Metal Slug Attack was a mobile Tower Defense game released in February 2016 by SNK. It was the sequel to Metal Slug Defense. It vastly improved over MSD in certain aspects and has been updated every 2 weeks since its release up until the final "Extra Ops" event.
Most notably, this game not only greatly develops the world of Metal Slug but also introduces a whole new cast of characters. This can be seen in the new "Another Story" and "Extra Ops" modes.
Since both games are functionally similar, most gameplay tropes can be found in Metal Slug Defense's article.
However, the game has ended service on Thursday, January 12, 2023
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Most of the characters and assets are reused in Metal Slug Commander.
Tropes:
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Gameplay
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Most of the end bosses walk towards your base (which excludes stationary units such as the Toschka Dalanue and Big John).
- Announcer Chatter: Returns from Defense, although here, this can get somewhat excessive once you 1) Acquire the skills that allow the main characters to keep their weapons after using them and 2) Field many of the main characters at once.
- Anti Poop-Socking: Downplayed. The maximum stamina cap is around 150 sorties but buying more sorties, grinding them from the Treasure Hunt and earning them through the daily missions can exceed this cap up to 99,999 sorties.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Heavily.
- Pre-acquisition units can also be this, but instead of paying for it with medals, a player must pay $100 for 110 parts for that particular unit (that means a total of $300 to platinum ranking of said unit) as well as an exclusive gold bordered avatar that come with it. Thankfully, these pre-acquisition units will eventually become obtainable via medal crank, so if you want a powerful pre-acquisition by spending medals instead of cash, you just have to wait.
- Box and Step-Up cranks are never available in the Medal Crank. You have to wait until a particular unit's crank is available again.
- Cap: At first, the level cap for both units and their skills is 10, then it's whatever level the player has up to Level 50.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In the Extra Ops, certain Hell missions will spam a butt-ton of units (to the point of seeing a visual streak) who immediately start using their special attacks. This commonly occurs when the enemy's base is in critical levels or a certain amount of units reached the enemy's base.
- Defeat Means Playable: Completing the Marathon or Rare Boss Extra Ops rewards the player with the event's boss.
- Evolving Title Screen: The first screen is the first mission of Metal Slug 2. It was replaced by the promotional art for the first anniversary. It was replaced again with the character illustrations of Yoshino, Dragunov, Red Goblin, a Martian, Marco, General Morden, Abigail, and the Professor to mark the second anniversary of the series. It was replaced again with the in-game sprites consists of characters, bosses, and other units to mark the third anniversary of the series.
- Hard Mode Perks:
- The Elite Stages in Attack mode will randomly reward players with unit parts (one part per POW rescued). Higher difficulties also give out higher tier items.
- Choosing higher difficulties or harder stages in the Extra-Ops gives out larger amounts of Exclusive Points and more POWs to rescue.
- Limit Break: In addition to the Metal Slug Attack, the game adds two more limit breaks. The Recovery Support refills all units HP and their production reload automatically goes to zero. The Reload Support automatically charges the units' cooldown time, allowing them to use their Special Attacks without waiting.
- Macross Missile Massacre: A later update adds an Attack button on the lower-right corner. Press it and everyone with their Special Attack ready will all attack at once.
- Megaton Punch: Ralf's Galagta Phantom also spews balls of fire upon impact. Crazy Ralf's version has a fire element.
- Necromancer: Cat and Lovely mummies summon a trio of regular mummies, who each make one attack and dissolve into sand.
- Nerf: A rare occurrence in this game. Units are nerfed when they're overpowered by unintentional means.
- Leona was originally absurdly powerful for a low AP unit. She was severely nerfed in the next update.
- Morden's special would previously can damage enemy's base with the invincible summoned Hi-Do's. It is so popular with staller decks that the dev team removed its ability to damage bases.
- The Doctor's special is deploying the Brave Guerrier with a large area of attack and deploying mooks. The player can send out multiple blimps at once. It was nerfed so he can only use his special again once the blimp completely leaves.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: Attack reuses the same arcade graphics from the previous game. New characters and vehicles are created to differentiate between the two games.
- No Fair Cheating:
- Like in Metal Slug Defense, if they caught you using any explicit tools that allows to cheat the game such as increasing the number of medals and sorties, the development team will make your account get suspended and cannot be recovered again.
- Also using a modded game that can be downloaded from the third-party sites rather than in Google Play Store will prevent you from purchasing something via Medal Shop and some new updates which will force you to uninstall and reinstall the game that lead to loss your save data.
- Palette Swap:
- A trend by the end of the first year of Attack's release, units of the Extra-Ops are new recolors of either previous bosses or units.
- El Dorado controls a flying Slug Armor that can shoot energy beams, and it has a similar coloration to that of Iron Man's. Slug Armors that are colored on the basis of Kyo and Iori (of the King of Fighters) also appear, both having different ways of attacking. Midori also deploys brightly colored Slug Armors.
- The United Front's units are all solid gold. The game constantly pokes at the utility of an extremely shiny vehicle.
- Promoted to Playable:
- Unplayable units from Defense, such as the Huge Hermit and the Subway, are now available to deploy and fight against.
- Units once fought in unique situations have their sprites modified so they work horizontally.
- Randomly Drops: Rescuing POWs in has been made easier due to them always appearing in the same spot in a level. Instead of boosting AP production, base HP, etc., they instead gave out a random item out of a stage's list.
- Red Is Violent: Crazy Ralf is a red skinned Ralf who lost his cool (and his Flame Shot) and starts punching the hell out of everyone. It turns into a trend following the release of units such as MS-Alice (Marco) (Marco's only red because he accidentally ingested a hot pepper) and Wrath versions of Rebel Soldiers.
- Reviving Enemy: The zombies, Allen Jr., and Crazy Ralf are able to revive when their appropriate skill is unlocked.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Most "Supply" characters (Sisilia, Rapid, the Aikawa sisters) will run away when their HP is depleted instead of dying. Caroline will also leave if her drone is destroyed first. Nikita and certain Morden driven units exit by helicopter. Dion leaves after getting a distress signal. Animal-based Slugs will also flee.
- So Last Season: Just like the last game, newly released units sooner or later outclass previous sets of units. Slightly downplayed as certain older units can provide support for the team and some recolors perform worse than their originals.
- Synchronization: Caroline controls a miniature version of the Shooting Ray and both her and the plane have separate HP. If Caroline dies first, then the plane will crash at the unit who killed her. If the plane dies first, then it'll crash to whoever destroyed it, and Caroline will simply walk away in anger.
- Team Spirit:
- By unlocking a certain unit's proper skill, they are able to buff others' HP, attack, or driving if they are both on the same faction (e.g. Marco buffing only P.F. units).
- Putting certain units in a deck will also let those gain more HP or use less AP to put on the field (e.g. Leona, Ralf, and Clark will gain 10% more HP for themselves if they are together in a deck).
- Temporary Online Content: Units and special item parts that are received through the Extra Ops and Pack-Shop become unavailable once the event is over, although starting around November 2016, some Pack-Shop units replaced a majority of other units in the Medal Crank. With the addition of Another Story, previous event bosses, parts, and units are also available.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Every unit in Defense has had their stats and attack sets beefed up. Some are useful in buffing their teammates.
- The introduction of Status Strengthening items in update 4.9.0 increases older units' stats to match up with the newer, stronger units.
- Turns Red: Some units have a second form once taken enough damage or attack on their own when their vehicle is destroyed. Immortal Allen has three forms.
Story and Characters
- Adaptation Expansion: To the series as a whole. The Ptolemaic Army and Amadeus Syndicate are given more attention than what they had in their home games.
- Beach Episode:
- The Pirates Attack event in Attack, where Big Shee and a crew of pirates interrupt Eri and Fio's vacation. The girls are dressed in bikinis, and Eri and Fio use the Big versions of the Laser and Rocket Launcher respectively.
- Also, the Everlasting Summer Another Stories. In all stories, Trevor is the only one that cannot take a vacation.
- Cat Girl:
- Cat/Lovely Mummies. The Pharaoh has a couple of them attending him on his War-Dias.
- Leona goes as one for Halloween.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Sally, with red eyes and a scythe to boot.
- Enemy Civil War: Ptolemaic Another Story 5 ends with roughly half the Ptolemaic characters turning on Ptolemaios.
- Evil vs. Evil: Attack shows that the Rebel and Ptolemaic armies battle against each other as much, if not moreso, than they fight the good guys.
- Excuse Plot:
- The Extra Ops missions tend to have their own mini-plots, although sometimes (that is most of version 2.0's) it is nothing more than: Here's the boss, here's the pre-acquisition unit, boss is defeated, Mission Complete. Later on, these were replaced with actual stories with character portraits speaking in text boxes.
- Averted with the release of Another Story, where characters from one faction of the game's five will go through a set of story-driven battles, story being varied based on faction. It's also a way of being able to own past boss characters that were only available in Extra Ops.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Ptolemaios is more hellbent on global domination than Morden. When Dragunov noticed the disconnect between the Ptolemaic soldiers and the Wizards, she and her friends started their own rebellion.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: The "Another Story" and "Extra Ops" stories go a long way towards humanizing the enemy forces, thus making them more of Anti-Villain or even Hero Antagonist teams.
- Mêlée à Trois: There are at least eight note notable factions fighting each other throughout the story. Even when the Amadeus Syndicate and Rebel Army are allies, White Baby doesn't care and vehemently pokes the Rebel's machines.
- No Ending: Beating the final mission in either Standard or Elite mode in Attack mode will just send you back to the map screen. The Another Story and Extra Ops avert this trope, although certain events (usually the ranked ones) will not trigger the ending until the event has concluded.
- No Plot? No Problem!: The intro to Metal Slug Attack showcases an animated recreation of the promotional art, having various characters and units running on a desert field with explosions everywhere until a close-up of Morden appears, even though he is not the final boss of the main game. The Extra Ops averts this by giving out explanations as to why the event is occurring, and both Extra Ops and Another Stories tend to connect each other.
- Original Generation: Starting with the Mummy's Event, events would include units never seen in other games such as the Pharaoh (the mummys' leader), several new commanders for all factions, independent fighters, and new vehicles.
- Stripperiffic:
- The females of the Mummy Army wear loose clothing. Cleopatra has a top that wouldn't be out of place in Queen's Blade. She also has really small briefs and a backwards Showgirl Skirt to show off how fully developed she is. Her sister Arsinoe goes further by not wearing the skirt. Cat mummies and their variants also wear bikinis.
- Dragunov (a Ptolemaic Hero Unit who has a custom Flying Unit equipped with a Wave Motion Gun) wears a bikini top and whale-tails her underwear out of her fatigues.
- The "Eternal Summer" versions of the female cast has them in bikinis.
- Portal to the Past: The Big Gate from the Future Rebels allows them and Nova to travel to the past.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits:
- The Ptolemaic Army has the most visually unorganized group of soldiers. Most of them are either invited, forced into joining, or are under Mira's experiments.
- The new Red Goblin Society are comprised of various inexpedient members who were pulled into the Ptolemaic Army's mess with Red Goblin.
- Suspect Is Hatless: Ptolemaios sends his troops to find Red Goblin, only describing him as red-headed. A Running Gag has various red-headed civilians and characters getting incorrectly assaulted.
- Take a Third Option: When Sisilia interrupts an argument between Dragunov and Veronica about who gets to pilot the Ptolemaic copy of the Union 01 Unit, they decide to put her in it instead.
- Time Travel: Nova, Mello, Licht, and Elena travel to the past. The Professor was assumed to be from the future, as his debut Extra Ops show, but this tidbit was swiftly ignored in later cutscenes.
- Walking Swimsuit Scene:
- The "Everlasting Summer" units, versions of various female characters in swimsuits. They are every bit as dangerous as their uniformed selves, arguably moreso, since they're pissed their vacations got interrupted!
- Destrade, Julia, Ariadna, and other females fight in a swimsuit style uniform.
- A Winner Is You: Some Extra-Ops endings consists of the event unit doing their victory pose with the destroyed unit beside them.
- World of Action Girls: Most of the new characters are female, and some are part of enemy factions, unlike previous games where the females mainly existed in the Regular Army.
