Metal Wolf Chaos XD for PC Review

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Metal Wolf Chaos is the most American game I’ve ever played. It’s a game made for patriots, for those who bleed red, white and blue. And it was made by Japanese people. Because they understand what it means to be an American patriot. Developed and published by FromSoftware, Metal Wolf Chaos, the ultimate American game, was released for Xbox exclusively in Japan in 2004. From what I understand, a worldwide localization was planned but never came to fruition. Regardless, Metal Wolf Chaos gained a cult following and apparently in 2016, publisher Devolver Digital offered to help localize it. Long story short, a remaster of the game titled Metal Wolf Chaos XD was released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in August, 2019. For this review, I played the PC version.

I’ve actually been wanting to play Metal Wolf Chaos for some time. If memory serves, whenever I found a copy of the original Xbox game online, it was always expensive. Plus, I would often get it confused with Steel Battalion, another Xbox exclusive that came with the Mega-Jockey-9000 controller. So when I heard about Metal Wolf Chaos XD, I jumped on it as soon as it released. This remastered version comes with improved visuals, higher resolutions, widescreen support and some gameplay improvements.

The story puts the player in the shoes of Michael Wilson, the 47th President of the United States. After the military launches a coup d’etat led by the Vice President, Michael jumps into a special armored ops suit developed in secret by the military to defend the nation against the rebels, also known as the “coup d’etat forces”. Obviously satirical, Metal Wolf Chaos feels like an outsider’s perception of American ideology. I can’t say the plot is very compelling but it’s sure as hell entertaining if only for the insane and absurd dialogue that goes beyond hammy and ridiculous. It’s hilarious. It’s one of those it’s so bad it’s good scenarios and I wouldn’t change a thing.

As the President of the United States, it’s your job to take back the country and restore freedom and that means laying waste to your enemies in a special armored ops suit, the Metal Wolf battle mech, often resulting in large amounts of property damage. Metal Wolf Chaos is an action game with plenty of guns, explosions, and destructible environments. You move around in the mech, stomping, boosting, hovering, and shooting things. You can carry eight weapons, four for each arm and switch between them at will. As you destroy things, you build up blaze and when it’s full, you can unleash a blaze attack which is simply a barrage of projectiles. I will say the actual gunplay is pretty good. Weapons have good feedback, muzzle flashes look cool, and bullets can rip through certain parts of the environments resulting in destruction accompanied by solid visual effects.

Just to get this out of the way, Metal Wolf Chaos is not a super challenging game. I say that because it comes from developer FromSoftware who as you may or may not know is responsible for the Souls series of games among others that many players perceive as challenging. No, it’s not like that. Metal Wolf Chaos will not kick your ass and it’s also not as deep as FromSoftware’s popular mech series, Armored Core. That’s not to say Metal Wolf Chaos doesn’t offer any kind of challenge but I would argue it’s a lot easier to pick up, play and beat when compared to some of the developer’s other offerings. Once you get the hang of things, I would say much of the challenge lies in the scoring system. You can chain attacks together to form combos so destroying enemies in quick succession can result in high scores. While not perfect, it does provide an incentive to return and the game does support leaderboards. When you beat the game, you unlock the Fever! and Hell modes. Fever! mode doesn’t track your score but does offer infinite ammo and is quite fun. Hell is just more challenging and you can unlock new suit models.

I did play with a Series X controller and found the game easy enough to control after a little practice. The controls aren’t bad by any means but it’s one of those games that took me a little bit to get used to. It’s how you switch between weapons that would throw me off every now and again. I would recommend taking a glance at the controls before playing and maybe even mess around in the first mission or location a few times just to get used to the controls. Learn how to do the stomp attack because that will ward off a good chunk of frustration, especially in the beginning when you have a limited supply of weapons and are still learning the ropes.

If there are any negative things I can say about the game it’s that it does start to feel a little repetitive after a while and Jody doesn’t shut the fuck up. I think she’s Mike’s assistant or secretary or something like that. Basically, she’s a guide. She’ll frequently give you tips and hints on what you should be doing and how to do it, and even warns you if you’re in danger. I’m guessing she’s supposed to the game’s form of a tutorial or hand holding but she doesn’t outright tell you how to perform certain maneuvers which is why I would recommend glancing at the controls and experimenting for a bit in the first mission. Otherwise, she’ll tell you to do something and you may have no idea how to do it or the best way to do it. But I can tell you that once I got the hang of things, she just became background noise. You know what is really annoying? When the game stops to show you something important in the form of a cut scene. The action can be fast-paced and hectic so when I was really into it only to be taken out and thrown off by a cut scene, that shit got on my nerves.

Metal Wolf Chaos is one of those games that clicked with me after a couple hours or so of playing. Sure, I knew what to do and how to do things long before that but that’s when it really hit me. When I really got into the groove of things if that makes sense. When everything just clicks and you get it. The repetition is exposed fairly quickly but it didn’t really set in until I started replaying missions. That’s when I realized how most of them kind of feel the same but that’s also when I realized what the meat of the game really is. Destroying things, collecting resources, earning money, and trying for high scores. Once you’ve unlocked the powerful weapons, overcoming obstacles isn’t much of a problem. Then it’s just simply about doing better. Getting a better score. With the right weapons, you can breeze through many missions.

As you destroy enemies and decimate the many locations across the country, you acquire pickups, some of which are resources needed to unlock things. Missions come with one or multiple primary objectives; destroy target areas and kill a specific enemy which is usually a boss. Secondary objectives include rescuing hostages and rescuing certain people results in benefits. If you explore and destroy things, you’ll find pickups like augments, funds, ammo, weapons and other resources. Collecting enough of certain resources can result in upgrades to your suit. Money and rare metals can be spent in the Garage in between missions to unlock or develop and manufacture new weapons. There’s a lot of weapons in the game and each one comes with different stats. I did replay previous missions every so often to ensure I had enough money and metals to unlock and equip better weapons for the threats ahead. And I can say revisiting early missions with powerful weapons makes them significantly easier.

The weapons you bring with you will determine how easy or challenging things will be. You’ll be up against military forces including traditional foes like soldiers and helicopters but as you progress, tougher enemies will be thrown at you including foes in armored suits and autonomous weapons. Missiles and bullets will often be coming at you and you’ll have to learn what weapons are best against what threats. Many missions contain target areas you need to destroy which are typically defensive structures with turrets or things that spawn enemies and destroying these areas will often reduce the amount of reinforcements or some other threat. Some missions feature a time limit and I dislike these the most because you have a limited time to explore and once you complete the final objective, the mission just ends automatically.

One of the best things about Metal Wolf Chaos is the destructible environments. I guess you could say they are partially destructible because there are certain things you just can’t demolish. You’ll be travelling to many locations across the country and will have the opportunity to decimate them, leaving behind objects and debris in your wake. Some environments feel more linear than others but many are kind of open allowing you to approach destinations in different ways and all of them encourage exploration. If you take the time to look around and destroy the many objects and structures you come across, you’ll find pickups and resources. And you can always revisit missions to collect any resources and save any hostages you missed the last time.

Metal Wolf Chaos XD looks exactly like what it is. A game from the early 2000’s that was remastered. I did notice some visual oddities here and there like texture flickering but for the most part, I would say this is a pretty good remaster in terms of visuals. The actual textures look really crisp and while many elements of the visual presentation show their age, I think it’s a solid facelift, overall. As for the audio, I’m not super impressed with the audio mixing. Certain sounds will often be drowned out by others and when there’s a lot of action going on, it just sounds noisy. The soundtrack is alright with some decent tunes peppered throughout assuming you can hear them. On the technical side, the frame rate is capped at thirty even on PC but it remained stable as far as I could tell and I did not encounter any major bugs or issues.

Metal Wolf Chaos is American as fuck and I really enjoyed it. It controls well, it’s action-packed and I think it’s pretty easy to get into. Achieving high scores and mastering the combo system will take some practice and it’s fun shooting, stomping, boosting, and smashing everything in sight. With numerous missions, multiple game modes and tons of weapons, the replay value is high. Trying different weapons and strategies is all part of the fun. Although, the action can get repetitive and the more powerful weapons can make several missions a breeze to get through, even in Hell mode. But I admit there is something euphoric about shooting and smashing through each level, no matter how many times and even with more powerful weapons than before, that I simply enjoyed doing it over and over again. Seeing things explode, structures crumble, and dirt and debris fill the air never got old for me as I earned more money to buy more weapons. There’s is an addictive quality to it.

I would absolutely recommend Metal Wolf Chaos. It’s a very American game made by Japanese people. It’s a lot of fun and contains plenty to keep the player occupied and coming back, even if it does get repetitive. It’s not a perfect game by any means but the good does outweigh the bad and the action never lets up. Definitely check it out.

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