Ah shock troopers, my first exposure to this was on the PSP aka SNK arcade classics

plot is pretty simple, leader of the bloody scorpion group kidnap a scientist and her granddaughter Cecilia to create a drug called Alpha-301 which turns humans into superhumans, 8 soldiers from 8 countries must then take out the leader to save Cecilia and her grandfather

it's your standard top down shooter but what I love about this is your perspective locks where you shoot, compared to early top down shooters you always have to reorient your character to the direction you want to shoot at (commando, mercs, ikari warriors), another big winner for me is the ability to roll and dodge bullets which makes the game much more fair
there's health items and weapons, there's super weapons as well but those rarely appear at all, the weapons you often get are either the vulcan or machine gun, there's also a melee attack but only works when your near an enemy and press the fire button

graphics are pretty alright despite most of it being prerendered, music is rockin and I love how each character has a specific moveset, big mama uses punches, milky uses a gun while the rest use knives

Though what bothers me is that the version I played which is the psp one, the life bars are completely different, in team battle all 3 characters share the same life bar
there's also the medal system which indicates if that specific character is good with the stages terrain, you also get a little bit of health
2 stars meaning the character is suited for that terrain and you get 1 extra heart, 3 stars meaning the character is really well suited for that terrain and you get 2 extra hearts for your lifebar
another thing I don't like are the bosses, the tank, helicopter and forklift with the spikes are reused a lot, the huge henchmen also just operate the same way only the guy with shades has bigger bullets, the final boss is the same thing only now he uses a sword, a missile launcher and his fists, repetitive but offers some good challenge

this plays much better compared to capcom's mercs, it's much more fair and fun, also love the team battle system where you get to pick 3 characters of your choice to form your team, why I prefer team battle is because of the bomb specials, marie bee has homing missiles, milky has flame bombs and big mama has the bazooka which helps a lot in the final boss
and again, each character can move either slowly or quickly depending on the terrain your on, it makes lonely wolf more of a challenge

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