Video Game / Metal Wolf Chaos

"LET'S PARTYYYY!"

"It is 2004. I am taking you on a journey to 2004. Our good friends at FromSoftware released a game that, unbeknownst to them, would lay the very foundation for the modern American political landscape. This game, this motherfucking legendary piece of cold-rolled amazing, was forged in the most sacred elements of video game development: mechs, explosions and overly-dramatic voice acting. Ladies, gentlemen, holy fucking shit, may I present to you FromSoftware's 2004 masterclass in democratic mech warfare: METAL. WOLF. CHAOS."

— Nina Struthers, Devolver Digital E3 2018 Press Conference

Michael Wilson, veteran of the Arizona Insurrection and 47th President of the United States has been deposed in a military coup by his running mate, Richard Hawk. Now, he must take up the guise of Metal Wolf and take back America city by city, armed only with his Mini-Mecha and the power of burning American freedom.

Metal Wolf Chaos is a 2004 original Xbox game made by FromSoftware of Armored Core and Souls fame, which unfortunately (and weirdly) was never released outside of Japan. It is a mecha game similar to the Armored Core series, focused around the highly American pursuit of blowing stuff up, with a plot and dialog that is the epitome of Hot-Blooded American Patriotic Fervor, regardless of coming from a different country altogether. Weaponry includes machine guns, rocket launchers, and a shark gun — yes, a shark gun — while the plot takes you to shootouts in the southwest, bomb threats in Beverly Hills, mangling mechas in Manhattan, redecorating the White House with missiles, a showdown with Richard in Las Vegas, and space, assisted along the way by a resistance force skilled only in blocking tank cannons with their helicopters, and the President's slightly psychotic secretary, Jody Crawford.

Michael Wilson and his mecha made also a cameo appearance in FromSoftware's Enchanted Arms as a bonus boss which unlocks the ability to use him in battle once defeated. He also made another appearance in 3D Dot Game Heroes as the "President" model.

In 2016, publisher Devolver Digital announced their intent to localize the game overseas... which indeed came to pass at E3 2018 with their announcement and partnership with General Arcade of a remastered version, dubbed Metal Wolf Chaos XD, and was released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC through Steam and GOG.com on August 6, 2019, finally allowing international audiences to experience the patriotic insanity after 15 years of being an import-only console game. Since the remaster's announcement, Devolver has released various videos during its development, which are the E3 2018 teaser trailer, the release date trailer, a retrospective of the game's legacy, and the "Let's Party" Pre-Release trailer by Powerhouse Animations. A "Behind the Schemes" was also released featuring Devolver Digital interviewing key FromSoftware staff members behind the development of Metal Wolf Chaos.

See also Liberation Maiden for another game about a fictitious presidential figure piloting a mecha to save their country. Absolutely not to confused with nor related to the 2002 Princess Soft science fiction visual novel, Metal Wolf.

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Mr. President, believe in your own tropes:

• 0% Approval Rating: In his brief reign as President, Richard has re-established slave labor, completely militarized and fortified the country's major metropolises, flooded the city of Chicago with poison gas, installed a Wave-Motion Gun on Alcatraz Island, and terrorized New York with a giant mechanical spider. To his credit, he at least subconsciously acknowledges that everyone hates him and runs a Bathos-laced propaganda campaign to boost his approval ratings out of the .000%-range.
• A.K.A.-47: Largely averted by the lower level weapons, but played straight with the high leveled ones.
• Abnormal Ammo: Things Michael can fire from some of the unusual guns that can be unlocked includes high-speed baseballs, bouncing and exploding footballs, water bubbles, confetti, festive Japanese fireworks, dragon spirits, shark missiles, or tornadoes.
• Ace Custom: Both Michael Wilson's and Richard Hawk's mobile armor are custom, improved variants of mobile armor you can encounter as Elite Mooks in later levels. Richard also has a line of custom-made weapons, which are recognizable with the "RH" suffix and usually the highest-tier weapon you can unlock in each category.
• Achievement Mockery: There's quite a few achievements in the XD remaster for subpar performance and questionable actions.
  • This is Metal Wolf: Die for the first time.
  • Fail Better: Fail the same mission ten times.
  • Deserter: Leave the battlefield ten times.
  • Hostage Down!: Lose ten POWs.
  • Blindspot: Get damaged by a mine or a Kamikaze thirty times.
  • You will never be forgiven: Fail to save the White House.
  • Fathers and Sons: Destroy father's statue.^* Fathers and Sons XD is unlocked for destroying it a second time at the Fight House.
• Achievement System: The XD version features 47 achievements the player can accomplish. These achievements include "Clear X stage", "Rescue 5 musicians", "Take damage from landmines or kamakazes", or "Unlock every weapon in the game".
• Action Bomb: The appropriately named Kamakazes, small drones armed with explosives and charges at the player within range to suicide bomb them. The M939 "TROT" trucks, military trucks in the Beverly Hills level loaded with bombs, will also try to ram into the player and explode on contact.
• Action Politician: Michael, probably THE most badass president ever (fictional or otherwise). And if Ninja Blade is any indication, he got it from his dad.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: The Warner battle tank in Liberty Island, which has Michael cornered on the Brooklyn Bridge between it and its approach towards the Statue of Liberty which is where Jody and Michael's co-workers are being captive.
• Affectionate Parody: Specifically of FromSoftware}}'s other series, Armored Core, but also of mecha shows, American action movies, and politics in general. Some people claim it's satire, but it's much too cheerful about everything to count as that. Specifically, it seems like a parody of movies with Action Presidents such as Independence Day or Air Force One.
• Alliterative Name: One of Michael Wilson's former comrades from from the Arizona Insurrection is named Paul Payton.
• Alphabet News Network: DNN.
• American Robot: Exemplifies this in spirit with the titular Metal Wolf, a man-operated mech whose pilot is a Hot-Blooded President of the United States.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Alternative suits for Metal Wolf by clearing stages in Hell mode, some of which take the Patriotic Fervor to extreme levels (e.g. American Flag scheme).
• Anti-Frustration Features: Should you accidentally kill any POWs, fail rescue the ones in time-bomb cages before they explode, or miss any POWs, you can revisit the stage later and rescue them again.
• Armies Are Evil: Though they are always referred to as the "coup d'etat forces", most of the entire United States Military seems to be in on the coup — they also have a nasty habit of making POWs out of random civilians.
• Art Attacker: There are small subset of weapons with a "PA" suffix that fire paintballs instead of live ammo but provide special effects when wielding them. The M29/PA handgun and M4A1/PA assault rifle increases the Burst Gauge's fill rate (the latter to a lesser degree), while the DE91/PA handgun increases item drop rate chances from defeated enemies.
• Artificial Stupidity: During the battle in Las Vegas casino, Richard's A.I. can't discern between different heights, leading it to attack space under the balconies, if protagonist stands on one of them.
• Attack Drone: The GL95/AA grenade launcher shoots out a small drone in the air that sprays out bullets for a couple of seconds before exploding.
• Auto-Save: The XD remaster adds an auto-save feature to save player progress in between stages.
• Battle Cry: Michael's "Owkay... LET'S PARTYYYYY!!!"
• Behind the Black: Some of the hidden collectibles are hiding behind the player's starting point or off from their line of vision, while some others are perched away in obtuse places that can easily be missed.
• Beard of Evil: See Richard Hawk is the game's central antagonist and sports a goatee as seen here◊.
• BFG: Many of the guns used by Metal Wolf are as long as it is tall. Enemies also carry their share of big guns.
  • The kings of those, however, are railguns, sporting the meanest punch amongst most weapons, at the price of long charge-up time to fire the more powerful shot.
  • It should also be noted that a good chunk of the weapons are regular firearms that have been upscaled for use with Metal Wolf.
• BFS: The Moonlight Sword, a secret bazooka-type weapon that fires a devastating magical sword beam with lighting following its path, similarly to its magic attack from the first (and Japan-only) King's Field.
• Black Comedy: The entirety of the game's humor hinges on this, from the super over-the-top Eagleland parody of the United States, the barrage of one-liners from Jody in how gleeful and optimistic she is over the mass carnage and elimination of traitors, and things like Richard's extraordinarily evil means of killing every single person that resists him out of cruel-yet-hilarious spite.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Some of the written script has "Bowforce" (meant to be BOFORS), "Mobile Armor Model Shack" (meant to be Shaq, referring to Shaquille Neville who piloted the aforementioned mobile armor), and the naming can't decide whether a referenced-only character is named "Money Money Gold" or "Manny Manny Gold".
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: One of the last secret handguns in the game is the GRE-RH, a golden revolver used by Richard Hawk that sets enemies on fire, but is also weaker than the most of the M45 handguns or the RAY-G ray gun.
• Blow You Away: The TLT750 "TWISTER", a unique Flamethrower weapon that can create powerful tornadoes that shred apart foes instead of shooting a stream of fire.
• Card-Carrying Villain: We never hear any of Richard's motivations beyond some incomprehensible propaganda near the beginning. He just hates freedom for some reason.
  • We are told near the end that Richard is doing this because he believes America has become corrupt and lazy, possibly due to too much freedom, and he intends to create a stronger nation by culling the weak...or so we think. For all we know, he's merely using this as a testing bed for social engineering when Pax Economia comes.
  • In the final battle, he also shows his jealousy towards Michael getting a Medal of Honor and not him.
• Cartoon Bomb: The cannonball shots from the Taihou bazooka resemble this and have a skull and crossbones on it.
• The Cameo: Michael and his mecha make an appearance as a bonus boss in Enchanted Arms, an RPG game also by FromSoftware, however his mecha's name was dubbed "Executor" in that game. Defeating him unlocks him as a recruitable Golem that also uses some of his catchphrases from Metal Wolf Chaos during attacks. He would also make another guest appearance in 3D Dot Game Heroes.
• Catchphrase: No less than six — "Believe in your own justice," for the game as a whole, "Because, yes! The pen is still mightier than the sword!" for Peter MacDonald, "I, Richard Hawk," for, well, Richard Hawk, "Because I am the President of the United States!" for Michael, "The password is ______" for the Government Policy Promotion Department and "That's an ironclad battle tactic!" for the Resistance Commander. No, really.
  • Also, "HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW!?!" for Michael.
  • "Whatever!"
• Charged Attack: How the Railgun-type weapons works. You can fire a single energy shot, or hold down the fire button and charge up more power into your shot at the expense of your Boost Meter.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Should you lose at any point during a stage, you'll be booted back to the beginning of the stage if you decide to continue as well as any collectibles will be forfeit and found must be re-collected again.
• Chekhov's Gun: Remember this spaceplane launch facility, which you took down along with Olajiwon heavy super-assault helicopter? That's from where Richard moved resources to the USA's space colony, which is set for the final level in the game.
• Chest Blaster: Richard Hawk gets one as his answer to Michael's Macross Missile Massacre.
  Richard: "Eat my flame of justice!" [Unleashes a barrage of lasers from his mobile armor's chest cannon]
• Chicken Walker: The pilotable mobile armors used by Michael Wilson (which is a given for Metal Wolf's motif), Richard Hawk, and the president's former comrades from the Arizona Insurrection each have reversed leg joints.
• Continuing is Painful: On top of being forced to start a stage over for failing, you also lose whatever collectible items/weapons you found and POWs you may have rescued during the stage and have to find them all over again until you succeed with them in tow.
• Crate Expectations: Since the Metal Wolf armor is so large, shipping containers serve the role usually taken by crates in shooting games. They can contain funds, unique weapons, temporary powerups, or Energy Pods.
• Curse Cut Short: Michael's commentary on Richard's Spider Tank.
  Michael: "You are a sick—"
  Richard: "Take a bite from its super energy wave phaser!"
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In one of the cutscenes, Richard, standing on top of the helicopter, uses two MML-RH multi-missile launchers simultaneously and without any recoil kickback. In the game itself, MML-RH is a two-handed weapon and has a recoil so powerful it can easily push the user several meters back. Justified, since this cutscene shows a DNN propaganda video.
• Cutting the Knot: Possible in gameplay when enemies are standing on destructible objects. The player can shoot out the ground they are standing on, which is typically less durable than the enemies, and let them fall to their deaths.
• Cyber Cyclops: Both Michael's and Richard's Mobile Armors seem to sport a single red eye.^*However, upon closer examination, Michael's armor has two more cameras on the "cheeks" and Richard's armor has four smaller cameras on the head itself and possibly six more cameras in the shoulder pylons.
• Damage Over Time: Weapons with incendiary ammo (often ones with the "HE" suffix) and most of the Flamethrowers in the game can set enemies and structures on fire, causing them to take damage over time until the fire is put out. Enemies can also do this to Metal Wolf as well with their own fire-based weapons.
• Deadly Gas: Richard set up poison gas dispensers all over Chicago, so he could blame the attack on Metal Wolf.
• Deadpan Snarker: Jody sometimes adds deadpan observations in certain situations of Michael's missions.
  [U.S. Army soldiers armed with rocket launchers storms the underground Air Force One hanger]
  Jody: "Well lookie here... more 'guests'. Well, I guess they won't be voting for you next term."
• Deflector Shields: Equipped on the giant spider-bot in New York.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Richard just wants to be president, period, and doesn't care how much the nation suffers under his rule.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Metal Wolf Chaos's gameplay revels in destructibility. Nearly every inanimate object in the game, ranging from barrels, crates, fences, trees, concrete walls, street signs, lamp posts, parked vehicles, barricades, power generators, garage doors, and even shrubbery can be demolished by Metal Wolf's weapons, charging into them, or air stomping them to oblivion. Even your secondary end-stage rankings grades you based on how much property damage you've done and how much money the damage was worth.
• Die Laughing: Richard Hawk goes out with a big laugh as he and his mobile armor incinerates during atmospheric re-entry at the game's climax.
• Difficulty Levels: Upon clearing the game and resuming from the cleared game save file, you can access two more difficulty levels: Fever!, which is the same as the Normal mode but with UNLIMITED AMMO, and Hell mode, which makes the enemies and bosses deal 50% more damage and have 50% more health.
• Dissimile:
  Richard: "What do you think of my cute lil' pet? Thanks to him, the people of New York City are right now festively... uh... Running around and trying to escape! Uh, it's like a big ol' carnival, it's like Mardi Gras, in New York or something, heh heh heh..."
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Government Policy Promotion Department's final broadcast announces that the following are subject to arrest and execution — Insurgents, Metal Wolf sympathizers, their families, their friends and acquaintances, anyone who has ever attended any form of school with them and any co-workers.
• Double Unlock: Unlocking new weapons from the lab first requires spending money earned from clearing stages to advancing your weapon's development level, then developing those weapons by spending both money and rare metals.
• Dual Boss: Try Triple Boss in the Phoenix stage as you take on three Michael's former comrades manning Mobile Armors as they hold a sneaky shootout for you in a Wild West-themed locale. You also a fight a dual boss against Castina and Dorsey in Las Vegas.
• Eagleland: This game is drowning in it, and it shows: 1up has labeled this as the Number 1 Most Insanely Patriotic Game. And Michael Wilson is the Number 1 President.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Dossier on the Ultimate Weapon states, that the megamissile it carries as the last resort has a payload equivalent of "30,000 times Earth's entire nuclear stockpile - enough godlike power to shatter the planet".
• Easter Egg: If you walk around on top of the space colony, when the Ultimate Weapon prepares to fire the nuclear missile at the USA, you can see "Metal Wolf Chaos" written on colony's glass roof.
• Electricity Knocks You Out: Weapons with the "SB" (Stun Bullet) suffix use a special high voltage ammo that paralyzes some enemies to a standstill. Some enemies and bosses such as Randy's mobile armor are also armed with similar high voltage weapons to paralyze Metal Wolf.
• Elevator Action Sequence: The finale, which has you fighting off enemy Mobile Armors on and off on a Space Elevator.
• Elite Mooks: The Cyborg enemies, unmanned Mobile Armor troopers that are capable of taking a lot of punishment from live ammo unlike standard infantry units, and wield higher powered weapons.
• Energy Weapon: Weapons in the game use one of two ammo types, live ammo or energy ammo, with the latter requiring a certain portion of the Boost meter to fire but are often more effective against heavily armored enemies or structures than ones with live ammo outside of the hard hitting ones.
• Endgame+: After clearing the game, players can not only revisit previously cleared levels, but can play the two difficulty options (Fever! and Hell) to uncover the game's Post-End Game Content.
• Engrish: Bizarre version. The voice-acting is done by native English speakers, but the dialogue is incredibly cheesy. Having tons of phrases clearly translated from Japanese Stock Phrases, which few Americans would use in actual conversation, is a big factor.
• Equipment-Based Progression: In Metal Wolf Chaos, players become stronger through investing and then developing higher-powered weapons for their arsenal, starting from old-fashioned or standard military-issue firearms to advanced high-tech ones. However in some instances it is mandatory for the player to upgrade their weapons not only because what they need to destroy will shake off most of the damage, but in situations where the player is on a time limit (e.g. Chicago, Liberty Island), they wouldn't be able to put out enough damage to destroy their targets in time or simply run out of ammo, especially in Hell mode. Players can also upgrade Metal Wolf's Shield, Boost, and Burst Meters by collecting Energy Pods hidden throughout the stages.
• Everything Breaks: Virtually every environmental object and some footholds in any given stage can be destroyed by the player or enemies, and unlocking a couple of secret weapons demands that you S-Rank the amount of property and financial damage you do throughout the course of the game.
• Evil Chancellor: Richard demonstrates once again that "Vice President of the United States" is a modern way to say "Grand Vizier."
• Evil Laugh: Richard lets one loose almost every time he and Michael run into each other.
• Evil Is Hammy: Richard. He has some restraint when speaking in public, but when he interacts with Michael he has absolutely no restraint, breaking into an Evil Laugh and overacting like an 80's cartoon villain.
• Exploding Barrels: Red fuel drums with a flammable sign can be shot down and cause large explosions, harming anything caught in the blast and can be effective to clear out large number of enemies or obstacles.
• Faux Affably Evil: Richard talks to Michael as if they were old friends, despite having nothing but envy and contempt for the latter.
• Fictional Counterpart: DNN appears to be a composite of CNN (with its name) and Fox News (with its approach to journalism that can border on being propaganda).
• Fighting Your Friend: Michael ends up fighting a lot of his old friends from the army. They don't come out well.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Flamethrower-type weapons, in a nutshell. These weapons however require both hands to operate and consume Boost Meter along with their own fuel, but can roast many enemies to cinders, especially heavily armored ones and some live ammo-resistant towers.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Metal Wolf can bump off infantry soldiers by boosting into them.
• For the Evulz: There is no political or ideologically charged motivation for any and all heinous deeds committed by Richard during his short tenure as the acting president.
• Friendly Fireproof: Zig-zagged with POWs. If you destroy their cages with non-explosive weapons or by ramming them, none of the prisoners will even be scratched, no matter how much dakka will you pump out. If you try to do it with explosives or Shockwave Stomp, however, everyone in the cage will die. Thankfully, there are warnings about that written on the cages.
• Game-Over Man: Whenever Michel's mecha has been beaten or if he deserts the battlefield, players are greeted with Jody or another character involved with the mission to cry out the President's name or call him out for failing/abandonment before proceeding into the Game Over screen.
• Gameplay Grading: You are graded in four criteria upon clearing a stage: K.O. Points (how many enemies you defeated), Damage (how much damage you've taken), Rush Combo Points (scoring "Nice!" and "Cool!" kills), and Chain Combo Points (how much combos you were able to rack up), which affects how much funds and rare metals you receive after the stage. There are also secondary grading criteria that cover other areas such clear time, property damage, ammo used, and so forth.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The aptly-named Gas Mask Soldier enemies, whom wield M4A1 assault rifles and MK grenade launchers.
• Gatling Good: The later end of the Machine Gun category of weapons are made up of miniguns, with later variants that can fire off even more bullets on their own.
• The Goomba: Some of the Soldier enemy types, some of which often carry weapons that hardly pose a threat to Metal Wolf and can easily be gunned or stomped down.
• Goomba Stomp: Surprisingly effective against buildings and stationary structures from a high altitude.
• Gratuitous English:
  • While most of the English is quite good, the song titles on the soundtrack are just strange. "The President Spirit"? "Moduration City"? "Assign Monk"? "Dept Blue"? Yeah...
  • There are a few mistakes outside song titles, however. "Aim for the caterpillar — kill the legs first. That's an iron-clad battle tactic" indeed.
• Ground Pound: Players can perform one by pressing the Y/Triangle or X/Square button depending the controller layout while airborne, which can deal damage to anything unfortunate enough to be underneath Metal Wolf. After obtaining enough Energy Pods, Metal Wolf's air stomps gain an eletro-magnetic field upon impact.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Many of the game's items and POWs are usually hidden in straightforward locations, however, there are a couple of these collectibles that are very well hidden, often being in places many wouldn't suspect to look at.
  • Some of the secret unlockable weapons have no hints on how to unlock them, with some of them requiring performing certain out of the way feats such as using little ammo, intercepting a lot missiles, or scoring lots of Rush Combo kills.
• Guns Akimbo: Metal Wolf can duel-wield many one-handed weapons with both hands, including weapons that would require two hands by humans such as shotguns, assault rifles, and miniguns. The Railguns, Flamethrowers, Sniper Cannons, and Multi-Missile Launchers however require the use of both hands to wield.
• Gun Porn: Boy howdy does this game give you lots of guns to play around with in your mission to liberate America.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Tons of it between Michael and the many enemies from the coup de'tat forces.
• Hard Mode Perks: Hell mode makes the enemies even stronger, but gives opportunities to uncover hidden unlockables that weren't in the Normal mode, and clearing a stage for the first time rewards you with a new suit for Metal Wolf.
• Harmless Freezing: The Freezethrower, WRE-RH, and SHARK Launcher can freeze some enemies in place.
• Heart Container: Energy Pods, which will increase Metal Wolf's maximum Shield, Boost, and Burst Meters for every five the player picks up. The Energy Pods can be found hidden in stages or from rescuing POWs.
• Heel–Face Turn: Peter MacDonald spends most of the game as a reporter on Richard's side, until he sees Michael stop a giant tank from destroying the Statue of Liberty. Then he proceeds to claim that he was always a supporter of Michael.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Jody. She serves as Michael's Mission Control and secretary, but her manner of speaking is eerily detached from the stakes more reminiscent of a game show host's assistant, and she gets way too gleeful about massacring "traitors" (which include the U.S. Military who is Just Following Orders) and doesn't seem to mind about wrecking the country in the process. Her lines when fighting bosses are borderline nuts, to the point that Michael, for all his own patriotic quirks, is much more human than she is.
• Homing Projectile: Missile Launchers and Multi-Missile Launchers can lock-onto an enemy (or enemies with the latter) and track them down once fired. The DRG "DRAGON" Railgun can also home-in onto enemies when charged. Some enemy mechs and military vehicles also use homing missiles against Metal Wolf, which can be shot from the air by shooting at them.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Michael still thinks there's some good left in Richard despite how the latter tried to glass America. Richard just laughs at him for it in the ending.
• Hot-Blooded: Super robot-levels of it — you have President Michael who is essentially Kamina who runs the United States, and Richard Hawk is essentially a Large Ham incarnate.
• Humongous Mecha: While most of them are Mini-Mecha, the game doesn't shy away from these in the least.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Metal Wolf carries a downright silly number of guns, from small arms (including handguns) to heavier ones.
• Immoral Journalist: Peter MacDonald, an antagonist releasing propaganda for Richard.
• Incoming Ham: Every single time Richard shows up.
• Invulnerable Attack: The Blaze Attack not only allows you to unload a barrage of every weapon stored in Metal Wolf's backpack without using ammo, but you're also immune to enemy fire while the attack is active.
• Joke Weapon: The game's unusual weapons which fire strange ammunition that would otherwise be impossible in real-life. Many of these weapons are weaker than most guns but have some bonus effect to them (e.g. increased item drop rate, increase Burst charge rate) to compensate.
• Landmarking the Hidden Base: The Air Force One is housed in an underground hangar beneath the White House, and the runway is beneath the Reflecting Pool, which splits apart when the plane needs to take off.
• Large Ham: Michael and Richard Chew the Scenery: Though, here, it's not so much as chewing as stuff starts spontaneously exploding around them.
• Laughably Evil: Richard Hawk constantly spews cheesy lines with a smug and sarcastic tone, all while being a sociopathic dictator.
• Lethal Joke Item: Some of the joke weapons, such as the bubble blower, surprisingly have a high damage rating and for the bubble blower, it's classified as small arms, so it can be used equally to lay waste upon enemies and also freeing hostages.
• Lighter and Softer: Considerably, compared to practically every Armored Core title barring Armored Core: Formula Front and FromSoftware's collabrative works on Another Century's Episode.
• Life Meter: The Shield Meter, indicated by green power units with secondary green meter underneath. Players start with 6 Shield Units a the beginning of the game, each worth 1,000 HP each, but can increase it through picking up Energy Pods hidden throughout each stage or rescuing POWs. The green meter can recover over time if players can avoid damage, but it will not recover any lost units of shield.
• Limit Break: The Blaze Attack, complete with Hot-Blooded shouting and More Dakka by unloading every weapon you have on your mech!
  HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?!? [unloads every weapon in his backpacks]
• Ludicrous Precision: Jody flat-out guesses it will take the Alcatraz Cannon five minutes to recharge. This turns out to be accurate to the nearest hundredth of a second.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Your Multimissile Launchers, which can fire a barrage of missiles that can be an effective crowd control weapon or deal high damage to a single locked-on target. Some of your enemies and later bosses are no slouches in this department with their own swarming missile attacks either.
• Made of Explodium: Every machine you fight in the game explodes when defeated.
• Magnetic Weapons: The Railgun-type weapons, which require high amounts of energy and have a limited starting ammo capacity, but a well-placed charged shot can make short work of anything it shoots down.
• Man on Fire: Flamethrowers and certain other weapons that use incendiary ammo can set enemies and structures on fire. Enemies or mounted flamethrowers can also do this to Metal Wolf.
• Mana Meter: The Burst Meter, indicated by the circular blue gauge. It fills up as Michael defeats enemies or picking up the Burst Unit pick-ups, and once the meter is full, players can unleash the Blaze Attack to assault enemies by unloading every weapon in front of Metal Wolf.
• Marked Bullet: Richard's nuclear missile on the space colony is inscribed with the words "Merry Christmas" in cursive, although the story isn't set around the holiday.
• A Mech by Any Other Name: The pilotable mech suits in this game are referred to as "mobile armors", or "MAs" for short.
• Meta Mecha: Richard Hawk's quadrupedal mecha in the final battle.
• Meta Multiplayer: Online leaderboards were added for the XD remaster, which allows players to compete on who can rack up the highest points in a stage.
• Mini-Mecha: Metal Wolf and other mobile armors are only double the size of human infantry.
• Mirror Boss: Richard Hawk, in the penultimate level.
• Mission Control: Jody feeds the President with information and banter.
• Mirrored Confrontation Shot: In nearly every cutscene where Michael and Richard duke it out, there will be a shot of their suits striking each other in the same pose.
• Monster Compendium: The game features a compendium of enemies and bosses you've encountered throughout the game along with some additional information about them.
• Monumental Damage:
  • Michael's very first action in the game is blowing up a Metal Wolf-sized hole on the White House's facade, with the explosion presumably ruining the interior as well. Later, the Air Force One grazes and destroys the roof of Lincoln Memorial as it's taking off from the secret base under the Reflecting Pool.
  • Richard tries to do this to the Statue of Liberty. And while it's more of a Weaponized Landmark, Jody and Michael consider the Fight House to be this.
• Mook Maker: Some military vehicles, such as the M939 Cargo Trucks and the transport helicopters in the White House stage, will dispatch an endless supply of infantry soldiers or autonomous mechs like the Kamakazes until they're destroyed.
• More Dakka: No one can EVER have enuff dakka, but between this and all his Macross Missile Massacre goodness, Metal Wolf sure does make a mighty effort towards having almost enough. An extra mode after beating the game gives you unlimited ammo. Read that again: UNLIMITED. AMMO.
• Multi-Platform: The original game was an Xbox-exclusive title, however, the XD remaster is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and GOG.com.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: A number of mini-bosses were Wilson's comrades in the Insurrection, who refuse to betray Richard Hawk despite sympathizing with Michael's cause.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • Losing to Richard in the final level will result in him humiliating you when you are dying. "Way to go, Meester President!"
  • Additionally, any level with some sort of a Timed Mission has one such, if you fail to finish it in time. The Alcatraz Cannon willing to shoot San Francisco, the Warner will ram the Statue of Liberty, the poison gases flooding Chicago killing innocent civilians and Michael being blamed for it, and so on.
• Noodle Incident: While it's hinted at that Michael's presidency, Richard's evilness, and nearly every involved party's past is connected to a conflict called the Arizona Conflict or the Arizona Insurrection, we are never shown or told about what exactly happened there. All we are told (as an aside, no less) is that Michael received a Congressional Medal of Honor during that conflict. If Armored Core is any indication, Arizona attempted to secede from the Union only to be met with the super-weapons of the U.S., which included Michael's mobile armor.
• No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Completely averted for in-engine. Cutscenes display Michael's suit with the skin and weapons equipped by the player. Pre-rendered FMVs however are played straight.
• No Name Given: None of the piloted mecha are actually given names. The boss fight health bars describes them as "Mobile Armor" for whoever their pilot is. Even the player's machine is ambiguous, with "Metal Wolf" being seemingly the name the media gives Michael himself after Richard's propaganda campaign gets in gear.
• Not Quite Flight: Players can use Metal Wolf's boosters to hover or dash in mid-air for as long as their Boost or Shield Meter can last.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Richard Hawk claims he's trying to improve America by culling the weak and lazy. Then he tries to nuke the entire planet out of spite for his rival, showing that he doesn't care about anything except his own power.
• Obviously Evil: When your name is Richard Hawk and you look like this◊, you're not just Made of Evil, you're "Special Order" Evil.
• One-Liner: Too many to count. Too ludicrous to replicate here.
• Operation: [Blank]: Jody gives a callname for every mission, accompanied by a drumroll. They can be rather odd, like "Operation Bring Fashion Back to the Street" in Beverly Hills.
• Oppressive States of America: Richard enacts all kinds of horrible policies, like selling his own citizens as slaves, testing weapons on civilians, enacting martial law to take down that heinous terrorist, and building an orbital nuke to fire at the country in case he loses. Averted when Michael defeats him and takes back the White House.
• Our Presidents Are Different: Michael is President Action distilled to its raw form and equipped with a Mini-Mecha, while Richard is a straight-up President Evil.
• Palette Swap:
  • Many of the guns in the game and their variants have different colorizations and patterns to differentiate them depending on their specialty. For example, most energy-based variants uses a silver color scheme, strafing-type variants uses military camouflage, and heat ammo variants uses an orange and black color scheme.
  • By completing a mission in Hell mode for the first, players are rewarded with a palette swap for Metal Wolf that changes its appearance, which includes painting it in the style of the American flag, military camouflage, a New York mobster, festive Chinese New Year colors, and a blue-and-white striped prisoner.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: The Taihou cannons fire cannonballs that slowly fall on the ground compared to the rest of the bazooka-type weapons.
• Patriotic Fervor: Only because it's a Japanese video game, it's more like Hot-Blooded translated into the world of politics.
• Pop the Tires: Resistance Commander tells you to aim for the caterpillar of the giant tank, called Warner, in order to slow the machine down and give you more time to destroy it before it reaches the Statue of Liberty.
• Post-End Game Content: To unlock the alternate skins for Metal Wolf, players must clear the stages again in Hell mode. Many other secret weapons can only be unlocked by beating the game.
• Power-Up: Found in certain containers or dropped by enemies, players can pick power-ups such as Shield Units to recover lost Shield Meter, Burst Units to fill the Burst Meter, Offense and Defense Augments that temporarily boosts attack and defense power respectively, ammo for certain types of weapons, and bonus money and rare metal pick-ups.
• Propaganda Machine: This trope has been an announcement from the Government Policy Promotion Department, where our motto, "Justice over Theory," is your motto.
• Protection Mission: The Statue of Liberty and White House missions require the player to win without letting either structure's health bar get emptied.
• Psycho Supporter: While Jody doesn't really do anything outside her support role, her dialogue reaches Ax-Crazy levels with the way she cheers on your carnage during boss fights, and shows a love for violence even Michael doesn't share. Then there's her alien-themed rendition of "Ten Little Indians".
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "I! RICHARD HAWK! WILL UPHOLD! AMERICAN! JUSTICE! WITHOUT! FAIL!"
• Purple Is Powerful: The GOG.com pre-order skin, Stargaze, which paints Metal Wolf in a deep purple color with stars resembling a galaxy.
• Rank Inflation:
  • Your end-stage rankings are graded based on your performance, with each criteria being given a letter rank. From worst to best: E, D, C, B, A, and S.
  • Many of your weapons' stats are graded based on a letter grade, between E through S, however some stats such as Firepower or Starting Capacity have a simple number figure.
• Rage Helm: Metal Wolf itself has antennae and markings that make its head resemble a heavily stylized wolf's head.
• Rated M for Manly: President Michael Wilson must reclaim America using his All-American Mini-Mecha "Metal Wolf", a ton of guns, and HIS BURNING LOVE OF FREEDOM AND JUSTICE!
• Ray Gun: A very retro-looking one, used by Greys. After all Greys are captured, it becomes possible to develop those ray guns for Metal Wolf's usage as a RAYG Pistol-type weapon.
• Red Is Violent:
  • Paul's mobile armor is painted in red-and-black camouflage and is outfitted with incendiary missiles that can set Michael's mobile armor on fire according to his dossier.
  • The unlockable suit for clearing the Chicago stage on Hell mode is named Red Eye, which paints Metal Wolf primarily in red with some orange/yellow accents.
• Redshirt Army: The Resistance is mostly useless, as It's Up to You.
• Refuge in Audacity: And how!
  • It's so over-the-top that it's the more subdued moments that really jump out at you.
  • The game starts with the President in a Mini-Mecha bursting out of the White House with a extremely Engrishy "LET'S PARRRTYYYYYYYYY!" and goes up from there.
• Remaster: The XD remaster for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 features widescreen presentation, updated graphics, and a new autosave function in addition to the game's manual saves, but plays faithfully to the original Xbox experience.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Zig-zagged. Some of your starting weapons are old-fashioned revolvers, however they are later outclassed by newer modern standard-issue handguns further into the weapons development lab, but later players can develop a newer set of revolvers that are some of the most powerful of the Handgun-type weapons.
• Rewarding Vandalism: The game justifies Michel Wilson going around causing thousands to millions of dollars worth of damage in a miniature mech as "liberating America" from Richard Hawk's corruption on the country, and players are also graded based on the amount of destruction caused and how much the damages are worth at the end of each stage. Two of the secret weapons are also unlocked for causing a ton of financial and property damage.
• Rocket Punch: The President's mecha is equipped with one of these.
• Rule of Cool: Everything that Michael does.
• Save the Villain: In the ending, Michael tries and fails to save Richard from getting killed in the atmosphere while claiming that the latter must love America deep down. Richard just mocks his former ally's sense of justice.
• Say My Name: "MICHAEL!!!" "RICHAAAAAAAAARD!!!"
• Scoring Points: The game features a scoring system for each stage but it is hidden on the HUD by default. Players can rack up President Points by defeating enemies, but extra points can be earned by scoring Chain Combos and Rush Combos.
• Score Screen: The end stage results gives bonus points based on their K.O. Points, any damage sustained, highest Chain Combos and Rush Combos, which are tallied into their total score along with a grade based on their performance. There is also a second page where players are graded based on Clear Time, Property Damage (based on the general destruction of the level), Accuracy, Ammo Consumed, Stomp Kills (if any), Projectiles Destroyed, and Financial Damage (based on how much the destruction was worth). After beating the game for the first time, an extra Grey Kill Time time is added and players are graded based on how quickly they took down a Grey if they engaged in fighting it.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: The game's cover art, featuring Metal Wolf pointing a handgun at the viewer/player.
• Shared Universe: With Ninja Blade, another game made by FromSoftware. According to the manual, Special Agent Michael Wilson is none other than the protagonist's father (which makes him President Michael Wilson Jr.).
• Stealthy Mook:
  • Shaq's, Paul's, and Randy's mobile armor use a special camouflage to bend in the environments while using a radar jammer to prevent them from being detected... until Michael destroys the jammer and towers supplying power to their camouflage.
  • The Stealth Soldiers seen late in the game are special infantry soldiers whom wear special stealth uniforms that makes them harder to see, but can be easily dispatched like any other foot soldier.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: The aptly-named Shield Soldiers, whom can withstand frontal attacks and even Metal Wolf's air stomps with their shield.
• Shield Surf: Michael does this when escaping from the space colony.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The shotgun class of weapons, many of which are lacking in range with a rank of E or D in range, but their spread can deal a decent amount of damage to enemies up close and can help intercept oncoming missile attacks.
• Shout-Out:
  • All the boss mecha in the game, Richard's mobile armor notwithstanding, are named after important U.S. athletes:
    • The very first mecha you fight, the Dorsey tank, is named after NFL quarterback and current Buffalo Bills coach Ken Dorsey, whose career spanned the San Francisco 49ers, the Cleveland Browns, and the Toronto Argonauts, with a remarkable 28 touchdowns and 12 interceptions total, and several records for the University of Miami's book.
    • The massive assault helicopter/floating fortress is named Olajiwon, after Hakeem Olajuwon, the star of the Houston Rockets during the 90's who led the team to winning back-to-back world championships. The physical design of the Olajuwon bears a striking resemblance to the Variblune from Himitsu Sentai Gorenger.
    • Likewise, the giant spider mech, Casparaitis, is named after former NHL left defense Darius Kasparaitis, who played for four different teams in his tenure, and was famous for his aggressive playstyle, knocking Eric Lindros out for 18 games while on the Pittsburgh Penguins, and represented Russia in the 2006 Winter Olympics.
  • In the first stage, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool splits in the middle so the Air Force One takes off from under it, just like in Mazinger Z.
  • The TLT750 "TWISTER" is a weapon that blows deadly tornadoes, and its weapon description mentions it was manufactured in a Kansas-based weapons facility.
  • The final assault rifle in the game, the BR "BEAM RIFLE", resembles one that was used by the RX-78-2 Gundam.
  • The achievements/trophies in the XD remaster have some on their icons or name. One achievement is called "One Punch Wolf". Another is called "Medal of Honor" and features an icon of a bald eagle wearing a familiar pair of sunglasses. Another is named "Motivated". There's also one named "This is Metal Wolf".
• Sky Surfing: More like atmospheric re-entry surfing.
• The Social Darwinist: Richard claims his actions are for the sake of culling America's weak.
• The Sociopath: Richard Hawk, though he is more a cartoonish parody of the sociopathic variety of villains.
• Sore Loser: You can't get much sorer than nuking the country because the rightful president took it back from you. Additional points for doing it with a planet-buster megamissile..
• Spider Tank: In several variations:
  • Small kamikaze drones, which will jump onto you and blow up as soon as they get close enought to you.
  • Slightly bigger spider-like robots, which can fire machine gun on the move or turn into a stationary cannon turret.
  • A gigantic autonomous weapon under the name "Casparaitis", which was deployed by Richard for field test in New York and treats citizens of it as guinea pigs. It's intended to be a Hopeless Boss Fight until some targets are destroyed to disable its Deflector Shields and a gun that can kill the player in seconds.
  • The Ultimate Weapon, upon receiving enough damage, switches from tank mode into a spider-like walker. It has both Deflector Shields and several miniaturized wave cannons, in addition to launching craploads of missiles. And this time, there are no targets to be destroyed to disable the shields and guns of it.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To the Armored Core series, which features a much more serious, futuristic, and sometimes post-apocalyptic real robot storylines throughout the series, in-depth mecha customization features, mechs that handle like walking tanks, missions that tasks players to perform various objectives while being mindful of their resources, and a grading system where your performance in battle, whether its victory or failure, can impact your income from completing missions. Metal Wolf Chaos, on the other hand, features a story that is an over-the-top parody of American politics bordering on the super robot genre, stripping down the customization features to simply unlocking and advancing weapons development (and unlockable palette swaps post-game), mechs having the mobility of a beefed-up Powered Armor, arcade-styled gameplay that encourages players to cause as much destruction as possible, and lacks any long-term penalties for failure.
• Sprint Meter: The Boost Meter, represented by the yellow power meter. It drains as players use Metal Wolf's for dashing or hovering, but will steadily consume the Boost Meter and eventually burn into the Shield Meter if they continue to use the boosters after depleting the former, though it stops draining if the Shield Meter is nearly burnt out. Weapons that uses energy rounds, as well as certain weapon types such Flamethrowers and Railguns, also require energy from the Boost Meter.
• Strawman News Media: DNN is not actual concerned with real journalism and instead acts entirely as Richard's propaganda mouthpiece.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Almost everything explodes when shot enough.
• Subsystem Damage: Possible on as early as Olajiwon (though chances are, you'll down it without even knowing about this), likely to happen on cruiser and is required on Warner (if you don't have weapons with very high damage to destroy it quickly, you better listen to Resistance Commander, lest the tank either shoot the Statue of Liberty to pieces or ram it before it's destroyed).
• Super Drowning Skills: Metal Wolf is not equipped to handle underwater environments, thus falling into deep bodies of water such as the ocean beyond the Miami Beach coastline will result in an instant Game Over.
• Tank Goodness: Tank-Not-So-Goodness when they are your enemy and can take as much of a beating as much as they can dish out.
• Taunt Button: The D-pad (and the T key for the PC version of the XD remaster) can be used for Michael to shout various phrases and sounds.
• Theme Naming:
  • The mech bosses are named after important U.S. athletes.
  • The "RH" Vice President variant of weapons are named after the Zodiacs of Western astrology.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • According to Casparaitis's dossier, its super energy wave phaser is capable of outputting heat reaching upwards of 3,000º Celsius^note or 5,432º Fahrenheit, which explains how it can deal severe damage or even One-Hit Kill Metal Wolf, but due to the immense amount of electrical power its phaser demands, it needs to stop at a special recharge facility.
  • Richard Hawk's last ditch effort to wipe out the United States of America with what was left of his Ultimate Weapon involves launching a massive megamissile that has a payload equivalent to 30,000 times the Earth's nuclear stockpile.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: The game pulls the standard ambiguous date of "20XX", but since the player character is the 47th President the game is guaranteed to take place (as of 2018) somewhere between 2024 and 2040.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The release date trailer for the XD remaster showed some moments of the game's climax and some of its quotes, such as the game's final boss and Michael making a last-ditch effort to save Richard from burning into re-entry after his defeat.
• Unexplained Recovery: Characters regularly survive helicopter explosions, hand waving it by saying "we have thorough knowledge of how to escape", or even just "I have somehow managed to escape!".
• Updated Re-release: Metal Wolf Chaos XD features remastered visuals, widescreen presentation, gameplay tweaks, and a new auto-save system over the original.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Subverted; while some Flamethrower-type weapons have woefully short range, require your Boost Meter to fire, and use up ammo quickly, but can make up for it by sheer damage output, which can be effective against military tanks and structures that are resilient to live ammo, and whatever is set on fire will take damage over time for a while.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Richard blames Metal Wolf for every atrocity he commits, calling it meaner than Satan.
• Vocal Dissonance: For such a badass president, similarly like Theodore Roosevelt, Michael has a somewhat high-pitched voice.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Some of the characters, especially Jody, communicate with Michael through military communication line.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Alcatraz Cannon, an anti-terrorism weapon. As the narrator on the Let's Play video above comments on it:
  "I just love the idea of building a massive particle cannon to fight terrorism. I can just picture some poor sap with a dirty bomb in a shopping mall, blown to smithereens by giant laser artillery. Wouldn't be out of place in this game."
  • The main gun of Casparaitis also qualifies, as it vaporizes its victims with a massive heat radiation beam.
• Weaponized Landmark: Building a giant electromagnetic cannon inside Alcatraz, 'nuff said. Apart from cladding the White House in armor and weapons to make it the Fight House.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Who knows who many perfectly innocent Americans, not to mention soldiers just doing their jobs, Michael blows up in his fight for freedom? More importantly, who cares? Go blow more of it up! And don't worry about killing innocents. Only the really evil people die. Barring Richard himself, presumably.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Surprisingly enough, Jody (of all people) will call out Michael if he opts to use explosions and his Diving Kick on a cage containing civilian POWs, which results in all of their deaths. This is perhaps the only instance where she shows some form of disapproval towards his actions.
• Word Salad Title: The game's name is "Metal Wolf Chaos", which can come across as this if you don't know that in this game, the main mecha is named "Metal Wolf" and there's a lot of chaos.
• Wunza Plot: He's the President of the Great United States of America. She's his secretary with an appetite for random destruction.

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Whatever.