> 1. ''Outsourced'' to a different developer due to SNK's bankruptcy transition
> phase

That doesn't automatically make it bad.

> 2. Took away all the outlandish and surreal elements that the MS series had
> built up over the years, and hauled it all in a truck to the local dump. Aliens,
> Crabs, etc, gone. Back to the reused nazi soldiers from all the past games, and
> even more insulting, reusing backgrounds from even MS1.

Can't say I missed the aliens. I thought of MS4 as a welcome return to the Metal Slug roots.



> You obviously don't know how to play MS, you don't just free play and
> continue-every-10-seconds-cause-you-can't-even-kill-a-puny-soldier your way
> through the game, you gotta learn how to survive, how the fuck do you think
> Rambo lasted his ass for 3 movies?

I'm a bit confused by that last line. But I know perfectly well HOW to play MS3 - go incredibly slowly, take two steps then spend five minutes shooting everything 50 times with your dismally-underpowered pistol because there are far more enemies than your decent weapons have ammo for, then take two more steps and do it again, and again and again and again. It's perfectly possible, it's just *incredibly fucking boring*. That wasn't the sort of gameplay that made me love the Metal Slug games in the first place, whereas the speedier, more fun style of MS4 and MS5, much closer to the first one, is.