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| mission complete |
Recently, Tencent's first IP product "Metal Sluggish: Awakening" that received a version number last year opened the first round of testing.
For players after 80.90, the IP of "Metal Slughead" can be called a household name. In that "arcade era", "Metal Slugg" quickly stood out among many games with its excellent shooting feel, rich and diverse gameplay experience and extremely exaggerated and humorous design elements.
After the arcade and console successively launched 7 generations of orthodox sequels (excluding enhanced versions X and XX), the IP of "Metal Slughead" slowly faded out of players' vision. Until recently, authorized by SNK and newly developed by Tencent TiMi Studio, the mobile game "Metal Sluggish: Awakening" began to be closed beta, which seems to bring the former king back to the public stage.
In my opinion, "Metal Slugg: Awakening" incorporates a lot of past IP mobile game experience while enhancing the picture quality and retaining the classic gameplay, and even looks a little "déjà vu" in the overall experience. However, this feeling of "déjà vu" does not mean that the product is static, but more reflects the underlying logic of the market-proven IP mobile game. On this basis, the integration of "emotional elements" close to the original IP and a variety of additional gameplay can better take care of new and old players.
Although I feel that there are still some problems with this product at present, for a classic IP with a history of 26 years, TiMi's adaptation obviously chooses the most secure way.
01
The most secure way to play mobile games
The most difficult thing about the mobile gaming of old IP is how to capture old players and how to attract new players, and retaining feelings and integrating gameplay has become a regular operation in the industry. Prior to this, "Contra: Return", which is also a classic IP mobile game, has been in front of it, and what "Metal Sluggard: Awakening" has to do is how to go further on this basis.
From the perspective of graphics, "Metal Slug: Awakening" chose the mainstream 3D picture, although the overall performance is not amazing, but for players who have seen more of the original pixel arcade screen, this improvement from 2D to 3D is also a kind of "strengthening" in line with the aesthetics of modern players, adding a freshness that the original does not have.
It is worth mentioning that even if it becomes a 3D picture, it does not mean that it needs to emphasize realism, "Metal Slug: Awakening" cleverly chooses cartoon rendering and retains the classic one-head proportions of the characters, so in the actual play experience, the exaggerated physical performance of the original work can be restored in this work without drama.
The background screen of the game mostly uses scenes from the orthodox series, such as beaches, deserts, factories, etc., even after 3D, veteran players can almost recognize the scenes in various places at a glance where the original work came from. Especially the classic 2nd generation desert map in the prologue, under the silky 3D picture performance, almost 1 to 1 "replica" instantly fills the feelings.
In terms of gameplay, "Metal Slug: Awakening" retains the basic gameplay of horizontal shooting, and has made a certain degree of "templated" adaptation on this basis.
In addition to the original two classic operations of "hit and jump", "Metal Slug: Awakening" has greatly strengthened the cultivation elements, including four aspects: characters, weapons, accessories, and vehicles. Each character has their own unique skills and talents. For example, the well-known captain Mark of veteran players can enter bullet time for a short time and be equipped with dual-wielding submachine guns to deal a lot of damage after using the finishing skill, while the cute girl Fio's summary skill is to summon a large number of refrigerators to fall from the sky and pick up dropped food to get skill recovery.
Players can also get various trinkets by defeating bosses to change the form of skills, such as Marco's grenade skill can be turned into a Molotov cocktail to cause large-scale damage skills, or directly throw three grenades to cause high direct damage, facing different battle situations to switch different character skills, undoubtedly provides a certain strategic choice.
The addition of character skills brings a certain freshness and provides players with more room to operate, and this change is also reflected in the development of weapons.
The various bullets in the original work are preserved in the game, such as the "machine gun" that cannot be moved, the laser gun that makes the enemy sweaty, the tracking gun that does not require any operation, etc., and players can fully experience a sense of nostalgia by "eating" various ammunition and using various weapons in the original work.
In addition, Metal Slug: Awakening also adds a base weapon, and after using the special ammo, the player will not use the "Xiaomi plus rifle", but switch to their own base weapon, so that the continuous feeling of pleasure will not be weakened by the "lack of firepower". Of course, the biggest impact of this change is that resource management is no longer the main core of the game, and for a mobile game product that needs long-term operation, I can only say that this approach has both gains and losses.
In addition, the game adopts a squad mode, players can group up to three characters into a squad, switch at will during the battle, with their own exclusive skills and weapons, adapt to various battle situations.
The game has added some active props, some can return blood and some can launch missiles, and some vehicle battles, air battles, and even parachute jumping mechanisms also make the whole game interesting, and by the way, it also pays tribute to the feelings of a wave of old players.
It is not difficult to see that this "experience" of the underlying adaptation of "Contra: Return" ensures that "Metal Slugg: Awakening" has an excellent game experience both in terms of feel and gameplay content, allowing this old IP to come to life on the new platform of mobile games and attract the attention of players in the new era. And through the polishing of various details and the integration of gameplay, "Metal Slugg: Awakening" has indeed taken a path of its own.
02
Sentiment and innovation
To be honest, for a long time, I was very worried that the finished product of "Metal Slug: Awakening" in the end was a card game with an IP, and the construction, dispatch, and attack all relied on "playing cards", after all, for a long time before, for this kind of "old IP" that has been some years old, the common practice of domestic game manufacturers is to "undecided cards".
Therefore, when I really got started, I thought that although the product was not perfect, in terms of low-level gameplay, "Metal Slugg: Awakening" did not have any major problems, especially for the integration of emotional tribute and sub-gameplay, which exceeded my expectations to a certain extent.
As I said above, one of the biggest difficulties in IP adaptation is to woo and pay tribute to the feelings of old players. At this point, Metal Slugg: Awakening's approach is to make a big fuss about the player's memory point of the series.
In the opening plot, the series flashes back many classic pictures in the original pixel style, such as the land warship in the fourth level of the 1st generation, and the classic picture of defeating UFOs in the last level of the 2nd generation and capturing the modern general alive.
Immediately followed by the first level of the 2nd generation desert map level reproduced with a new 3D screen, it immediately presented players with a wave of "memory killing", I believe that most players are 2 generations of pits, so this wave of emotional combination punch is simply a lore. It is worth mentioning that the final boss chose the old version of the aircraft instead of the X tank, and this wave of detailed processing is worthy of praise.
In addition, in the main plot of the game, "Metal Slugg: Awakening" also added a memory mode, simply put, it is to take out some of the classic levels in the original work and reproduce them in 3D again, and recall those classic scenes that have been played countless times over time, I believe that no matter which old player may be full of emotion.
And for new players, I think Metal Slugg: Awakening also shows enough sincerity. First of all, it provides an automatic shooting mode for mobile game platforms, which greatly reduces the threshold for getting started and the complexity of operation.
The integration of various sub-gameplay also ensures that in addition to the classic level-breaking gameplay, the amount of content of the game is guaranteed. For example, "Hunt Plan" provides the current mainstream meat pigeon gameplay, challenging the intensity while also honing the skills of character operation. "Arcade Carnival" refines various "cool points" in the original work, such as the 1st generation of mid-dismantling cars and the 2nd generation of mid-top trains, which really achieves the fun of "always playing and always cool".
In addition, as the most classic multiplayer of online games, "joint action" allows up to three players to team up to play online and beat the final boss together, which is quite a bit of the feeling of playing games together in arcade rooms.
Finally, it is the expansion of the entire worldview of "Metal Slug". In "Metal Slugg: Awakening", classic elements from various original games can be seen almost everywhere, in addition, the newly added god story further expands the worldview of the entire game, and sorts out the originally loose plot and characters into a main line.
Each character is not only equipped with a detailed introduction, but even adds their own exclusive plot, which does not destroy the original setting, which has played a certain role in promoting players' in-depth understanding of the background story of the entire IP.
epilogue
Of course, having said all of the above, in my opinion, "Metal Slug: Awakening" still has some shortcomings. For example, the addition of basic weapons makes the role of bullets further weakened in the game and becomes dispensable. In the later stage, vehicle battles become less visible to the naked eye, so that gameplay changes are not so frequent. The expansion of the plot makes many new bosses and new characters join it, which requires a certain amount of time for old players to adapt.
However, many times, IP mobile gaming is not an easy task, "Metal Sluggers: Awakening" with market-proven experience to carry out mobile gameplay, although people feel that the product experience is somewhat "familiar", but it is undoubtedly to ensure the game's basic gameplay and content. At the same time, it integrates emotional elements and sub-gameplay that are in line with the tone of the IP, which greatly takes care of new and old players, and in my opinion, this may be the safest approach.