Finger on the trigger: Hands-on with Metal Slug Advance

It might come as quite a surprise to a lot of gamers that the Metal Slug series continues to spawn sequels and cross-format ports. In this day of 3D visuals and top-end first-person shooters the Slug's bitmappy 2D visuals look crustier than the inner folds of a fat bloke's thighs.

But, as we all know, you should never judge a book by its cover, especially when that cover is plastered with powerful guns, huge tanks, massive helicopters, legions of crazed infantrymen and battalions of mental suicide bombers. Like Metal Slug Advance on GBA.

In a way, Nintendo's handheld (should it be 'old-school handheld' now the DS is inviting everyone to touch its bits?) is the perfect platform for Metal Slug. The basic 2D visuals suit the graphics hardware of the GBA to a tee and the gloriously simplistic run, jump and gun gameplay is perfect for a session of portable play.

And initially Metal Slug Advance seems a lot like the arcade, PS2 and Xbox versions. You choose to play as a male or female soldier of fortune, then bound across six side-scrolling 2D levels rescuing bearded POWs so you can get your mitts on fatter guns and then shooting everything in sight.

There's plenty to shoot, too. In the best traditions of old-school shmup gaming your enemies come thick, fast and frequently, only pausing to unleash a bloody great boss on you.

Metal Slug's always had fun chucking cool bosses your way, and Advance is no different. In fact, there's been a conscious effort to split the levels up even more frequently with bosses, so you can expect numerous showdowns with huge helicopter gunships, massive torpedo-spewing submarines, acrobatic monster tanks and terrifying armoured trains.

It's finger-twitching, platform-pounding action of the kind that kept us glued to videogames all through the eighties and early nineties, and it still exerts a magical power even today. It doesn't hurt that SNK has also ensured that rather than just being a lazy port of the arcade and console versions, Metal Slug Advance is tailored especially for the GBA.

For a start you've got an energy bar, meaning you can soak up a few hits before you drop your dogtags rather than succumbing to cheap one-hit-kills. If it hits rock bottom you're dumped back to the last checkpoint, which is never too far back. This helps to keep the action flowing and prevents explosions of frustration when you die at the end of the last level and have to go right back to the start.

Similarly, once you've completed a mission you can go back and replay it at any time. The six levels aren't designed to be endlessly huge, but rather sharply designed to offer an increasingly tough challenge. So why would you want to play them again? Well, as you hone your skills and memorise attack patterns you'll be able to clear them quicker, with more points, and with less life lost, massaging your gaming ego and making you feel like a Metal Slug master.

Plus, as you progress you'll come across some of the 100 hidden stat-boosting cards that'll let you play through the levels with fun new abilities and steroid-like physical enhancements. You'll have to work to get them, though - pick one up and fail to complete the level without dying and you'll have to do it again, and you'll only be able to collect some of them if you've already activated others, a little like Zelda's progressive puzzles. Levels open up vertically as well as horizontally and we noticed loads of areas we couldn't initially reach.

Okay, so it might sound like a cheap and cheeky way to elongate the game's lifespan, but from our hands-on with Metal Slug Advance these features are effective ways to keep you coming back for more. The platforms-and-guns action is exactly the type of gaming that makes you want to go back again and again, whether its just to finally nail that annoying boss or to scream through a level like a thumb banshee. With the added incentives of hidden objectives to chew on, Metal Slug Advance offers some pretty perfectly formed dip-in-dip-out gaming.

Which is exactly what we want from our GBA games. The narrow dimensions of the screen do impinge on the action a little, particularly in the vertically scrolling sections, and we would like a few more levels to keep us going, but Metal Slug Advance looks like it'll be a cracking way to blast through a train or bus journey.

You'll be able to load up on Metal Slug Advance next month, but for now you'll want to target our fresh screenshots.

Graeme Boyd