Most of the games that I’ve played over the years seem to fall into one of three categories: they were extremely easy, they were extremely hard, or they were pretty easy until I got to the end where they ramped up in difficulty so sharply that they were nigh impossible. Unfortunately for me most of the ones that I would rent would fall into the third category. I’d stay up all night playing them, and make it to the end and then get stonewalled by the final boss fight.
Enter Metal Storm, a game that stars a robot that can (and must) change gravity to proceed. It’s kind of an interesting play mechanic, and really twists your brain a bit as you try and make sense of the levels, since they’re all essentially two-in-one.
So you run to the right, and occasionally up and down, to try and kill all the evil robots that stand between you and… um… you not destroying all the evil robots. If there’s a deeper story than that, then I don’t know what it is. It’s not like it matters anyway, your goal is pretty clear.
For the one night that I had this game I liked it a lot. Being able to change gravity up on the fly was pretty interesting, and I made some pretty good progress, but then I got to the end boss. I tried everything. Continuing lots of times, mostly. But I also resorted to my NES Advantage’s ’slow motion’ function and still couldn’t beat it. So, after several hours and a few hundred attempts I gave up.
I’d probably play through it again, but I guess I didn’t realize that it would be such a rare game to find. In the several years it’s been since I’ve played the thing, I have yet to see a copy of the game ‘in the wild’, so to speak. So I just haven’t had the chance.