To a certain degree, I kind of expected this. Metal Slug 3 is just in that venue of games that just wont get the understanding from most mainstream reviewers. Maybe not get the attention of the mainstreamers, in general. Stuff like this is a solid reminder of the odd changes in average gamer mentality, of which I can't say is an overall improvement. Sega AM2's worry about how Americans take arcade games, in general, is sort of justified by reviews like this. It's to the point that the content of the IGN review pretty much spells, the opinion, all out for you, word for word.
First of all the review takes pot shots at(no exaggeration, it literally does it):
1. The whole arcade game scene.
2. The Neo Geo original version of Metal Slug 3.
3. This version and the worth of it after glossing over extras.
If there's one thing, in the review, that seemed useful info for me, was to what extent the live scoreboards were used. I'm not exactly sure if it is implemented too well if you manually upload the scores. The cool thing about how the Microsoft Gaming Studios games do Live scoreboards is that they not only require you to play the game while on Live (for live scoreboards), that feature is a part of a great system to prevent cheating on your scores. The upload option sounds like it (like the Dreamcast-online scoreboards before it) allows people to do some off-line hacking before uploading scores. Needless to say, if such a thing is possible and starts occurring, then it'll be best we get our gamertags together, so we can compete on a level and fair playing field.
Still, it's technically SNK's first foray on the Live tip, and they did get the game out in a quick and timely fashion; so I guess it is a good thing that after we find out what they did, that we give them good feedback on how to improve their Live options. Especially for those of us, who have first-hand experience with good examples of how Live options should be done.
The good thing about all of this, is that the average review scores aren't really dismal. It's always nice to see a 2D (low-rez) arcade game not averaging scores lower than a 7, regardless of animation/game quality. Hopefully, the game will be still available when a price drop occurs, so that those on-the-fence people will at least give MS3 a try and see what kind of gaming they've been missing. If there is one vintage shooter series that deserves a sudden popularity explosion, this is one.