(Complete Slaughterfest) Iron Meat

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Hey, remember Contra? Run and gun 2D shooter? Well, this one chewed up Contra and spit something even sicker than that. Nonstop violence, gore, absolute splattering mayhem, and it never stops, never quits coming at you with everything it can throw.

Mutant human fodder and soldiers, turrets possessed, biological terrors coming in and out from all sides, my Xbox Series X controller is giving me thumb sores. Iron Meat, ok not such a catchy name, but you'll remember exactly why it exists in the first place. There are only a few games that takes running and gunning to the absolute extreme, even the most shameful moments in it.

The only complaints I have is about my Xbox Series X Bluetooth connection lag. Once that is fixed, I will come back and kick its ass one more time. You didn't see the last of Iron Guy or whatever the hell his name is. Yeah, it's short, but this is the best shortest experience you'll have.

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An experimental biological terror breaks out of captivity, man's own hubris on the loose, possessing a scientist before his contamination infects everyone in the lunar colony. Then teleports to the main military installation and all hell breaks loose. Only the dude that is me, can save the day.

Well, there's no day job like going deep into an alien invasion, and just mass cleansing every single bio terror with the outrageous choices of weapons pick-ups around. Every one of them has can shift how I engage in combat. If I continue to pick things without dying, my damage and rate keeps going up. I've like a tiny mobile unit with so much loaded arsenal. I'll even shoot rockets.

There's just shooting and jumping, moving with the d-pad or analog, and 7-axis aiming since down basically prones the guy. Which is very useful against dodging projectiles and air targets. Then again can sort of leave me vulnerable. He moves superfast, like those guys from Cuphead.

With limited amount of lives, each game level last 5–7 minutes. The first one I had waves of enemies coming at me, even the turrets, tunnels spawning creeps, it's not difficult to shoot the bots flying by, which is important by the way, then there are other spots like ports and boxes that also provides those pick-ups and I missed plenty. Important to get those, as there are enemies harder to kill.

Once I've completed it, I had 6 lives left. Since the boss took the rest, and yeah, it's not too much time taken, and if you needed help, just bring a friend along for 2 player co-op. But this was the actual easy one, the next one is insane. I had to progress vertically, meaning I had to platform jump, avoid death traps, shoot coming projectiles faster, and this stage where I had to kill several sentries or else I'll keep losing my lives, and start over. Starting over isn't good for me, though.

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Yes, there's grading every time I finish one, which unlocks these characters, allowing me to customize my character look from the head, chest, to legs. Pretty nice addition, and I guess some achievements too. But, back to the main game where I'm kicking ass.

Especially this boss on the second level, yeah I had an encounter with the possessed scientist himself in the second level. And he's already kicking my ass, absolutely. This guy, if this is a taste of what's to come. Sure looks like I'm going to be a goner several times. I never thought I would hate those damn worms, but they keep getting in the way.

Traps do exist, and often times involve proning, moving quickly, and well, sometimes they're close to unbeatable, because for my life of me, my hands starting to hurt badly. Then mix in the random enemy waves, and you have sheer insanity working here. Again, those weapon pick-ups, very important.

The following levels from the train run, and facility, gave me quite the run for my money. It's also where I found out I can find extra lives. It's easy to make a game like where crazies come in variety packages. But to balance them, only a person who played Super Mario Maker could have pulled this off.

I had serious fun, when I have a friend coming over, we'll go through the chaos together or rev up the playing fields to be more challenging. It has three difficulty settings for each level. Also, the train boss in the 3rd one is a possessed train, but with a giant skeleton on the last cart.

Like, yeah, it costs 18 USD. But, who doesn't want a crazier Contra? Maybe the next game will have 4 players co-op for the most insane playthrough possible. Now, time to get my controller checked.

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