YMMV / Metal Wolf Chaos

• Awesome Music:
  • "Metal Fighter." One-Woman Wailing Ominous Japanese Chanting over an Epic Riff? Hell yes.
  • "The Last Hero". An epic remix of the game's Recurring Riff, which accompanies Michael finally returning back to the White House and taking his home back from Richard's forces.
  • The main theme itself also qualifies, even if it's unusually melancholic-sounding for a game like that.
  • The gameplay trailer for the XD port uses the song "Fallout" from the Armored Core 20th Anniversary Soundtrack to great effect.
• Cheese Strategy: Quite often, a lot of boss enemies and target areas can be cheesed by hiding somewhere and charging up the railgun to full power, then walking to the target and shooting it. Provided right firing angle, it's quite possible to destroy multiple buildings in a single volley or one-shot a boss. Even the Ultimate Weapon is not immune to this tactic, though it's harder due to the insane amount of missiles it launches and deflector shields damping the damage.
• Complete Monster: Vice President Richard Hawk ousts the heroic Michael Wilson from office, proceeding to turn the U.S. into a military dictatorship under his control. Using prisoners of war as shields, Richard proceeds to order them gunned down while also attacking American cities in an attempt to kill Michael, now piloting the mechanical armor known as Metal Wolf. Richard reinstitutes slave labor, selling people in Miami into white slavery, and attempts to frame Metal Wolf by using poison gas to wipe out Chicago before also using a giant mech to try to wipe out New York. When Michael defeats him, Richard attempts to flee to space, where he has prepared the Ultimate Weapon to wipe out all of the United States out of spite at his loss.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • As if Richard's atrocities weren't enough, he enacts a law that calls for the immediate public execution (by guillotine) of any Metal Wolf sympathizers who don't confess by a previously set timeline. Along with their family members within four separations. And their old classmates. AND their friends and co-workers.
  • The whole game is this. Foreign game where the president saves the U.S. by killing lots of people? Offensive. American president saving the country by staging a one-man war on his vice president in a mecha suit while blowing lots of shit up and spitting out cheesy one-liners in the most hot-blooded fashion ever? Awesomesauce.
  • The XD remaster of the game, which is a Japanese-made game about the American president blowing stuff up, was released on the 74th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II.
• Demonic Spiders: The Kamakazes, unmanned walking bombs that will charge into you and explode, causing damage and giving any other nearby Kamakazes an opportunity to continuously pounce on Metal Wolf.
• Ham and Cheese: Arguably a completely intentional version of this (as in, FromSoftware was aiming towards this effect). You can practically hear the voice actors laughing in the studios as they're recording.
• Memetic Badass: Nothing is impossible for Michael Wilson! And the reason is, because HE'S THE PRESIDENT OF THE GREAT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Fans often compliment this game by calling it "Too American for America", due to the ironic fact it was developed in Japan and was never officially released in the U.S. for almost 15 years.
  • There's a tendency for discussions of the game to be interrupted with MICHAEL!!!
  • RICHAAAAAAAARD!!!!!!!!
  • HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW!?!
  • BURNING AMERICAN FREEDOM or BURNING AMERICAN JUSTICE, the respective mottos of Michael and Richard, which will always be in full caps and bold when possible.
  • "And the reason is... I AM THE PRESIDENT OF THIS GREAT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!1!!1!"
  • Michael's Incoming Ham Battle Cry from the Signature Scene listed below.
    Michael: "LET'S PARRRTYYYYYYYYY!!!"
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: This game has an enormous fanbase among Americans. By far the single most offensive thing about the game to most Americans who have heard of it is the fact that it was a Japan-only release for the longest time. Luckily, that changed in 2018, which saw an announcement of the XD port getting an international and multi-platform release, and it was finally released in 2019.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The aforementioned HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?! Cue hail of explosive death.
  • Also any time Peter McDonald says the name "Money Money Gold"—it just rolls off the tongue.
  • Richard Hawk's Evil Laugh. Oh goody, Incoming Ham!
• Nightmare Fuel: Shooting the President statue in the White House and Fight House stages will cause the echoing sound of Michael Wilson's father scolding you.
• Narm Charm: The voice acting and writing as a whole. It's ridiculous, insane, and completely over the top. The voice acting is pure Ham and Cheese. The premise is ludicrous. And yet, this game wouldn't even be half as good if it wasn't so corny.
• Signature Scene: First mission: The front-flip Rocket Jump out of the White House. Spoiler: The White House explodes behind him as a result. It was even used prominently in Devolver's big E3 reveal as if to say "You're not imagining this, we're really doing it!"
• Tainted by the Preview: Downplayed. While many were ecstatic about Metal Wolf Chaos finally getting a remaster that would be available outside of Japan, some were skeptical about the quality and direction of the XD port due to the announcement trailer featuring many missing effects and shaders from the original Xbox version, most notably the very "clean" look of Metal Wolf itself versus the battle-worn and gritty look it had from the original. However, one of the developers of the remaster reassured fans and newcomers alike that they were working towards attempting to give the remaster the same look and feel of the original, with the visuals being further improved by the v1.03/v1.04 patch.
• That One Achievement:
  • Medal of Honor, which requires you to defeat Richard's Ultimate Weapon without losing a single unit of Shield. You can take some damage during said boss fight, but you can't let it deal enough damage to cause Metal Wolf to lose Shields, which is easier said than done due to the sheer amount of missiles it throws at you and some of its other nastier tricks to catch you off guard.
  • Lord of War, which requires unlocking and manufacturing every weapon in the game. The problem comes from how to get some of these secret weapons, which isn't hinted by the game. Some of them demand performing daunting and time-consuming tasks such as scoring many "COOL!" kills, racking many high chain combos, completing all stages with a total time of under 45 minutes, and having a total of under 2,200 ammo consumed among others, with a few of the secret weapons not being worth the hassle to unlock them.
• That One Boss:
  • The Warner on Liberty Island. If you come here without the ideal weapons to fight this behemoth of a tank, chances are you will struggle with the time limit to destroy it before the boss destroys its target.
  • The fight against Richard Hawk in Las Vegas. Not only it's essentially a Mirror Boss but God forbid you enter the level without the RH tier weapons. Also during his last segment he will use Burst Attack, rendering him invulnerable for a time and also his RG-RH shot can insta-kill you with stun-lock. Since there are no other enemies to fill your Burst Attack, you must find the Burst Attack power-up in the casino and then use it at the same time to counter his Burst Attack or dash like mad to try and dodge shots.
  • The Ultimate Weapon's second form doesn't pull any punches. It launches a shit ton of missiles that will shred you apart if you're in one spot for too long. In addition, the thing has shields, which can dampen the damage of a ill-timed Burst Attack.
• That One Level:
  • Alcatraz. It's a Timed Mission where you have ten minutes to rush to destroy a huge railgun before it fires on San Francisco, and it's packed with stuff to slow you down. For one, there are a number of charging stations that you can destroy to "slow down the cannon's charge", in quotation marks because the stations' defenses get ridiculous deeper in: toward the beginning of the mission, there are a couple that take one or two bazooka shots to destroy, while the last couple of stations are so bulky you'll likely spend more time trying to destroy them than you'll earn back by doing so. One section of the main path is dotted with near-invisible mines that will blast a health bar and a half away, and since you're rushing to get to the cannon in time it's very easy to slam into them, and it culminates in a hard-hitting tank that soaks up tons of damage and is flanked by two equally burly defense towers.. There's tons of side paths that hold valuable hostages to free or power cells, and traversing them will eat up so much time there's next to no way to get them all on the first run, necessitating multiple playthroughs. The complete package is an absolute nightmare, and a reminder that "Oh yeah, this is a FromSoftware game."
  • The Grand Canyon, thanks to the sheer lack of safe ground and abundance of death drops, not to mention the lack of checkpoints. Falling in a pit at any point means starting the entire level again.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While the v1.03/1.04 update for the XD remaster fixed most of the visuals and restored some effects missing from the original Xbox release, there is an error that was introduced in the update that caused the Moonlight Sword's shockwave beam effects to become broken and flat whereas in earlier versions of the remaster or the Xbox original had the effects working as intended. The distortion effects used in places such as the Alcatraz Cannon's charging animation also remains missing in the XD remaster.
• Values Resonance: Quote Gamespot to the XD re-release:
  "Playing through the game now, however, it's hard not to draw parallels with the events and storytelling tropes of the game and today's political climate. With homegrown terrorism, fascism, and propaganda on the rise, it can make some of the events of the game feel eerie—even when its story is totally absurd. Between levels, you're treated to breaking news segments from major news channels where your battles against the Hawk's militia are intentionally misconstrued and repackaged as propaganda. Essentially, fake news."

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