Metal slug 2 is an ambitious sequel
It Definitely improves over the concept of the original metal slug in theory and design, but it feels like the game was not made to run properly in the arcades
It's about as fun as the first one, with some positives and some negatives that balance it out enough for me to rate it about the same as the first game
I like that this game is the first to introduce a more crazy and bizarre ''story'', with the goofy looking aliens towards the end and the unspoken comedy, even better stages than the first game, and the visuals being absolutely beautiful, as an example using some simulated 3d animation for some moving bridges, the background for the stages looks wallpaper worthy and the variety of ambiences is great.
They also added many more little secrets than in the first game, adding some more to the replayability, which is always great, especially for arcade games like this, as not having many things you can do is what i feel like brings down a lot of other great arcade games, that are simply repeat the same thing over and over without any variety, and lastly the bosses are pretty good and have interesting mechanics
But, either due to their ambition, system limitations, or unpolished coding, the game lags a lot, sometimes enough to bring down the experience as you shoot rockets and kill your fps instead of the enemies, and this is not an emulator issue, it's also exactly the case in the arcade version of the game, it simply runs worse and it slows down significantly in some sections, it's not unplayable but it definitely takes away from the experience
A section i specifically dislike is the train section, it's unfairly difficult trying not to die in that section, the train simply pushes too hard, takes too long to destroy and there are too many enemies coming at you, so it feels like it just wants you to put another coin in sometimes
They wanted to go all out with this game's sequel and they did, freed their entire creative minds to it and i can appreciate it, i just wish it was slightly more polished, and luckily, They listened to similar complains, releasing later on Metal slug X a year later, a much less laggy and improved ''remixed'' version of Metal slug 2
In short, play metal slug X instead for the definitive experience, and only play MS2 out of the curiosity for the original game
It Definitely improves over the concept of the original metal slug in theory and design, but it feels like the game was not made to run properly in the arcades
It's about as fun as the first one, with some positives and some negatives that balance it out enough for me to rate it about the same as the first game
I like that this game is the first to introduce a more crazy and bizarre ''story'', with the goofy looking aliens towards the end and the unspoken comedy, even better stages than the first game, and the visuals being absolutely beautiful, as an example using some simulated 3d animation for some moving bridges, the background for the stages looks wallpaper worthy and the variety of ambiences is great.
They also added many more little secrets than in the first game, adding some more to the replayability, which is always great, especially for arcade games like this, as not having many things you can do is what i feel like brings down a lot of other great arcade games, that are simply repeat the same thing over and over without any variety, and lastly the bosses are pretty good and have interesting mechanics
But, either due to their ambition, system limitations, or unpolished coding, the game lags a lot, sometimes enough to bring down the experience as you shoot rockets and kill your fps instead of the enemies, and this is not an emulator issue, it's also exactly the case in the arcade version of the game, it simply runs worse and it slows down significantly in some sections, it's not unplayable but it definitely takes away from the experience
A section i specifically dislike is the train section, it's unfairly difficult trying not to die in that section, the train simply pushes too hard, takes too long to destroy and there are too many enemies coming at you, so it feels like it just wants you to put another coin in sometimes
They wanted to go all out with this game's sequel and they did, freed their entire creative minds to it and i can appreciate it, i just wish it was slightly more polished, and luckily, They listened to similar complains, releasing later on Metal slug X a year later, a much less laggy and improved ''remixed'' version of Metal slug 2
In short, play metal slug X instead for the definitive experience, and only play MS2 out of the curiosity for the original game