1 is my favourite in the series. I think it has the strongest aesthetic, best levels and it has more background interactivity than any of the sequels. I feel the sequels added a lot of weapons and vehicles, that while "funny" and "cool" in concept, aren't very useful or fun to use in practice.
4 gets a lot of shit, but I think it's actually quite good. Sure, it frakensteinize and recycle sprites like a motherfucker (the best example being stage 2, which stich together the backgrounds of three separate stages from MS1 and one stage from MS3, Human Centipede-style), but the level design and boss battles are... pretty good, actually? A lot of the new additions (dual-machine guns, riddable enemy vehicles, monkey transformation, vehicle damage actually varying based on the enemy attack) are also genuinely good - sure the first three I mentioned are probably born out of the desire to Recycle More Sprites, but they're ultimately fun and useful additions, and I think that's what matter.
5 made a valliant effort to create a set of new sprites, but it was rushed, and it shows. Levels have strange choices (like in level 2, you get a slug at the start of the level only to ditch it immediatly after, and later in that level, there's a very obvious alternate path you can't take, etc). Still, I like the new graphics, the soundtrack, and the mech Slug is a pretty good new vehicle. I like it.
6 is my least-favourite favourite Metal Slug and the one in the series I genuinely dislike. I felt the new alien enemies were tedious to fight, I didn't like the greatly reduced ammo for weapons, the washed-out backgrounds and the obnoxious scoring system that showers the screen in coins that obscure objects and enemy projectiles.
7 fixed my complaint about ammo, but the backgrounds now looked like poorly-compressed jpegs. It's been too long since I've played it to give a coherent opinion though.
4 gets a lot of shit, but I think it's actually quite good. Sure, it frakensteinize and recycle sprites like a motherfucker (the best example being stage 2, which stich together the backgrounds of three separate stages from MS1 and one stage from MS3, Human Centipede-style), but the level design and boss battles are... pretty good, actually? A lot of the new additions (dual-machine guns, riddable enemy vehicles, monkey transformation, vehicle damage actually varying based on the enemy attack) are also genuinely good - sure the first three I mentioned are probably born out of the desire to Recycle More Sprites, but they're ultimately fun and useful additions, and I think that's what matter.
5 made a valliant effort to create a set of new sprites, but it was rushed, and it shows. Levels have strange choices (like in level 2, you get a slug at the start of the level only to ditch it immediatly after, and later in that level, there's a very obvious alternate path you can't take, etc). Still, I like the new graphics, the soundtrack, and the mech Slug is a pretty good new vehicle. I like it.
6 is my least-favourite favourite Metal Slug and the one in the series I genuinely dislike. I felt the new alien enemies were tedious to fight, I didn't like the greatly reduced ammo for weapons, the washed-out backgrounds and the obnoxious scoring system that showers the screen in coins that obscure objects and enemy projectiles.
7 fixed my complaint about ammo, but the backgrounds now looked like poorly-compressed jpegs. It's been too long since I've played it to give a coherent opinion though.
