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Metal Slug and Contra are games about pattern memorization. You need to memorize where the enemies spawn, where they first shoot (Depending on your approach), and where the safe points are between these bullets. In the Contra games, this would seriously mean jumping over one line of bullets, in front of another, and without jumping up into a third. It would become a ridiculous web of death you'd need to navigate quickly, and, of course, one hit and it's back to the start of the level (At least).
But once you know the area, you know the patterns, and you start getting that ingrained in muscle memory, a level that would destroy you in the first couple seconds is now a walk in the park. You can effortlessly navigate all the way through, much to the astonishment of onlookers. And it feels absolutely GREAT to make that amazing leap in skill. And with games like this, when they're done well, you can actually FEEL yourself improving. You can feel things getting easier, bit by bit.
It's the same thing that makes games like Super Meat Boy fantastic- You feel yourself improve, and you improve just by playing it.
Now, take that formula, add in zombies and submarines and awesome, overpowered vehicles, and a MAMMOTH WITH A MOUNTED GUN. The game has a really great amount of variety, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that I could actually be turned into a zombie, gaining an entirely new power. I expected to just die, but the original developers thought farther than that.
So, I guess the tl;dr version would be: It's a great game due to its punishing, yet adaptable, difficulty, and its great supply of variety. And, of course, points for nostalgia. :P
But this doesn't necessarily mean it's your game. If the difficulty just makes it a rough, unpleasant journey for you, then you won't be able to relax as much and start learning the levels. If it just feels like a grind, then all that means is that this game is not for you.
I find that Metal Slug doesn't have good execution in its difficulty. It's just difficult and that's it, there's nothing artful or fun to it. You may end up feeling this way as well, even when you improve to where you can beat the game, so like you say, you'll be disappointed in the end of the game. It's very possible.
Arcade games carry a huge amount of nostalgia for people, because they include going to a place outside of one's home, often with friends, and sometimes even meeting strangers, and standing in front of a machine and playing a game with graphics capabilities far beyond that of their home video game consoles. People like being brought back to that time. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I just don't find nostalgia works on me that well. I beat Metal Slug in the arcades back in the day and I thought it was the best game ever back then too, back when I was about 14 or 15 years old. Now I play it and realize that the things I mentioned were what I liked about the game, not the gameplay itself.
Of course some people are able to like the game, and that's incredible to me and my hat is off to them. You and I just may never join those people Trixie.
Really? Cause I found Contra to be waaay harder. But maybe that's cause I was a lot younger when I played those. I dunno. lol
The levels, enemies and bosses are well-designed. The game has awesome 2D sprite-based graphics. The game is just fun, despite all of the cheap deaths. The only downside to MS3, in my opinion, is that the game is too short--it can beaten in under 1 hour. But the game is so fun that it is worth playing many times. So that you get better each time and beat the game with fewer and fewer continues.
As for the crabs, you can shoot or melee attack their bubbles. The crabs are one of the easiest enemies in the game because all you need to do is keep shooting them, and their bubbles will pop to your bullets or melee attacks!
But to claim that "it is hard to mess up on making at least a decent side-scrolling shooter, given that it isn't hard to program one" is pretty ignorant of everything else that goes into a game. This statement implies that all a game is just code- If you can make code that works, you can make a good game. It implies that all of the art assets, and animations, and sound, and level design, and story progression, and pacing, is all second to the code. This is absolutely not the case.
And even if it were the case, you are still assuming that side-scrollers are easy to program. Would you know how to even implement a basic gravity to account for jumping, or grenade arcs? Or AI rules that make for a good level of difficulty- Not too easy, and not too hard? It's easy to make dumb AI, and it's easy to make impossible-to-beat AI. But finding that balance is almost an art.
And on top of this, we're talking about an entire genre. People can add a LOT of content, and a LOT of variables, and still remain in the same genre- Look at Mercenary Kings (Seriously, it's the only other example I have in this genre. lol) It's filled with customization, and upgrades, and an almost open-world feel to it. But it's still in the same genre as Metal Slug.
As I said, it's quite the massive assumption.
As Shadowspaz has debated with you a little, the single requirement of a good side scrolling shooter is not that it is made so that the entire game can be beaten without dying. I'd wager I won't find a side scrolling game that hasn't been beaten in such a manner. It's simply not the only thing I'm basing the value of the game on, because what makes game design good is more than if the game can be completed perfectly or not, just as much as it is more than whether or not it is "hard to program one", a statement that is completely subjective to who is programming it and also completely irrelevant to the design choices made.
I understand my opinions differ with other people's, and I'm not trying to change anybody's; I'm just explaining where mine comes from. An ultimately futile effort, I'm sure, and meaningless even if I am successful, since I don't need anybody's approval to validate my stance, but there's my attempt nonetheless.
Run and gun games, as a genre, have always been somewhat difficult and skill based. Despite the fact that it's level based, Metal Slug is very much based on the original arcade mentality about players learning patterns and fostering skill.
Now Metal Slug 3 in particular is one of the better designed games. That is, the amount of "cheap shots" is fairly low. By cheap shot I specifically mean something that the player can avoid with quick reaction time if they don't know it's coming. If you're good at these types of games it's actually pretty fair. This isn't true of every Metal Slug though, MS5 in particular is full of cheap shots. The earlier games are better designed than the later entires. In particular 2/X and 3 are the best entries in the series.