Another Limbo of the Lost? The plagiarism on display here in blatant Metal Slug rip-off Commando: Steel Disaster for the DS isn't as flagrant as LotL's level design lifting, but it's still pretty shameless: The title rips off music from classic SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, as well as a 2D Gundam fighting game.
Kyle Orland writes:
"0:00 Yet another game I had never heard of until it showed up in my mailbox. The back of the box makes it look like a Metal Slug knockoff, which gets my hopes up a bit.
0:01 Synth-heavy metal-techno plays over a sprawling, two-screen image of a Commando with a huge gun slung over his shoulder. Normal and Hard are the selectable difficulties. I hate choosing the lowest available level, but I'm not quite ready to dive in to "Hard."
0:03 "Emergency! Emergency!" says Jessica. "Hey, what's wrong," asks Storm, the guy from the title screen. "Snow Lab is being attacked by X-1." Not Snow Lab! Apparently X-1 is OUR newest weapon, but it went berserk and attacked. The dialogue boxes don't have a space after the periods ... VERY annoying.
0:04 Just like that, I'm racing in on a snowmobile. I can jump over land mines and lean back to fire at rocket pack-equipped enemies in the air. This is fun!
0:06 On foot now, trudging across a snow-covered landscape. Immediately I'm annoyed that I can't seem to fire diagonally. Come on ... this has been standard since Contra. It's especially annoying because I'm running up a slope and can't really hit the enemies ahead of me effectively."
WorthPlaying writes: "If you took one glance at the screenshots or videos of Commando: Steel Disaster and thought, "Hey, there's a new Metal Slug game," then I wouldn't blame you in the least. On the surface, Steel Disaster looks exactly like SNK's long running side-scrolling shooter, and the developers obviously have no qualms about taking the gameplay and design and running with it for this title. However, while everything on the surface resembles Metal Slug, the actual gameplay is pretty stale and way too difficult to even attempt to be fun, leaving the end result a masochistic mess of bullets and unnecessary deaths.
To be honest, I'm glad to see someone try and take the Metal Slug formula and do anything with it, and I'm pretty surprised that previous attempts haven't already been made. Sure, you could compare a couple of Treasure titles, like Gunstar Heroes or something along those lines, but nothing's really stepped into the Metal Slug shoes before. Then again, I can't really commend Steel Disaster for just copying the franchise, either. It's the equivalent of a gaming homunculus, sure, it looks like Metal Slug, but it definitely doesn't act like it."
Kotaku writes: "Big week for new releases to take advantage of the Labor Day weekend shopping. Tuesday, Tiger Woods gets his Jesus on and Disgaea 3 comes out. Thursday, the highly anticipated Castle Crashers finally arrives on XBLA. And Friday, we have not only The Sims 2: Apartment Life, but also Prison Tycoon. If you rent in San Mateo, don't buy both, one will cover your entire range of experience."
As if the game itself weren't already clearly a Metal Slug ripoff...
aka; 'Commando: Steal Disaster'
STEAL DISASTER LOLLL
Wow you're on a roll
Intersting 3 seconds to rip off of Chrono Trigger, when comparing "Mission Failed" gameplay at 5:07 and the Chrono Trigger music at 1:17. That song is still pretty great though