First thing's first. This game is not complex, it is not deep, it does not make you think about the origin of Dark Matter, and it does not allow you to achieve nirvana.

It does, however teach you to dodge bullets at an insane speed.

In short, Metal Slug is the classic side-scrolling arcade shoot-em-up. There's you and your gun on the left side of the screen, and about six million pissed-off enemy soldiers to your right. Jump, shoot, duck, throw grenade, acquire weapon upgrade, repeat. This is the kind of game you play best while in a heightened state of awareness. I cannot emphasize that factor enough. You can only play this game if you are some sort of Force-sensitive bush pilot from Tatooine. Because when Obi-Wan tells you to duck, you don't ask questions--you duck, and you have about a third of a second to do it. Things happen fast, and you don't have time to stop and sniff the corpses.

I do have to ask...who at SNK thought it would be a good idea to map the "throw grenade" function to the "whip Wiimote around like a cat in a bear's jaws" motion? There's a B button right there, with no function on it...why didn't they use that? This game does unfortunately display the tendency of developers to overuse the Wiimote's functions in an effort to make you enjoy it. Definitely not necessary here.

It's just good, clean, mow-down-six-legions-per-minute fun, and there isn't much more to say about it...except, bring friends. This simply cannot be done with just one minion.