Metal Wolf Chaos XD is a time capsule from 2004 that allows its recipient to survey the United States' enthusiasm for boisterous violence and blind patriotism. The President stomping around in an eight-gun mech suit and delivering outrageous dialogue while suppressing a coup is nakedly hyperbolic, but it's also a lens to an outsider's interpretation of mid-aughts American culture. Metal Wolf Chaos, in addition to presenting a clumsy but capable action caper, has only improved with age.
For fifteen years, Metal Wolf Chaos persisted as one of gaming’s more enigmatic legends. Produced by (then) unheralded maestros at mech-and-fantasy obsessed FromSoftware, released in 2004 as an exclusive to the original Xbox’s imaginary Japanese audience, and featuring the President of the United States of America in a mech suit obliterating parades of an usurping military power, Metal Wolf Chaos was all of the pomp and war-consumed violence of contemporary Americana as perceived by those half-way around the world. Thanks to Devolver Digital and General Arcade, Metal Wolf Chaos, now branded as Metal Wolf Chaos XD, is finally accessible on modern platforms.
In 2004’s future of 2020, years of political unrest reveal a United States on the brink of another civil war. This conflict, which Metal Wolf Chaos constantly refers to as coup d’état, drives the 47th President Michael Wilson out of the White House by a military force led by the current Vice President Richard Hawk. On the player’s end, this is performed by donning an agile mech suit and eviscerating scores of ground troops on the White House lawn before entering a secret tunnel that leads to Air Force One, which then drains the nearby reflecting pool to reveal a hidden runaway. This allows the President’s plane to escape danger, somehow with his giant-weapon-equipped mech suit in tow.
This sequence proudly lays Metal Wolf Chaos’ cards on the table. It’s a game about crushing human fodder, demolishing pesky Enemy Towers, and outgunning gigantic bosses — all while grinding rare metal and money to develop and fund newer, better weapons. Metal Wolf Chaos is also a game created at the apex of the United States’ War on Terror, high on jingoism and willing to take whatever means necessary to justify whatever military objective someone else made up. Metal Wolf Chaos is also from the perspective of a Japanese development team’s estimation of American culture, leading to prose that feels awkward, voice-acting that is slightly off-kilter, and action that only escalates in its absurdity.
The player controls President Michael Wilson in the form of a bright red mech suit. Inside of the suit are slots for up to eight weapons, with some of the more powerful railguns and sniper rifles demanding two slots. An effective jump, a great jump-slam, and good-enough strafing movement exceed expectations of a lumbering brawler. While switching between weapons is a cumbersome product of its age, moving around in Metal Wolf Chaos—and balancing boost energy with the health bar it shares—is fast and effective. Learning its quirks felt like acquiring a skill.
Metal Wolf Chaos is composed of fourteen levels scattered across a selection of American cities. Miami is a beach lined with land mines and battleships, Chicago’s sprawling urban landscape is complimented with an elevated train, and the Grand Canyon’s chasms are spanned by perilous bridges. Completing a level requires the player to destroy yellow-highlighted targets on the map, which are almost always stationary towers and structures positioned throughout the expansive levels. Most levels also feature a climactic boss fight at or near its conclusion.
It’s not all mindless tower blasting. In Chicago, for example, poison gas is on the rise and the player needs to take out all of the odious towers before the parts-per-million reaches a lethal level (which is about five minutes). Alcatraz, with its island-spanning giant gun on the brink of discharging, carries a similar threat of time. Some levels, like Houston and Phoenix, are introduced with bosses that must be weakened through the elimination of targets positioned throughout the level. I suppose Metal Wolf Chaos does regularly come down to deploying all of your ammunition into whatever’s in your way, but some concrete objectives manage to outline its form with a bit of structure.
Metal Wolf Chaos is also a rudimentary loot game. Smashing tanks, soldiers, and any other form of opposition increases the amount of money earned at the end of a level. This money can be invested in upgrading the technology of machine guns, assault rifles, flamethrowers, and a variety of missile launchers and bazookas. While some special weapons can be found inside every level, most can be “developed” with money as they’re unlocked with a proper technology level. In the early parts of Metal Wolf Chaos I found myself repeating the Beverly Hills and Phoenix missions over and over until I obtained two machine guns that could liquefy everything in front of me.
Hostages and Energy Tanks comprise Metal Wolf Chaos‘ collectibles. The former are trapped in extremely fragile cages—gunfire, not missiles, can release them—and often positioned in obscure parts of each level. Collecting Energy Tanks eventually increases your total health, completely doubling it if you snag them all. Hostages also seem to increase science levels and other mechanics Metal Wolf Chaos fails to make clear, although I did appreciate how rescuing musician hostages allowed me to change the music away from its default setting.
To be honest I didn’t expect much from Metal Wolf Chaos’ production as a videogame. With 2004-era FromSoftware ten games deep into Armored Core, not mention adjacent Giant Robot titles in Frame Gride and the Xbox’s own Murakumo, I surmised Metal Wolf Chaos was going to deliver an uninspired, albeit passable, mech shooter indistinguishable from Gungriffon or MechAssault. Somewhere around the Alcatraz level I became obsessed with locating every hostage and every Energy Cell, which required a bunch of play-throughs, which meant I obtained my prized MG200/EN machine guns quite early. This left me not unlike that gif of Hank Scorpio and it was an effective strategy for every encounter not concerned with distance.
Sometimes, however, the debris of Metal Wolf Chaos’ budget and era will boil over the top. Trying to hop on boats while avoiding battleship missiles in the Miami level is a nightmare. Bosses dropping essential loot and then falling off screen with that loot, like in the second Washington DC level, isn’t great. Several weapon classes, like the pistol and the flamethrower, felt either worthless or superfluous. If your equipment is poorly selected a boss can melt your health-bar in seconds, and any death demands a complete replay of the entire level. Younger players without the context for how games (and especially b-games) behaved fifteen years ago may believe Metal Wolf Chaos isn’t worth their time. They are correct. It’s worth mine.
It’s difficult to undersell the absurdity of Metal Wolf Chaos’ narrative. You fight a giant gunship in Houston named OLAJIAWON presumably after The Dream himself. The President justifies every bonkers decision by stating “Because I am the President of the great United States of America.” Sentences like, “surrender now while your crimes are still not so serious,” and “have you forgotten your American soul” are delivered with gripping sincerity. The back-and-forth, Metal Gear Solid Codec-like dialogue between the President and his assistant Jody are all complete nonsense. Metal Wolf Chaos’ is the product of a time just before everyone started taking localization seriously and persists as an id-fueled descent into patriotic madness.
Listening to Metal Wolf Chaos’ dialogue—which was only ever recorded in english—I lost count of the number of times it either felt machine-translated or its writer only had a vague idea what they were referencing. The real-life Space Center Houston is referred to as the “Space Plane Station.” The in-game propaganda/news station DNN opens its scenes with “Dear fellow Americans.” Richard only demands a ransom of 500 million dollars. The voice actors sound like native english speakers, meaning they went along with Metal Wolf Chaos’ dialogue as it was directed. The machismo, the maniacal integrity, and the honest but naive attempt to appeal to a Western audience leaves Metal Wolf Chaos as the recipient of an unconsciously perfect performance. No one could have made something like this on purpose.
At the same time, there is an element of truth buried inside of Metal Wolf Chaos’ absurdity. Half of the story is delivered through cut-scenes or text dumps framed as reports from the in-game news network, DNN. The reporter constantly spins whatever’s happening against Michael, like altering the outcome Alcatraz level as Richard destroying the giant gun before Michael could operate it. In actual 2019 if you’ve witnessed extreme partisan websites and real news networks ameliorate and sanitize the insane comments and action of the actual 45th president, Metal Wolf Chaos’ political farce can function as legitimate satire.
In a revealing interview with Destructoid, Metal Wolf Chaos’ original producer Masanori Takeuchi framed the operating premise of the development team. Their exaggerated take on the political offices was compared to American media’s portrayal of ninjas as heroic figures capable of solving any problem with violence and ingenuity. Professional wrestling, with its warped sense of justice and operatic performances, was also cited as a significant influence. When Richard and Michael angrily scream their names at one another, it’s hard not to flashback to the Attitude Era of sports entertainment. Metal Wolf Chaos thrives as a caricature of Western culture.
It’s easy to see why Metal Wolf Chaos never made it west in 2004. The premature death of the original Xbox coupled with post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t create a healthy environment for a weird-ass action-political-rampaging-thriller like Metal Wolf Chaos. What’s presented is the most feverish and exaggerated take on America’s military outside of Senator Armstrong’s Shakespearean energy exploding out of Metal Gear Rising’s climax in 2013. Devolver Digital, a publisher whose reputation is founded not only supporting innovative independent development, but also publically not giving a fuck, deserves all the good will in the world for getting Metal Wolf Chaos out the door.
Metal Wolf Chaos XD is a time capsule from 2004 that allows its recipient to survey the United States’ enthusiasm for boisterous violence and blind patriotism. The President stomping around in an eight-gun mech suit and delivering outrageous dialogue while suppressing a coup is nakedly hyperbolic, but it’s also a lens to an outsider’s interpretation of mid-aughts American culture. Metal Wolf Chaos, in addition to presenting a clumsy but capable action caper, has only improved with age.
