story was in the manual and no one read those. You will get some story out of this in the cut scenes, but nothing too exhilarating. The cut scenes themselves though were well animated, at least for being on the SNES, so the opening one might be worth watching, while every other is just simply a mission briefing which can be skipped over.

The gameplay is where it’s at. Metal Warriors is a simple side scroller with mechs. Every single button on your SNES controller will be used as mechs can shoot, melee, block, use secondary weapons, use a special ability, and jump. Basically go from left to right doing all that and a just a bit more. There are a variety of mechs to choose from but you have to go find them. At some points in the game you will have to get out of your mech to press a button or to take another mech at which point you can fly around and use a pea shooter. Though the gameplay is simple, it is fun. The level designs are well done and doesn’t exactly feel like the same thing over and over again – to a degree. The variety of mechs also changes things up a bit as they all play differently, with different traits and abilities. Also the objective is different in each mission so it doesn’t feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

All the mech action is fun and all, but the game does have a difficulty curve. The first levels start out easy enough, but then it gets to the point where giant guns shoot you once and die. Besides that, there are also ridiculous points in the game such as mission four where you have to defend a ship with a slow moving juggernaut. Sure it does enough damage, but it takes a minute to go from one side of the ship to the other where all the enemies are. By time you get there, they’ll just move to the other end of the ship to destroy that part while you are slowly trekking back. At this point of the game it can get very frustrating and after five continues, you’ll have to start the game all over again. At another point in the game, you have to get out to press a button, only to get blown up by a giant mech or, even worse, when you get back to your mech, an enemy pilot just spawns right next to it and takes your only ride out, leaving you for dead. If that’s not enough, the final boss fight will make rage more than anything, as it is a ridiculously cheap fight.

Besides all the single-player stuff, there is also a head-to-head mode where you can play with your companions, friends, families, or lovers – if you have access to that stuff. Initially you can choose any mech you desire and jump right into the action. This can be very entertaining and can easily kill an hour. Just as its entertaining, it could be just as rage inducing. For instance, there is a mech called the Drache, a fast flying mech with only two weapons. One being just a gun that shoots in any direction and the other being a power dive that kills anything beneath it in one stroke – it’s not really fair, it doesn’t need distance or momentum, just get an inch above your opponent and they’re dead.

Overall, the game is good, you just need a bit of patience to play it. The presentation of the game is good, graphics and music are superb and fit well with the style of the game. If you are any sort of mech fan, I suggest you play this game; anyone else, it’s a fun afternoon if you get a hold of it.

]]> http://giantenemyblog.com/metal-warriors-rage-inducing-mech-fun/feed/ 0 http://giantenemyblog.com/tales-from-the-bargain-bin-nanobreaker/ http://giantenemyblog.com/tales-from-the-bargain-bin-nanobreaker/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:52 +0000 ButtQuakez http://giantenemyblog.com/?p=3362 Lets get one thing out of the way up front. “Awesome” means something that’s completely retarded, but appeals to that twelve year old boy in all of us. We can’t help loving it, even if thinking even the slightest amount detracts from its quality. Lightsabers are awesome. Metal is awesome. Dinosaurs are awesome. NanoBreaker is awesome.

NanoBreaker was released on the Playstation 2 a few years ago by Konami. It failed miserably. At least I think it did. Mostly because I got it for five dollars. The awful thing is, this game is easily worth ten dollars.

The main gimmicks of NanoBreaker are the truly excessive, downright silly blood splatter and the titular weapon, an fancy energy beatstick with the ability to shift into different weapons during special attacks.

The mechanics are solid, though far from impressive. It’s a generic action beat-em-up deal. Throw combos at monsters, advance. Luckily, a couple of interesting things are thrown in to keep you from having Streets of Rage flashbacks.

As you progress, you’ll receive Fancy Powerup Things that allow you to unlock new combos and special attacks in the order you want. This doesn’t actually mean much, but it provides just a tiny bit of interaction with what would otherwise be a static movelist.

The other twists are the Action Dealies and the Grabby Thing. The Action Dealies which are special effects that you can have equipped. One allows your block to reflect lasers, one makes it easier to use special attacks with your Grabby Thingy, and so forth. The Grabby Thing launches out and grabs things, Scorpian style. Pull enemies out of the sky and wail on them, use it to bring one member of a tough crowd to you to fight it one-on-one, stuff like that. Basically, it’s DMC4’s gimmick, just a couple of years earlier and done better.

Hey, and if you love block pushing puzzles, get ready for the BALL INCINERATING EXCITEMENT OF BLOCK PUZZLES WHERE YOU GRAPPLING HOOK THE BLOCKS INSTEAD OF JUST PUSHING THEM.

Alright, the game is decent. Enough of that shit. Back to the transform-o-lightsaber and enemies made entirely of blood and the enigmatic spurt boson. Simply put, this game is bloody. Not disturbing, just… has blood everywhere. Enough blood to make you wonder if your goofy ass robot ninja angel character can swim. Gallon upon gallon of blood is pumped at high speed out of everything you wound and kill, and enemies are numerous. This game has so much blood that they were considerate enough to put in a blood color option. With like fifty damn colors. Including random, where every enemy will bleed a different color. For when you want to feel like you’re slaughtering an enclave of wicked fairies or something. Literally painting the room with rainbow gore.

And there’s a transforming lightsaber thing, for fucks sake. If you have five bucks, pick it up.

The view doesn't change much, but at least it isn't gunmetal gray.

Without a doubt, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is one of the best PS2 games I’ve ever played. This isn’t very impressive, considering I have played a grand total of eight games for the PS2.

With all the controversy over Metal Gear Solid 4:Guns of the Patriots in the Game of the Year race, and remembering that I actually do have a PS2 now, as well as once playing through Metal Gear Solid:The Twin Snakes for GameCube, I thought I might as well give the third installment of the series a try. I understood it as a successful game that used stealth gameplay well, as well as having a plot that didn’t involve arms containing souls of dead people possessing whoever got it for a transplant.

For those who are uninformed, Snake Eater is the earliest Metal Gear game chronologically, taking place in 1964, and tells the story of Jack, code named Naked Snake, who bears a striking resemblance to Solid Snake, the protagonist of the rest of the games, which are set 40 years in the future. Those who remember plot details of the previous games will pick up Naked Snake’s true identity fairly quickly, and it’s nice to see the plot unfold around this.

It’s true, Snake Eater’s plot isn’t nearly as preposterous as MGS2, but it does have its share of oddities, as well as inconsistencies. The game tries to get away with taking real events from the Cold War and twisting them to the plot’s advantage. The problem lies in that it attempts to play the “I’m a game, suspend your disbelief and just play me” card at the same time as the “Take me serious!” card. It uses the former to place some very impressive bosses, but uses the latter after the fights, which ends up feeling plain silly.  Ultimately, the plot succeeds, but just barely.

Another annoying aspect of the story as it unfolds is the constant redundancy of certain terms in the game. When playing, you’ll get to know the term “Philosopher’s Legacy” very well. Likewise, the game presents you with sepia-tone still image exposition that will make you roll your eyes every time you see it. And it happens often. Twice in the first hour, and any time a new “word” is brought up. However, the ending saves the plot, throwing in a few twists that you may or may not see coming, but are still rewarding to see happen in the final moments after the last confrontation. Like a movie, the schizophrenic plot is eclipsed by an excellent beginning and ending.

However, as much as others may complain, EEM GEE ESS three is not a movie, but a game. And it really does succeed as a game. The sound design and original score are both magnificently executed. Voice acting is fantastic, especially from Eva and The Boss, and there are more easter eggs than I’ve ever seen before, including a dream sequence that involves saving at a particular point and then reloading the game.

Boss fights are mostly fantastic, with only a few week points. The greatest  being the Cobra Unit, which consist of: A man controlling hornets, A spider-man lacking spandex suit and packing a crossbow, A century-old sniper, and a cosmonaut pyromaniac. Each of these manage to be engaging, challenging and equal. THAT’S RIGHT, these bosses are not difficult because they knock off half your life bar from one hit, but because they have skills and patterns. I can’t say the same for a few of the other enemies.

You might think this is a picture of a brick wall, but look closely and you'll see Snake.

The basic gameplay succeeds in design though, allowing you to approach a situation and choose whether to go in guns-blazing, poorly-camoflauged moving target, to sneak in and slowly eliminate each guard with deadly accuracy, or just to walk right past them. In the end, it bottlenecks you into the next story element, so you never can go too far off-track. The game uses a camouflage system that grades how visible you are based on the surroundings, allowing you to switch camo and face paint to blend in better. It works most of the time, but there were moments when I wondered why my black and red suit would blend well in grass.

Realistic yet annoying is the “Cure” menu. When you sustain injuries in battle, they’re reflected in this menu. You’ll slowly lose health unless you fix yourself up. This feels sadly more like an answer to politicians against violent games than a game mechanic. It’s embarrassing enough to get perforated like a Subway punch card by an enemy, but going in the menu and using medical supplies just to stop your health from going an extra pixel down is ridiculous.

Where the game succeeds, it truly does, going above other games in the genre, and where it fails, it becomes a minor annoyance at worst. You certainly could do a lot worse for your PS2 library, and despite its problems, it’s worth playing. Unless you hate being told not to shoot people, but if that’s a concern, e-mail me so I can know when to hide from you.

The rather cryptic teaser that was shown only a few weeks ago had everyone guessing. A new Metal Gear, it seemed to say, coming out on a different console other than the PS3. Some of us speculated that it would be a new Metal Gear Ac!d, while a lot more cried out for an Xbox 360 port of Solid Snake’s final adventure. After all the guessing and raging, Konami has finally decided to end the debate once and for all by coming clean: the teaser, in fact, was announcing the arrival of a Metal Gear Solid for the iPhone.

Let that sink in for a little bit.

According to Konami, the game itself is an original title set in the MGS4 universe.  Using the iPhone’s touchscreen controls, players will guide Snake through eight PMC-ridden stages. Judging from the images above, this game seems to focus more on shooty action rather than stealth – and while it’s not necessarily a bad thing, sneaking has always been Snake’s special gig, and we hope that stealth sections are at least included.

The game is slated for a worldwide release Spring 2009.