Slave Zero is one of those arcade shoot-a-tons that does many things by the numbers. What it does add is an interesting setting made of building-sized robots, but that novelty tends to wear out fast, and overall the game doesn't really have any difference from any other shooter with normal-sized robots. Sure, you can stomp on little guys, but you'll probably stop doing that soon. Even if generic, though, it all kinda works. The shooting is fast and satisfying, weapons don't have much impact but then it's an arcade title, the platforming is never frustrating, and the battles are generally challenging while not frustrating the player too much (with one exception, the final boss). It's just too bad that it ends pretty soon. The graphics were probably the only reason why this game managed to reach some notoriety at its time. It was marketed heavily on its support to Enviroment-Mapped Bump Mapping, a kind of bump mapping that only worked on Matrox G400 and looked much more realistic that the Emboss offered by other cards at the time. Only Expendable and Slave Zero ever supported it, so there's at least some history there. Too bad only the main character is bump mapped - and to be fair, it looks weird. I actually liked the Emboss version better. For this price, anyway, it's good fun for the few hours it will take to complete.
Magic Carpet, love it or hate it, is unlike anything that came before it - essentially it was a first person action-strategy game with a fully 3D world. MC2 is very similar, but changes things around a bit, probably in order to appeal to more players. Gone is the open-ended structure of the levels, now you have to follow precise mission objectives. This does give the game more focus, and adds more variety, but also results in a much easier game. Killing enemy wizards is especially easy now. The game in general is not nearly as hard as MC1, although you'll still die quite a bit, and overall it's not particularly long either, having only half the level count of the original. New monsters and new spells (now divided in tiers) have been added, but for the most part, the formers are annoying and the latters are useless. Technically it was improved however, especially the game speed not being dependant on the CPU speed anymore, so you won't need to tinker with Dosbox to make it run at the right speed. Night levels have been added, and they are quite the lookers. The same can't be said about underground levels which, while purposely dreary, also end up being pretty annoying to play through. But open levels are better structured than the ones in MC1, which sometimes looked as if they were created with a random generator. MC2 is probably a better introduction for new players. If you liked this game, you can then try Magic Carpet as well, because it will require some more thinking.
