Metal Slug Attack

Metal Slug Attack is a tower defense game created by SNK Playmore for iOS and Android mobile devices. It was originally announced by SNK Playmore in November 2015, and then officially released for Android and iOS on February 14, 2016.

The game itself is a sequel to Metal Slug Defense, a tower defense based on the Metal Slug series.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game is essentially a reskin of Metal Slug Defense with some tweaks and contents, to make this much worse, SNK released this game as a tie-in to a 25th year Anniversary of the Metal Slug franchise!
 * 2) Talking about reskins, tons of units featured in the game are essentially reskins/palette swaps of existing units with much-improved stats compared to original units. For example, the Iron Nokana, one of the bosses from the first Metal Slug game, has 5 reskinned variants (6 if you're counting the original variant). and if you're also counting the Iron (a modified variant of Iron Nokana featured in Metal Slug 4) and its reskinned variants, there are 11 units based on the Iron Nokana in the game.
 * 3) *Also, after a few weeks when a new character is released, the developer release a "special" version of the said character which is much stronger or more useful than the original version.
 * 4) The game is yet another gachapon game filled with microtransactions, as many units can be only obtained via "Crank Box" (a kind of gachapon featured in the game).
 * 5) One of the most noted and most criticized aspects about it are its new characters, which absolutely do not fit in the Metal Slug universe, since they are heavily oriented towards anime crowd and not in a good way, with most of them looking completely absurd.
 * 6) The game is still currently unbalanced and easily prone to powercreeps, as many units added currently are able to easily wipe out enemy units with their special attacks.
 * 7) The game butchered up the plotline of the Metal Slug universe (that was already messed up in Metal Slug Defense) even further.
 * 8) No cloud or any backup features, unlike Metal Slug Defense.
 * 9) The second anniversary title screen looks unoriginal. It's just a character illustrations of Yoshino, Dragunov, Red Goblin, a Martian, Marco, General Morden (despite of being the main antagonist of the series), Abigail, and the Professor slapped on it which represents the main characters of this game.
 * 10) *However, the first and third anniversary title screens are pretty decent as well as the current one in Version 6.0.0.
 * 11) False advertising: On the "Begin Training" extra ops event, it said that their adventures with a Heroines version of Leona Heidern and a newcomer named Kelly will continue into the Heroines world, but that did not happened in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy.
 * 12) They reuse the same official illustrations of "special" version of the said character but it's recolored unlike the other special version units which they had different illustrations. For example: The illustration for Special Ami is actually the same as her per-acquisition unit except in Silver.
 * 13) During the Holiday-related events, they even reintroduced the same existing Holiday-themed special units (Like Everlasting Summer Abigail and Christmas Midori) as a Medal Crank unit rather than a new special unit that is newly introduced from the previous events which is repetitive even if they are available in some certain shops.
 * 14) On the new Crank Box system called "Lucky Bag Crank", you need to purchase it with real money rather than any in-game items (medals, MSP, etc.) In order to crank it and only one can be purchased per affiliation during the period. After that, you cannot purchase it again.
 * 15) It's very impossible to obtain previous crank exclusive units during returning box and step up cranks since they are more focuses on a specific faction rather than mixed up previous box and step up units like in the previous versions. They even includes some of the existing rare and non-box/step up crank super rare units from the older versions.
 * 16) The Customize Unit screen in Version 6.0.0 is more complicating because some of the other units like Special Alma doesn't show the actual unit's illustration but it still shows a shadowy figure of a soldier from the Extra Ops cutscenes instead even if a unit has an illustration like most of the character units.
 * 17) The Anniversary Crank in version 6.0.0 is completely useless despite of having a free 10 crank for each day because you'll obtain more cheap units that you easily obtained from shops and MSP Crank. At least, you still get the three Super Rare units (Fio for Liberty, Subjugation Tactics Beatriz and Caroline Ver Rebellion) and some good Rare units especially if you are a beginner of this game.
 * 18) Despite of the main characters (such as Marco Rossi and Donald Morden) appearing in this game, it tends to focus a bit more on the new characters that are exclusively for this game.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The game marked the first official debut of Ptolemaios, who was supposed to be the main antagonist of Metal Slug 5, but got cut from final release due to development rushing.
 * 2) Some original vehicles were added, such as the Ball Slug, Tail Slug and Tiger Slug.
 * 3) Good artwork and well-animated sprites on several new characters/units.
 * 4) Ignoring the fact that it's a Metal Slug game, many new characters actually have pretty nice and attractive designs (both, males and females). Some new characters such as Abigail, Owen, HMT, Nikita, Dion, MS-Alice are the most likeable. Other than that, they are more fun to play and easy to win such as Oao-One and Maya.
 * 5) The Chinese Version has an exclusive story in the Attack campaign.
 * 6) They added parts of any previous Box and Step Up crank units in every recent cranks when the new unit comes out.
 * 7) They added a new feature called "Laboratory" which allows players to test every units in all platinum, including the ones that you haven't obtained.
 * 8) The enhanced versions of any existing characters such as Midori for Liberty and Subjugation Tactics Abigail are more decent and well balanced.
 * 9) *However, some of the recent Special Units like Incognito Sharl had different appearances instead of recolors.
 * 10) They added a Beginner Support Campaign which offers a free Platinum framed Box and Step-Up Crank units for new players.
 * 11) The Ultimate Mission doesn't require any sorties to play and you'll encounter an ultimate boss unit that never seen before such as the Golden Slug Phoenix (which is originally appeared in the Pachinko version of Metal Slug 3) and the Perfect Jupiter King.