Metal Warriors/Joose

Game: Metal Warriors, Konami, 1995, Super NES
Beer: Joose, 23.5 fl. oz., 9% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 1
Level Reached: 4th level
Level of Intoxication: Woozy

Game
I recently lucked into a Super NES deck and a bunch of games, and so I decided that I would celebrate that find with a review of one of my favorite old SNES games, Metal Warriors. Metal Warriors is a game made by Lucas Arts and distributed by Konami, if you need any more excuse to go out and find this game, you obviously do not know the pinnacles these two companies reached seperately, much less in a theoretical consort with one another where both were at the top of their game. Metal Warriors flew well under the radar at the time of its release, and has become an unknown gleam of awesome in the deep, stormy retro-gaming sea.

Gameplay
You pilot a huge mech with a variety of weapons and powerups, blasting anything that moves in a number of varied and well-designed levels. Sounds like there's more to it, eh? You bet your candy-ass there is. First of all, you start the game with one type of mech, but there are several different mechs in the game, and you can either find new ones littering the level and jump in those, or you can be assigned a different mech at the outset of a mission. During a level, you can press the select button and jump out of your mech. This leaves you extremely vulnerable, but is necessary for certain tasks, such as jumping into a different mech, turning off switches that control locked doors, or even completing level objectives such as taking control of ships and killing enemies down tiny, man-sized corridors that your mech simply cannot access. Awesome? Oh yeah. Speaking of level objectives, the game throws a great variety at you. You will seldom ever have a "get to the end and kill a boss" mission, instead you will be presented with "save this person and evacuate," "protect this ship from marauders," and "get to enemy ship's control room and bring it back to base" missions, among many, varied others. The controls are tight, and each different mech operates in its own special way, featuring a bunch of weapons and different limitations and advantages.

While the single player campaign is awesome beyond reproach, where this game truly shines is in the two player head-to-head battles. You and a friend pick a mech from the 6 available, and then go at each other in large, split-screen arenas, complete with powerups, destructible environments, and many corners to hide behind. I remember playing this long ago with a friend when the SNES was in its hey-day, and we'd spend all night blowing each other up and having a grand old time. Nowadays is no different. I grabbed a random friend for this review and the experience was just as pure and unadulterated. It was fun straight down to the bone, distilled entertainment pumped directly into my brain, and the kind of tomfoolery a thousand modern titles promise but never deliver. If you have a friend, play this game in head-to-head with them, you won't regret it. It's the kind of two-player experience where once you get done blasting each other to smithereens, you can turn to them and say "Okay, so about moving my gun safe from the basement to the attic..." and they won't object, especially if you promise them more Metal Warriors.



Graphics/Sound
For a Super NES title, this thing does a fine job. If you shoot the environment, it shows damage. As your mech gets shot up, it displays more and more visual damage and even loses the use of weapons. The cut scenes are superb for a 16-bit system with clean, anime inspired lines and bright colors and wonderful details. The entire futuristic theme is painstakingly maintained and packaged in tightly rendered visuals. In the background of many stages, you can see capital ships engaged in battle and allies dogfighting with enemies. Each stage is littered with enemy mechs trying to take you down as well as stationary guns and traps trying to impede your progress. All are drawn in 16-bit glory, showing the mastery that artists back in the day had. Explosions are colorful, and even the little humans that litter each level have a certain personality to them, running as soon as you shoot at them, and turning around and firing at you as soon as your back is turned to deal with a bigger foe. The mechs and gun turrets are all drawn with incredible detail, and as you play and the levels get more intense, you'll be sucked in by the masterful artwork.

The sounds are also well rendered, although in my opinion, there could have been a lot more done in this regard. If I had to assign one word to the music and sound effects, I would choose "adequate." There are no voice samples, or even any discernible instruments in the musical score. Most everything is synthesized, and the most realistic sound effect is of large level props blowing up. The gunfire is typical "pew-pew-pew" fare, and the level music really takes a backseat to the action, whereupon you really won't notice it as you chop through the legions of the Dark Axis with glee. But I suppose a soundtrack that can be safely ignored is better than a soundtrack that is actively detested. So, in that regard at least, the sound of this game wins. Still, it would have been nice to have my ears treated to the same candy as my eyes and fingers, but ah well...Such is life.

Story
Metal Warriors is a space opera, much in the vein of Macross. Basically the Earth is under siege by a nasty guy and his Dark Axis forces, and only a few remaining stalwarts of the United Earth Government are at hand to fight off the evil machinations of this tyrant and his imposing army. As you can imagine, you are instrumental in this stratagem of counter-attack and you lead missions of utmost importance to weaken the enemy and strengthen your own flagging reserves. The story as a whole may be cliched, but its delivery and atmosphere allow it to transcend such oft-treaded trappings. By the second level, you'll be enjoying the missions the story requires of you, and will find yourself savoring some inner glee at being promoted through the ranks in the cut scenes as a result of your performance in the game. The story arc follows a predicable path, but if you allow yourself the suspension of disbelief, you'll have a great time filling the shoes of Lt. Stone.

 

Most levels are followed by a quick cut scene which outlines the objectives of the next mission and sometimes they have story elements sprinkled into them. Cut scene assets are reused often, but don't really seem to lose their impact, as you are always eager to see what happens next. Levels themselves may occasionally open a "comms" window with headquarters to update a mission goal or offer pertinent information, and they do so rather seamlessly and it does not break from the gameplay.

Beer
Okay, perhaps I'm stretching the definition of "beer" just a little bit with this one, but hey, I was low on cash (again) and saw this with the 9% alcohol content and figured, "What the hell, can't hurt to try something new, eh?" Well, it can hurt to try something new, and it did hurt, and I'm going to be sticking with regular beer from now on....maybe...probably not. But at the very least I won't be drinking this again. The can, which is so hip and cool because it once again abuses the entirely worn out tribal tattoo shop logo scheme, touts the contents as a "Flavored Malt Beverage" with "Caffeine, Gensing, Taurine, and artificial colors." In retrospect, I should have known better just by reading the label, but I'm stupid and curious, and so I bought it, and drank it, and I'm already regretting it. Nevermind that the FDA has an open investigation on alcoholic drinks containing caffeine and other stimulants, this drink is just downright nasty. It comes in two "flavors," red and purple. It really doesn't say on the cans what the flavor is, so I'm assuming they found out what red and purple taste like and just went with that. Apparently, the color red tastes just like gasoline, because on my very first sip, I was struck with the urge to pour this directly in the gas tank of my car. The odor is a sickly-sweet miasma, something of a cross between heavily decomposed flesh and a saliva-slathered lollipop left in the back seat on a hot summer day. The taste is also sickly sweet, but with a sinister undercurrent of pure alcohol, split with a faint beery taste that I imagine the massive amounts of sugar are supposed to hide. If you are the type of person who enjoys energy drinks, just take one of those tall cans of Rock Star, pour some rubbing alcohol in it, and you'll get a close approximation to what Joose tastes like. To be sure, the taste is one you won't soon forget.

The color is a nasty red, which I'm sure will stain anything it comes in contact with, as if it were Cherry Kool-Aid's big, ex-con brother. The carbonation is pretty consistent with soda, which means every sip will pretty much explode inside your mouth and cause your cheeks to bulge out. The sensation in the stomach is immediate, it seriously feels as though the drink goes down there and just detonates. The feeling does not pass as time goes on, but intensifies until you have no desire to do anything except sit there and examine the can for a poison control center number.

The only practical upshot to this drink is that it will get you wasted with a quickness unheard of outside of hard liquor. I downed one can in pretty short order and I can stand up and feel the wobbliness in my legs. I'm not quite three sheets to the wind, but I feel pretty damn close. This is upper Woozy area, and I'm sure if I had gone ahead and gotten the other can and drank them both, I would be in la-la-land right about now. Of course, this alcohol is reserved for those scant few individuals who want to get very drunk very quickly, have no money and no taste buds, and don't care about having a gensing, taurine, and caffeine induced heart attack. So for all three of you homeless winos who may also have internet, this drink is definitely for you...everyone else, steer very, very clear of this stuff, unless you need something to clean the corrosion off the battery terminals in your car.

The Matchup
Again, I seem to have chosen a beer/game combo at disparate ends of the enjoyment spectrum. I'm not sure if this is going to become a habit with me. While Metal Warriors is a shining example of a virtually unsung hero on the retro-gaming scene, Joose (which sounds a lot like a euphemism for some sexual activity) seems to be a shining example of what happens when two cottage industries (cheap beer and energy drinks) collide, with markedly bad results. The high from the above average alcohol content did allow me a much more colorful time with the game, although the game is already possessed of such a high merit on its own, it would be a blast with or without the effects of intoxicants. At any rate, Metal Warriors good, Joose bad. Try this game with a case of imported and some friends, and you will certainly not be disappointed.

Cheers/Game on.