The game that everyone talked about (because it was about the US President beating back a corrupt government via mecha) but far fewer played. Hey! I like it. Ahead of its time, or it certainly feels that way, a couple years before Gears of War would finish what Resident Evil 4 started, transforming any 3rd person shooter thing with guns into The Same 3rd Person Shooter Thing With Gun.
Beneath the control kruft standard to any ambitious game of its era, Metal Wolf Chaos is operating on a whole different level. By which I mean the levels are different, and all of them have something different going on in them besides aesthetic differences of “ruin” “slime” or the Act III transitional “slimey ruin” chapter. Beating back these ruthless despots, you do wild west shootouts (but with robots) in a prop town in New Mexico. You blitz through Chicago disabling poison gas dispensers. You flee a skyscraper-sized spider tank in San Francisco as you disable its power grid bit by bit and there’s a part I’m not quite sure how I won but I think I was supposed to snipe out a giant stealth bombers bombing bays that were spitting out crab robot land mines?
The most 2019 part of this game is how the DNN reporter following your heroism around by helicopter is a scum-sucking worm in service to the reactionaries who distorts facts to report on you as if you are a terrorist and then is all “we regret the error” when the truth comes out.
More than a handful of these levels also had (often, poorly explained) instant fail conditions. ‘More often than you’d strictly allow in a game you’d call “fun” (and not like, in that weird Deadly Premonition tier). You know another game whose reach may have exceeded its grasp, but only because a noble spirit warrior slammed a binding nail through its palm and then its eight other palms? That’s right, Otogi. Another From Software gem contemporary to Metal Wolf Chaos that didn’t get the respect it deserved due to lacking a solid gold premise like “President Mecha”
Look it just plays how EDF would play if EDF was fun, and it’s got a billion guns like EDF and most of them are really, really bad like EDF but UNLIKE EDF you can unlock like 19 guns per level so who cares if you occasional find a dud category. I’m disappointed with all the “lol japan’s so wild mecha president!!!” nobody ever thought to say “Oh yeah FromSoft figured out EDF before EDF even existed.”** I would’ve bought an import copy sight unseen. As it is, it was like $15 on steam? Does that sound right? I would’ve paid 30 or 40, easy.
There’s this specific kind of dubbing that we don’t get anymore. You know what I’m talking about. Kind of hollowed out, both technically and emotionally. This game had that. The Resident Evil thing but worse. Where the characters are voice acted by robots only recently given control of their puppets of meat and vocal cord.
RICHARD!!
**i am touching my earpiece to acknowledge this communique from the field stating that Earth Defense Force is actually older than i thought. damn… who’s the DNN government stooge now…
wow!! is it really a whole separate calendar year since we did 
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Fast Karate / Friends From The Internet (archival) 