Metal Storm (1991)

Beat on Normal using mostly the shield weapon. It was a great weapon for blocking enemy projectiles and for killing enemies in tricky positions, like the stationary beam emitters in level 5. It was not good for bosses, though I did finish off the 4 quadrant boss by perfectly avoiding its satellites for it to be perfectly positioned to take constant damage from my shield. It took more than half the playthrough to get used to the gravity switching and the controls to activate it. I often fumbled it or activated it when I did not want to. The key was to hold up then jump (but it was down when upside down), and to avoid jumping while shooting up. It sucked that there was no diagonal shooting but the intricacies of switching to upside down made up for it. I preferred to stay right side up whenever possible because being upside down was a mind warp, especially when combined with the vertical warping of the levels. It is not very often that I find a game that challenges my brain with entirely new concepts. The bosses were overall very well done but I was disappointed at the lack of a proper final boss. The best boss was the color changing robot because of how well platforming was incorporated into the fight. The worst boss was the 3 rotating things that had to be killed at nearly the same time because they were also the only safe platforms.

Then I played through again on Elite, this time mostly using the power beam. It was significantly more difficult and required a lot more save state scumming. There were 4 points that stood out as absolutely ridiculous and made me wonder if it was properly tested. The green clamp enemies in level 2 were extremely difficult to get past. On Normal it was simply being quick with jumps, but on Hard I needed to half jump to bait them, or combine jumping with reversing gravity in order to move fast enough. Level 3 with those enemies moving along a track was unmanageable because they took too many shots to kill. There was 1 point where I had to restart the level and get the gravity flame weapon to be invulnerable while switching gravity. Another part after that was impossible to get past until I checked a walkthrough and learned how to glitch out the enemies to create an opening to barely get past. I unfortunately did not pick up the armor power up, which was probably how I was meant to get past there. Then the miniboss in level 4 took many tries to beat. Even playing in slow motion at 30 frames per second was too fast to avoid getting hit by the enemies as they sped around faster and faster. Save state scumming did not help either, I had to perfectly jump to never get hit. Once I finally managed to survive I had 1 killed by the time they stopped moving and the remainder of the fight was easy. Most of the bosses were actually easier this time around because of using the power beam. The final boss actually had attacks this time and I lost my armor due to how unexpected it was.

Overall a fun and innovative game with good password system. I would love to see the gravity switching and upside down mechanics used in more games.

8.2/10

Run n Gun platformer with a mecha setting featuring the ability to flip gravity at will. What's more it flips it not just for you but for all the enemies. I don't know of any game that made gravity inverting this cool. It's no gimmick, the levels are designed with it in mind, and you can do it as much as you want whenever. Early on you'll probably end up getting yourself killed by causing enemies to land ontop of with your power, later on you'll be pulling all sort of trick shots and jumps relaying on it as often as you would the ability to jump.

There's also some cool power ups like the ability to turn into a flaming ball of death and descend ontop (or below depending on what you've done to gravity) of enemies killing them in a single hit, a gun that can shoot through walls or projectile-stopping barrier that you can reposition.

What keeps this from being a full 5 star game are the unassuming visuals. None of the mecha designs for you or your enemies are particularly cool and the environments are bland industrial areas. It's not bad looking just boring. The soundtrack, however, is top quality.

Of note is the second loop which is an order of magnitude harder, and the first loop is already above average difficulty by NES standards.