Ravage America To Save America! – Metal Wolf Chaos XD Review

I’ve heard about Metal Wolf Chaos for years.  Back before it was ridiculously easy to find things online, Metal Wolf Chaos was one of those games that my friends imported along with a Japanese Xbox or modded their systems just to play.  This is before YouTube or anything, mind you.  There were no videos, no Wikipedia pages, no real information.  Just a handful of low-res screenshots and a few short write-ups and mentions on the occasional forum.  But for all that mystery, the game sounded awesome!   The President of the United States of America fighting against the US military in a giant mech to stop a coup d’etat?   Awesome!  A hilariously over-the-top script with equally ridiculous voice acting?  Amazing!

Alas, I never got to play Metal Wolf Chaos back when it was released.  None of my local friends ever had a copy and eventually forgot about it almost entirely.  Fast forward to present day and From Software, a virtually unknown company in 2004 aside from King’s Field and Armored Core, is now ridiculously famous due to the Dark Souls series and has a massive fan base.  And they have remastered Metal Wolf Chaos, something I never would have imagined would happen!   It’s now entitled Metal Wolf Chaos XD and it’s utterly glorious!

Metal Wolf Chaos XD, as mentioned, puts you in the pilot’s seat of the President of the United States’ personal giant mech, resplendent with Presidential seals on the arms and all.  Your vice president has just taken over the military and initiated a coup, branding you a rogue agent and your mech as public enemy number one.  Your mission?  Win back the entire United States of America with a single mech, one battle at a time!  And don’t forget the one-liners!  Everything from busting out of the White House yelling “Ok, Let’s Parrrtttyyy!” to the Vice President saying that “Metal Wolf is meaner than Satan himself”!  It’s honestly a non-stop barrage of ridiculously silly one-liners that are up there with most of the recent Marvel movies.

As for gameplay, Metal Wolf Chaos XD is a comfortable game.  The controls have been tightened up and the gameplay has been modified to meet more modern standards.  Anyone who’s played Gunvalkyrie (still awesome!) for example will know how hard some of those original Xbox games were in terms of control!  Most of the controls are intuitive, though it is weird to have to hit B to open your weapons loadout and select weapons on the fly while enemies are attacking and you’re unable to fire.   Most enemy fire bounces off you like popcorn anyway, especially in the earlier levels.  It’s actually pretty hard to get killed by anything as long as you’re upgrading your weapons regularly.  Speaking of weapons, there are over a hundred, though you have to pick eight at a time for your in-level loadout.  Metal Wolf Chaos goes over the top for everything!

Bosses can be more challenging, but have fairly standardized patterns for the most part.  Pay attention and you’ll make it through though.   There are plenty of them too, including giant tanks, helicopters, ships, and more.  But while we’re on gameplay, there’s one glaring issue with the game that was not resolved in the remaster.   That’s the stomp maneuver.  Jump up in the air, hit the Y button, and you plummet down, smashing anything beneath you.  This is actually so broken that you can fight your way through entire levels without firing a shot!  You do more damage than most weapons, especially earlier in the game, and it never runs out of ammo like the guns you’ve been collecting and leveling up.  Not everything dies easily with a stomp, but most things do!  You can destroy virtually anything with repeated stomps, including bosses, buildings, and people.   Destroy every building and destructible item in your way, too!  They tend to conceal power up items and bonuses that will assist in allowing you to fully trick out your mech.

But that broken stomp mechanic is also somewhat indicative of the whole game.  It’s obvious from the get-go that this is a dated title.  Sure, the graphics are re-skinned and look much cleaner, the user interface is mostly well-designed, and gameplay mechanics have been tweaked and modified.  But the game still feels dated even if it’s fun as hell.  Metal Wolf Chaos XD is a game from 2004 and it shows.  There’s a certain quality to the entire structure, to the level design, to the backgrounds, that lends itself to a previous generation of gaming, one we haven’t seen for a while.  And no matter how ridiculous and awesome the script is, it doesn’t compensate for the flaws in the design that become apparent with age.  This is like a museum piece come to life, albeit one that’s fantastic to play.

Over fourteen levels, you slaughter more and more enemies.  Wait.  Are they enemies?  Aren’t they all US soldiers?  Aren’t you technically their leader and they’re just being manipulated by the evil vice president?  Hmm, a moral conundrum!  Well, they’re all firing at you, so it seems like it’s a good idea to take them all down!  In fact, you can even smash your way up to charging a burst meter that allows you to fire your entire loadout in one massive attack simultaneously!  Suffice it to say that not many enemies will survive the barrage, especially once you’ve invested some money into better and more powerful weaponry.  The entirety of Metal Wolf Chaos XD feels that way, like a 90s action movie amped up to the Nth degree.  It actually feels surprisingly like the Earth Defense Force series and has a lot of the same straightforward structure as the recently released Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain.  Both games have the low budget but fun feel down, although Metal Wolf Chaos XD definitely has significantly better voice acting and an overall better script.

I’m not even getting into a detailed analysis of the political parallels that Metal Wolf Chaos XD unintentionally draws.  Obviously drawn from a caricature of American culture in the early 2000s just after 9/11, the entire plot revolves around what essentially amounts to propaganda, fake news, freedom fighters, a factionalizing of America, and a reexamination of American values.  It’s ironic that Devolver Digital and From Software would choose now to re-release Metal Wolf Chaos XD as it’s about as on the nose as you can get (outside of this excerpt from Carl Sagan’s A Demon Haunted World in 1995) for the current political climate, propaganda, and the general feel of the United States of America.  Pretty wild stuff and anyone that follows current politics will immediately notice it.

At $25, Metal Wolf Chaos XD is honestly a pretty good deal.  It’s fun to play, it’s wildly over-the-top, and the flaws from being 15 years old and essentially unaltered are easy to ignore.  Bottom line is that the game is worth playing, it’s mech-lite gameplay with none of the burdensome mechanics that more intense mech simulations have, and it’s utterly enjoyable.  Gamestop is also releasing a physical edition in the US at $29.99 and likely as the only official release of the game domestically, it’ll be collectible as hell.  Internationally, Special Reserve Games is also releasing a limited quantity of Metal Wolf Chaos XD physically and it will come with some unspecified extras and will ship internationally, so one way or another, we’ll all be able to play Metal Wolf Chaos XD.  And that’s a damn fine thing.

This review was based on a digital copy of Metal Wolf Chaos XD provided by the publisher.  It was played on an Xbox One X using a 55” 1080p Sony LED TV.  Freedom for American citizens was procured during the making of this review.  Metal Wolf Chaos XD is available for PS4 and PC as well.  Also, giant mechs rock.  All photos are from actual gameplay and are purposely from early sections of the game to avoid too many spoilers.