GOTD 5/31/2016: Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad (Neo Geo)
Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad is a late Neo Geo AES & MVS game from Saurus, and is a follow-up to the excellent Shock Troopers. Both games are overhead run 'n guns a la Mercs/Commando, but with big, colorful Neo Geo flare. In 2nd Squad, one or two cooperative players set out to take on the evil organization DIC, who are using their business and military connections to create chaos and take power. The four selectable members must travel the world and use poorly-constructed english taunts to stop the spread of evil by blowing it up.
Each squad member has his or her own unique weapon and bomb attack, having different ratings and firing patterns. I personally prefer to play as LULU, whose primary gun has a wide spread pattern and tosses a nice grenade out with good range and power, but the others have their own strengths and weaknesses. Guns are powered up by picking up "P" icons, and collecting three levels your shot. "W" icons replenish bombs or special weapons, which are common to all characters as pickups. These include weapons like a round shot that spirals out a circle of glowing orbs, a flame thrower that does exactly what you'd expect, and a missile launcher, which sends out a barrage of slow, but deadly rockets. There are also vehicles that can be commandeered to attack and run over enemies with, and they can each execute a charge attack as well.
The scoring system in Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad is a bit different from the norm. The way you get both item drops and score multipliers is by chaining melée kills, which are performed by tapping fire at point blank range, which is made easier thanks to your jump evasion move, during which you are invincible. Aside from the aforementioned weapons and health restoratives, enemies will drop items that rotate through various values and, finally, letters. Each character has a different word below his or her status bar, and picking up the correspinding letters scores a huge bonus... but if you should pick up any letters not in your word, you lose all letters collected. This system isn't necessary for completion, but is very important for chasing score. Also, if you stand idle for a bit with extra power-ups, your character will reload and cash them out for another big bonus.
The Shock Troopers games are often referred to as a top-down Metal Slug, and that's pretty accurate. Aside from the already mentioned commonalities, enemies and characters are rather cartoon-y in appearance, and have violent, fluidly drawn death animations. 2nd Squad is often shelled for being less original and cutting many interesting ideas from the original, but I like it a lot for its colorful style and characters. It has a pre-rendered appearance for a lot of the larger sprites, but they are far more colorful than the norm of that style. 2nd Squad did receive a Japan-only AES release, which is very pricey, but the MVS cart I have is one of the cheaper MVS titles due to its international popularity, and usually goes for $50 or less. I've been a big fan since I first played it in 2001, so it was one of my first buys when I got my MVS cabinet.
Played it?
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