[EXPRESSO] Metal Slug Attack Reloaded STEAM | Freemium Free

So, yeah, this was unexpected, not unprecedented, but definitely unexpected, especially due to how quickly modern SNK put out and closed these free-to-play Metal Slug spin-offs.

But yeah, now the second tower defense Metal Slug title (Metal Slug Defense was a bit too old and kinda left unsopported for years, so it made sense to bring this one out of the freezer) is back as a 10 bucks single purchase, no microtransactions, timers or limited energy to play, none of that.

I’ve actually played quite a bit of the game when it was free-to-play on iOS, so it’s both kinda cool and weird to see it back as an actual game, you know, the ones you pay once and are actually meant to be played without the serpent of Eden asking for your credit card info.

I find it’s actually playable now, as the original release was notable worse in fighting anyone that didn’t wanna pay up, incredibly aggressive, a lot worse than Metal Slug Defense was, too.

Still, it’s a fairly mindless tower defense title, somewhat enjoyable despite very little strategy and little depth to it (which was also true of Metal Slug Defense, btw).

That said, it’s not a remake and it serves as a testament that nothing is actually free in free-to-play, because the design is untouched, meaning that the game is still unbalanced, heavy on difficulty spikes and grinding, holdovers that make littles sense without the F2P monetization, like the gacha to recruit units for which you’re given a fuckton of what was the “premium currency”.

Kinda odd as they also kept in the PvP online battles, but i guess why not, it’s not like they were gonna even try to balance this thing, it would have required pretty much making a new game from scratch.

P.S.: This review was made after playing the game a little after launch, pointing this out because this review has been (coincidentally) posted just before SNK announced in late November a vague free update coming in the future.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath Of The Mutants PS4 [REVIEW] | Arcades In Times

Since it’s un-officially “ninja month”, let’s talk ninja. Mutant teenage turtles ninjas.

And while their popularity and games based on the series still doesn’t waver, so much that we recently got a tie-in game to the 2023 animated film TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, TMNT: Splintered Fate, and one about the Last Ronin spin-off series by the TMNT original creators coming next year.

But we’re not talking about those, or the well received Shredder’s Revenge.

Nope, we’re going back to 2017, indirectly, thank to the recent release of the 2017 TMNT arcade game by Raw Thrills, in this expanded port (gaining the “Arcade” moniker and a new subtitle since there are literally dozens of TMNT game just called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”) handled by Cradle Games and distributed (even physically) by… shovelware maestro Gamemill Entertaiment.

Though this is not shovelware, i had the pleasure to play this machine/arcade cabinet more than once in my local arcades, and it’s quite fun 3D side scrolling beat em up, obviously trying to arken back to Turtles In Time, as these arcade TMNT titles often do, for nostalgia but also because it was indeed a quality title worth trying imitation and the flattery that – ideally – that would imply.

It’s a pleasant surprise regardless, since i doubt anyone was expecting this, expecially given how some digital only TMNT titles have gone delisted entirely, especially made for smarthphones offering and arcade releases. The TMNT Cowabunga Collection is great but some titles will always be bound to being emulated, at best, like the Tiger handheld games and such.

This not the case, as we get the game seen and played in the arcades as well as some new extra levels, which is a good things since Gamemill still asks more than it should for a physical copy, but we’ll discuss that later.

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The Callisto Protocol PS4 [REVIEW] | Ape Espace

When a beloved new IP is run into the ground and compromised by EA, that tried to squeeze Call Of Duty money out of a horror franchise and even had microtransactions inserted in the last mainline title…. seeing the publisher basically give up and do nothing with it for years is frustrating, even more so when the finale was followed up by a DLC retconning the ending.

And the inevitable homicide by EA of Visceral Games, after the routine danse macabre of shuffling them into developing completely different games of a completely different genre, lamenting how the star shaped peg doesn’t fit into the durian shaped hole, was the cherry on the corpse sundae.

So of course this leaves a specific hole in the market for “spiritual sequels” to fill, and mind you, this was announced before EA announced their own remake of the first Dead Space.

And on paper, The Callisto Protocol sounded exactly what fans of the series like me wanted, a “fuck you” to the vampiric publisher that wasn’t serving an audience starved for that action-horror sci fi dish, done outside of their control, with even some of the original creators of the series involved.

This is the kind of underdog story that we wanna see, as apparently everyone hates EA, and only EA for some stupid reasons, but alas this is not quite what actually happened.

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Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow Of New Despair PS4 [REVIEW] | #summerofedf

2017 passed, and the alien menace was repelled… for 8 years, as in 2025 the Ravagers returned with a vengeance, striking from within the depths of Mother’s Earth crevices.

I’m cheating a bit as i’m not reviewing the original PS3/X360 release of EDF 4, called Earth Defence Force 2025 in the west since EDF 3 was retitled as EDF 2017, and not randomly as this is a direct sequel of the storyline in EDF 3/2017, which – as we learned by now – the series does every 2 mainline titles before rebooting itself.

Which also means it’s also a remake of sort of EDF 2/Global Defence Force, aside from bringing back some enemies from that entry (and introduces some the very same way in some missions), it also features very similar key plot beats, like the mothership being destroyed halfway through after being teased as the final boss to introduce the actual new, bigger menace.

The B-movie storyline is as fun as ever, as are the hilarious dubbing and insane dialogues shouted by the soldiers, or by some utterly cuckoo operator or scientist that almost orgasms when an air raid is carried out, as somehow this series manages to have even more ridiculous and batshit hilarious exchanges and plot points every entry, as it’s basically not really competing with anything else on the market, but itself, so – as already said by a very peculiar medical student/gaming Youtuber – it has to push the kaiju-alien ants-robots-alien robots-ufo consommè of B-movie delirium even further, and as EDF 5 later managed to, so did EDF 4/4.1 in upping its predecessor.

I’m not gonna spoil how, because the dialogues are really a trashy treat of over the top voice acting and really evoke the old 70s english dub jobs of kung fu films, just for a 50/60s sci fi style romp about aliens that might be ants, robots, both, none, and might be working in tandem.

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The Summer Of EDF & The Shark Six

So, to celebrate EDF 6 finally releasing westward in late July, we are gonna have ourselves a little Earth Defense Force retrospective, covering all the games yet not reviewed here (EDF 5, EDF Iron Rain and EDF World Brothers – alongside the PAL release of the first game in the series – have already been covered, FIY), mostly mainline ones, with 4 reviews spread across June and July.

This was already planned as such before D3 finally put down an actual release day (after the delay from spring 2024 to summer 2024), and since those months will have the now regular weekly release/cadence for articles/reviews, i’m also bringing back the sharks with 6 selected films about these poor animals, with 3 reviews per month.

August will be a surprise. For now.

Also, an expresso review of Furiosa – A Mad Max Saga is coming up next.

Samurai Maiden PS4 [REVIEW] #meleemay

I’ve been waiting to cover this one for a while, but i had to wait for it to go on a decent discount, since D3 Publisher went extra crazy and asked 50 bucks (70 for the Deluxe Edition that includes all DLCs, mostly costumes and music from other D3 franchise like Bullet Girls) for what was obviously another budget game of theirs.

Having played all Oneechanbara games and waiting for the Namco Bandai owned company to finally announce the western release for EDF 6 (which was supposed to be out this spring but was eventually delayed to late July 2024), i did want to play Samurai Maiden earlier, but the absurd price really held me off, i’m not fucking paying 70 bucks for a complete edition of a digital only release of a D3 Publisher budget hack n slash anime game.

Curiously, despite the publisher involved and the premise of hack n slash action using a japanese anime high school girl, this is NOT the fanservicey fest you’d expected, i guess after the “prude crusade” Sony went (for whatever reason, since they were the main platform for most Senran Kagura games before), niche titles like this had to tippy toe on their tits to see what’s ok now.

the plot sees regular high school girl Tsumugi transported back to the Sengoku period, isekai’d directly during the Honno-ji incident so she can chat up Oda Nobunaga and have three female anime ninjas explain she was summoned there because she’s a discendant of a so called “Miko Of Prosperity”, and a prophecy involving her and a Demon Lord was foretold, etc.

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Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae STEAM [REVIEW ] #meleemay

Since i did already cover The Initial and the “sequel” hasn’t yet gone on sale on Steam, i feel it’s time to revisit (so yeah, it’s technically a rewrite in the sense that some of my opinions didn’t change over time, but it’s also a revision i wrote from scratch) another Oneechanbara adjacent title from the indie tier of Steam “famous” japanese hack n slash games heavy on the “school uniform cum swords” anime-derived aesthetic, the kind where you’d expect the dutch wives looking characters to randomly start fucking in a robotic, unappealing fashion, if you didn’t already know this was just a fan service-y hack n slash.

This was actually a fairly popular release, as in it was a smash hit when released during Comiketto 84 (AKA the 2013 august edition of Comic Market, that huge japanese only event) by his developer-creator Zenith Blue, and in March of 2014 PLAYISM picked it up to distribute and localize it in English for a worlwide Steam release.

It received a limited physical PS4 release via Limited Run Games and it’s also available digital on PSN and X-Box systems, FIY, but i got it in a bundle playable via Steam years ago, so i’m reviewing the Steam release alone, sold at a MSRP of 10 bucks.

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Anthem PS4 [REVIEW-FUNERAL DIRGE] | EA’s Dark Void

We’ve reviewed the horrific and turdular legend of Devil’s Third in October, so since today’s is Allsaints here, let’s speak of the dead, with another review-funeral dirge.

A really long one, too, because we’ll burying this one deep, just to be extra sure.

Don’t take a drink every time i mention Destiny, don’t, your liver will thank me.

And yes, while you can still buy and play Anthem, since physical copies are ubercheap and overabundant, the servers are still live with no announced plans of shutting them down… it is a formality, a pure technicality, air escaping from the lungs instead of his ass, just bring them out when Eric Idle shows up. Or just throw him on the cart as well, again, it’s for the better at this point.

FIY, i followed the absolute disaster this game was, saw it being discussed and unanimosuly declared absolute trash, i red the Jason Schreier’s editorial, i saw the dumpster fire blink at the edge of Alpha Centauri, etc. So i knew the shitshow this game caused, and i eventually picked up a PS4 copy new for 8 bucks from Amazon, because i knew i wanted another unholy artifact in my game collection, sitting next to other abandoned – and most likely by now unplayable – garbage fires.

I saw them announcing the “3 acts” and then backtrack that to oblivion, but i mostly enjoyed this game the best way, the recommended way: not playing it and seeing it discussed and torn apart by pretty much everybody, with even the more positive folks betraying the fact that this was another live-service disaster piece of crap.

The Fallout 76 of 2019, if you will.

But still, i didn’t bother to actually play it yet, as i waited to see if their last attempt to turn it around with a new version called “Anthem Next” (basically attempting a No Man Sky’s tale) would be given the greenlight. Every sign pointed to no, but Evolve Phase 2 did happen (and died not even a year in, but still), so i wasn’t ruling out the slim possibility of it happening. Not yet.

To no one’s surprise, Anthem Next wasn’t approved so then i decided to take out the PS4 disc, install it, let it patch itself to playability, and actually play it now that’s officially a living dead horse, just waiting for EA to kill it 100 % dead by closing the server and making it totally unplayable to anyone else in the future. Dear god, how i hate this industry and its clear malign lack of any interest in preserving its own history. I genuinely hate the “anti-archivism” built into these games.

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Pirate Warriors 4 and the sudden DLC deluge (extended bitchin’ edition) (UPDATED)

So, after i discussed Namco Bandai announcing a new Character Pass of 9 playable characters to be added as paid DLC over time, we now know the first DLC pack of characters (aptly titled The Battle Of Onigashima) will include Gear 5 Luffy, Kaido in his hybrid humanoid dragon form, and Yamato.

Which is a bit iffy since 2 of the 3 characters are just variants of previously existing characters that most likely won’t have a completely different moveset, but no, i didn’t write this article just to bitch more about Tecmo Koei and Namco Bandai DLC practices, even though i never get tired of it and it’s always right, especially when talking Tecmo Koei DLC bullshit.

Aside from this info and a glimpse of how Yamato will play, the trailer also included the announcement of a different DLC pack split into 3 parts meant to release piece-meal over time as well, called the Additional Episode pack, as in new actual content to play through, with the first one we know being about Yamato travelling through various stages (including Big Mom’s kingdom, as the first and only image – included below and taken from Gematsu article about the news- about the episode shows), and this one will also include a new power up map to learn new skills, increase stats and skill levels even further, and shit like that.

I feel like a stepped on a monkey’s paw, because YES, finally, new meat for the meat god, actually new episodes/missions/stages to play, BUT it’s paid DLC yet again, for a game that – as good as it is, and it’s a very good Warriors title – could have used some actual longtime support and some free content via update, like they did with Hyrule Warriors, even the base release on Wii U, especially due to its decision to cover less of the story arcs and hence do less unique maps/level.

I don’t need TK to also join the fuckin bandwagon and make “work in progress free to play but 60 bucks to enter” games that change over time, but you know, some support and little things or a clearer declaration of how/when the game will have new content arrived to it would have been better.

Honestly, i’d prefer they actually did a proper Xtreme Legends style expansion pak, but they make more money like this, so they won’t.

As previously said, i will be reviewing the new DLC Character Packs as they are released, with the Battle For Onigashima one still having a generic “September 2023” release window despite the fact we’re almost half-way through the frigging month,while the Additional Episodes Packs have a TBA release date as of now, but yes, i guess i’ll review them as well, why not at this point?

POST SCRIPTUM: Both the Battle Of Onigashima DLC Pack and the first Episode Pack (or whatever they’re gonna call it) of the Additional Episodes Pack will be available from the 14th of September (source: Gematsu)

That’s on me for not checking again before publication, i will take the blame for that because i really should have checked, and i do apologize for this.

One Piece Odissey PS4 [REVIEW] | Cube Memory

One Piece might not be a franchise that you would immediatly associate with RPGs, but like Dragon Ball its surprising how the genre is represented in their many videogame iterations, especially if we’re talking about older systems, and even more so if we’re talking about Japan-only releases, as the first One Piece videogame was a RPG on the old black-n-white WonderSwan, and more came out for both the Wonderswan family of consoles as wells as for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and even on the original Playstation.

But sadly most western fans are not familiar with some of these quirky GBC One Piece RPGs where (among other things) the Straw Hats are turned into animals, no, most likely you’ve yearned for years for a localized One Piece RPG, only to find out that it exists, One Piece: Romance Dawn, and that it’s sadly a very shit game, even worse as it’s a port from PSP to 3DS, and a cheap one too, because knowing this it makes all sense for the game to look that much like old ass.

I reviewed that one as well, but today we’re here holding hope to finally retire this status and have a big budget mainstream RPG that can make the series some justice instead of wishing they wouldn’t have bothered to begin with, with the long anticipated One Piece Odissey, developed by ILCA and published by Namco Bandai (who else?) in January 2023 to celebrate the series’ 25^th anniversary.

Available pretty much on all the platforms, old gen and new…. but not the Nintendo Switch.

For the record, this review is based on the PS4 version played on a PS4 Pro.

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