The Metal Slug series would have been low on my list as a candidate for a tactics game. Better known for bombastic 2D run ‘n’ gun shooting, it’s the antithesis of a slower, more thoughtful tactics games. Like its iconic pixellated tanks though, Metal Slug Tactics is ready to blow those expectations to smithereens.
General Donald Morden is the returning big bad, and having escaped justice – as bad men always seem to do – he’s declared martial law in Sirocco City. This is A. Bad. Thing. and you are part of the ragtag team sent in to stop him.
There’s plenty of early familiarity to the way that Metal Slug Tactics works. An isometric view is broken down into a grid, and you move your units about the map as far as their movement allows, before then using whatever offensive technique is available to you.
Leikir Studios haven’t sat on their pixelated laurels though, and while publisher Dotemu is behind stellar upgrades and reimaginings like Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap and Streets of Rage 4, it’s nice to see that they’ve taken a fresh approach to the tactics genre. The further your unit moves, the more Dodge resources they generate, and that stat reduces how much damage your character takes. Combined with using cover to further protect you, you can effectively charge through the enemies’ defences and unleash devastation. This makes it feel like Metal Slug.
Your special abilities further enhance that feel. These are powered by Adrenaline, another resource you gain with longer movement, via jumps, or through certain passive abilities and actions. You can save these abilities up to cause massive damage, calling in airstrikes or amping up your unit’s weaponry, and they’re critical to success against some of the larger tanks and enemy units you come up against.
The last key to the tactical puzzle is syncing up your attacks, positioning your team so that they’ll all join in with their own additional attacks, whittling down the enemies’ health bars as they do. In other series, this might feel optional, but here it’s downright essential, particularly at the start of each run before you’ve had a chance to buff your team.
Suddenly, Metal Slug Tactics all starts to make sense. Leikir have translated the run ‘n’ gun ethos of the original into a tactics game with startling clarity, without overcomplicating things, and it’s somehow balanced the outlook of the series and its new form. As a long-time fan of Metal Slug, who also happens to love games like Fire Emblem and Triangle Strategy, it’s a perfect mix.
It helps that it looks so pretty. The isometric viewpoint leans into the original’s pixel-art design, and everything feels authentic to the series. That’s before the hi-res artwork appears, lifting the UI, character conversations and special abilities so that it feels unequivocally modern.
That modernity then stretches into the game’s progression system, lifting roguelike elements so that you start a new run each time, gaining experience to level up your characters and their abilities as you advance. You choose your route across each stage, the map offering different rewards in each area. Again, it makes perfect sense with Metal Slug’s arcade roots, and it retains the addictive one-more-go design that would have ensured you kept ploughing money into the slot.
It definitely doesn’t go easy on you, and there’s that early punishment you’d expect from a Roguelike, but once you’ve got a handle on what it expects of you, and you’ve started to level up your team, things start to become easier for you.
Fans of 90s arcade games will love the sound design as well, which is thoroughly old-school. Between the energetic electronic soundtrack and the digitised voice work, Metal Slug Tactics sounds like you could be in the 90s, and it’s utterly brilliant, at least if you’re old enough to be played by the nostalgia card.
