Once more Into The Breach?
I am a very casual enjoyer of Metal Slug games.
You die a bunch and say: “ah, that was good.”
You still die a lot.
And you still walk away feeling fairly happy about it.
Well, I did at least.
It really depends on your tolerance for roguelikey restarts.
Fights take place on griddy battlefields.
You get three characters, each with their own weapon loadouts and special skills.
Some tote lasers that can zap right through multiple enemies in a straight line.
Others have devices that let you grab enemies by the hair and hoist them to a distant tile.
To the tactics fiends among us, it seems straightforward to begin with.
Its similarities to Into The Breach in particular feel helpful in establishing what the game wants from you.
You also have two turn resets per battle.
Meaning that if you mess up a manoeuvre with multiple troops, you could rethink it entirely.
But quickly you see that you’re expected to be a little more aggressive than your average tactical trouncer.
Cover is sometimes helpful but staying still is not.
And you only generate “adrenaline” points in the same way.
“Remember,” the game teaches you, “we always run and gun”.
It’s also somewhat hard to get your head around, speaking as a traditionally tactical turtler.
Your goal might be to only kill a handful of special targets.
There is another layer to battlin' that can help you out.
It’s an interesting extra layer that you’ll need to exploit to get out of most scrapes alive.
I never felt like I truly got the hang of syncing up my attacks perfectly.
In the end, I often just went with my gut out of impatience.
I died a lot.
This is where the comparison with Into The Breach becomes unflattering.
Your options for both movement and combat were limited, and each enemy had its upcoming attacks clearly signalled.
It was just up to you to escape the checkmate.
Metal Slug Tactics doesn’t want to be so obvious, keeping most enemy movements to itself.
You are not even told where Rumi, the gung-ho death-enjoyer, is going to move to next.
It really starts to come into its own when new characters are unlocked following successful runs.
Knifey ninja Trevor can confuse enemies into attacking their own pals.
Beefcake Clark throws enemies around, making it easier to line up synchronised shots.
Nadia summons self-destructive robots that can cause a handy distraction but risk a lot of friendly fire damage.
They’re great additions.
But it did feel like these characters are slow to appear thanks to the challenging nature of some missions.
The repetitive radio chatter of your off-screen commander, Margaret, also slows things down considerably.
But maybe I shouldn’t keep comparing this to Subset’s masterwork.
Maybe we should instead compare it to other Metal Slug games.
In that case, I almost prefer this incarnation of the pixel pistoleers.
And as much as I like those twenty-minute sessions, I will never see these games through.
The character select screen yells each character’s name with the tinny echo of arcade enthusiasm.
“Fio!”
“Echo!”
I’ve accrued a fistful of these digi-quarters.
But you know what?
I’m content with what I’ve played.
Like a good Metal Slug game, I can happily walk away from it without seeing every last battlefield.
I’m fully satisfied with the time and quarters I’ve already spent.
