Metal Dragon / Life on Mars Review

I love Evercade’s indie dual carts.

Kicking off with the solid XenoCrisis/Tanglewood cart, each dual cart had provided two great indie games that are a fair bit meatier than you get on Indie Heroes. Dual carts gave us our first native game with Cathedral, the hugely charming Goodboy Galaxy, and the Asteborg duology.

So I was excited to see another dual cart announced for our yearly indie fix.

I had heard of Life on Mars, from a #game-requests thread on the Evercade discord but didn’t know much about it. And Metal Dragon was brand new to me.

Life on Mars didn’t seem to make any secret of its Metroid inspriation, and Metal Dragon looked a little bit like Commando with Metal Gear trappings. I wasn’t really sure what to think, but I was willing to give it a shot.

Metal Dragon

Metal Dragon opens on a version of the “Winners Don’t Use Drugs” screen we got in US arcades in the ‘90s. It’s been updated to say “Some Winners Use Drugs.” Already we’re establishing a tone for the game.

Next, we get a quick rundown of the backstory with some scrolling text on top of a really well-done city skyline scene. 1989 - the closing days of the Cold War - the President’s daughter has been kidnapped - a rescue operation is mounted to rescue her without triggering Global Thermonuclear War. The story unfolds atop more pretty well done pixel art of a jail cell and a helicopter. We learn that they first sent in their best covert operative, “Flaccid Snake,” who has gone silent. So they’re sending us in to finish the job.

Again, we’re establishing a pretty consistent tone. 1980s action movie, over the top and macho, with a dash of juvenile humor.

Upon starting the game, you’re greeted by a Metal Gear Solid-style cutscene between the player - codename Metal Dragon - and your boss - codename Slim Boss. You are given your mission and you confirm that you will “penetrate the fuck out of” the enemy base.

You’re dropped into a jungle and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in a Metal Gear-alike, at least if you didn’t read the preceding cut scene where they made it clear it would not be.

Instead you’re in a run-and-gun game, like a Commando or a MERCs. Blow away wave after wave of enemies as you make your way through each level. You’ve got your main weapon as well as grenades. Certain enemies will drop different weapons, which are typically more powerful but have limited ammo. Also scattered throughout the levels are grenade and health pick-ups.

Make your way through the varied levels - jungles, military bases, towns - through vertical and horizontal scrolling sections. Blow away countless enemies - soldiers, turrets, jeeps, tanks kinda stuff - to make it to the boss. Kill the boss to move on to the next level.

Each level is punctuated by the sorts of conversation as above - see if you can count how many times the word “penetrate” is used (okay, I’m back, it’s actually only 5 times). A pretty straightforward story unfolds in these cut scenes, in between Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and Star Wars references.

Rinse and repeat for 45 minutes or so, and the game is over. There are two different endings, depending on what difficulty you’re using or whether you used continues, but that’s all there is to it.

This game is…fine. It’s alright. It looks nice, it handles fine, the art and presentation are good. But there’s just not much to it. You run and you gun and it’s fine, but that’s it - no secrets, no bonuses, no surprises or anything to subvert expectations. At least not that I found. And the action is okay, but it never really reached a “pulse pounding” level that compelled me to keep playing.

And if the gameplay isn’t enough to keep you engaged, the story might be enough to actively deter you. The story itself is…again, fine. It’s a reference to other classic media. It doesn’t do anything new with it, but that’s okay. The humor wrapped around it, though, is by turns cringey and eye-roll-inducing.

The game description on-cart says, “the game parodies the Cold War paranoia, jingoism and extreme violence found in many works of popular media from the 1980s, but marries these elements with modern game design.”

We can quibble over the definition of “parody,” but it doesn’t feel to me like the game has anything to say about these topics, or even any actual jokes to make about them. Instead it seems to find “hey, remember this?” to be sufficient. And I’m not sure there’s enough to the game to say if it has been infused with “modern game design.”

Ultimately, this game is fine for a quick playthrough, but you’re not likely to find yourself returning to it later.

Life On Mars

Life On Mars is a game that wears its influences on its sleeve. That's not a bad thing by itself, necessarily. But when you fail to live up to or differentiate yourself from your influences, all you're doing is reminding your players that there's better ways they could be spending their time.

As you can see from the screenshot, this game is A Metroid. Kinda.

You start off with a regular gun, but eventually you upgrade to…well…you don't. You can spend credits to make each shot more powerful or use less energy, but it's still the same gun. You do find some alternate weapons, but nothing that really changes the feel of combat.

But combat isn't everything in these games. What about the joy of exploration, discovery, and traversal? Well there's not much there either.

While the map has the trappings of a typical Metroidvania, it's actually a very straightforward hub-and-spoke design. Rather than exploring to find a traversal upgrade to reach all of the little out of reach places you passed along the way, you enter one level from the hub and the boss gives you an upgrade you use to unblock the entrace to the next linear spoke.

There are a couple instances of backtracking for minor, optional powerups, but those are the disappointing exceptions rather than the rule. It's always clear where to go next and you never get that feeling of discovery and exploration.

But those are structural concerns that maybe I could overlook by reminding myself that even though this looks like Metroid it doesn't need to be Metroid. So how about the moment-to-moment gameplay?

Well, that's a bit of a letdown, too. Enemies are all bullet sponges. Even as you upgrade your weapons you'll never find yourself returning to earlier areas and seeing that you've become more powerful. Partially because you generally aren't returning to earlier areas anyway, but even if you do you won't suddenly be stomping what you find there.

As you push forward through the game, you'll find larger, faster, and spongier enemies. And more of them, too. Sometimes a sarcastic amount of them. Starting halfway through the game, I started running through these large crowds of enemies because dispatching them would have take waaay too long.

One bright spot here, though, are the boss fights. Most of them are challenging in the right ways, demanding pattern recognition and mastery of the controls such as they are. That's not to say there were any showstopper moments that made me say “wow!” but I never found myself bored, frustrated, or upset with the boss fights (well, almost never).

This is another situation where the game looks nice and plays competently on the surface, but the pieces aren't really put together quite right.

The game clocks in at a few hours - it took me 4 or 5. The game is okay at that length. I was certainly ready for it to be over by that time. It would not have held up to a 10 hour+ playtime like we have seen on recent dual cart games. It's too much of a slog to engage most players. Perhaps it's to its credit that it knew when to wrap it up.

Wrap Up

Both of these games are…games. They are presented well, they are put together competently, and they play alright moment-to-moment. They're perfectly functional and I was able to beat both of these games.

Ultimately, though, they both fall short of the mark in ways both large and small. You can get your run-and-gun and metroidvania fixes plenty of other places on the platform.

It’s worth noting that purchasing these games physically for the Genesis/Megadrive will run you $120, though. So if you’re between either buying this cart or buying them separately for original hardware, then that’s something to consider.

If this cart were coming out in 2021, this story might have a different ending. But Blaze have raised the bar massively in that time. While these games are bigger and arguably better than typical Indie Heroes games, they still fall well short of the more recent dual cart fare.

If I weren’t currently committed to a full set of Evercade cartridges, I’d probably go ahead and Avoid this one.

And once again a subscribe button to appease Substack. Don't feel compelled to click it cause now that I've gotten writing, I can now take the time to consider more where I want to host the writing without risking putting the configuring-my-static-site-generator cart before the i-actually-enjoy-writing horse.