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There are times when reviewing games is a joy and times when it's an onerous task. The phrase "the latter" springs to mind at this point. If you disagree with the statement "sideways scrolling soldier shoot 'em ups have had their day", add an extra 15 per cent, but this is retro hell. Metal Slug seems to have been a popular arcade game. Alas, if you've come for more of the same you'll be disappointed. You see, this game is a bit of a let down, an anticlimax, a damp squib, if you will. It's good at what it does, no doubt, and it looks fab. It's just that what it does isn't that remarkable. Cutting away the gloss, the challenge is a pure memory test. Play. Die. Remember the location of the bad guys you can't see until just before they kill you. Do it again. Meet the boss. Remember his simple attack pattern and work out his weak spot before dying. Do it again. Win. Move on. This makes for an okay arcade game but a shallow and unrewarding experience in the home. Some people (kids) will probably love it, but I'm fairly confident that the majority will have seen it all before and want more out of a game than this. The NeoGeo has plenty of better titles on offer.
Puzzle Bobble, or Bust-A-Move as it's more commonly known these days, has been around a bit. Most people will have seen it in the arcade or on various home consoles, or even on a PC. It's impossible to talk about Puzzle Bobble without using the words "simple", "brilliant" and "addictive", so I'll get them out of the way now. It basically works the same as on other platforms, and the gameplay is all there. So is it any good on the small screen? The answer to that is a resounding 'yes'. Colours aren't as insanely bright as on your telly - that would be impossible on an LCD front-lit screen. However, it's still very easy to differentiate colours and the graphics are well defined. It's immensely playable and there's a superb Survival Mode that has you lasting as long as you can, in which you seriously risk missing your bus stop as you lose track of the outside world. Veterans will find it a bit easy at first, but crank the difficulty up to eight and you'll soon break into a sweat. Being able to carry this around is fab, and you can link up for the two-player fun we all know and love. Simply a must-have title, even if you already have it on another machine.
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