Metal Wolf Chaos XD review – unreconstructed mad mech trash

In 2004, when Metal Wolf Chaos was first released on the original Xbox, it didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it out of Japan. Any sane publisher would have taken one look at this mad B-movie robot game, in which the 47th President of the United States (Michael) dons a mech suit and blows up most of the continent to quash an insurrection led by his former vice-president (Richard), and correctly assessed that it was at best a nonsense curiosity. Now, though, its developer FromSoftware is famous thanks to Dark Souls and we have cheap digital downloads, so this mostly dreadful and yet somehow fascinating relic of a long-dead era of video games has made an unexpected reappearance. Given the merest visual upgrade, it is otherwise an unreconstructed mad robot romp from the mid-oos, with appalling voice acting and overblown, poorly translated cutscenes that truly must be seen to be appreciated in all their awfulness. Lines such as "The fight will continue … as long as the America in my heart is still alive!" are so common that after a while I forgot even to cringe at them.