UnMetal is a love letter to retro games and a parody of the original NES game Metal Gear and like the original Metal Gear, UnMetal is a overhead military action-adventure game with stealth elements; but unlike the NES game, UnMetal is dripping with humour and Easter egg nods towards other franchises and video games. Anyone who has played popular games and watched popular movies in the last 30 years will have a blast discovering the plethora of Easter eggs.
The game plays like the original NES game but with modern mechanics, for example in UnMetal you can pick up bodies and hide them, this being primarily a stealth game. You can also search the bodies for extra supplies and you can combine different items to create other items, but be careful as you can combine the wrong things which could be catastrophic. For example when I was going through all the items I had found so far and combining them to discover new items and in my haste I combined a jerry can full of fuel with a smoking cigarette butt, which you can imagine did not end well. To no ones surprise except mine because I was not paying attention I blew up the protagonist and got a Game Over screen which I thought was hilarious.
You play as Jesse Fox who gets arrested in the beginning for a crime he didn't commit and the army men that are arresting him even remark upon it. This first scene sets the whole tone of the game from now on and just gets better and funnier. The whole game unfolds through an interrogation which takes some seriously funny turns. Jesse does not have the best memory which leads to some funny moments and even gives you some choices in what you face in certain locations. For example in one scene where Jesse enters a building you get the choice of 1 guard or 2 guards and if they were asleep or awake. This gives you some control over how difficult some parts of the game is. Though it is not always clear which option is the easy or the hard, one of the options was between Vikings and exterminators, I chose exterminators but what I got were ex-Terminators, as in former Terminators, as in relentless killing machines. So I reloaded and chose the Vikings which were pretty much like normal guards except they were light sleepers but can be restrained as long as you have the right materials. This is a very fun mechanic that increases the re-playability a little bit and can lead to some hilarious moments because of Jesse´s spotty memory.
Though the game is a parody of the original NES Metal Gear, thankfully they did not completely copy the style and the graphics are more 16 bit than 8 bit. The sound design is on point and the voice acting is excellent. The level design is very good and not at all confusing, there are some environmental puzzles that do not feel too tough or obtuse. The controls are responsive. The writing is the main attraction here though and will leave you in stitches throughout this 10-13 hour journey with you most likely willing to jump right back in to see the other options you didn't make on your first playthrough.
In conclusion UnMetal is a very fun and funny game. If you like the Metal Gear series or any of @unepic_fran´s other games, you´ll instantly feel at home with UnMetal. They all have the same type of humour and eye for detail. Absolutely recommend UnMetal. If you´ve not done so yet go and try UnEpic and Ghost 1.0
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