Metal Slug is a series that always gets plenty of my attention. I’ve devoted a ridiculous amount of love to the franchise during my stay on Starship Earth, even going so far as to attempt playing it on a Neo Geo Pocket Color – which requires the player to sit directly beneath the sun in order to see the screen clearly.

Even after all this time, I’ll still put money into a Neo Geo cab when one turns up at a gaming event, and still lament the fact that I couldn’t afford any of the fancy Japanese hardware that allowed the game to be played at home when I was younger. In many ways, Metal Slug is why the dinosaurs had to die – so we could use the oil from their corpses to fuel the boats that would one day bring this franchise to North America. The animation of characters and actions grabs me every time I see it, that melodramatic Looney Tunes mix of over-action that separates Metal Slug’s cartoonish hyper-violent-bullet-coaster-ride from any other title.

With this in mind, it’s easy-peasy for me to fall into this PSP enhanced port of the DS release (Metal Slug 7), finding my groove and slugging a path through more enemies in a single level than exist in the entirety of other run and gun titles. And yet, like an indecisive Emperor, there’s enough weight on either end of the judgment scale to keep my thumb from turning up or down over this release, creating an unfortunate zone of indifference.

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