Metal Slug Tactics Preview: New Genre for a Classic

Metal Slug Tactics Preview

Okay, the introductory sentence is not entirely correct, because Metal Slug undertook an excursion into the field of strategy twelve years ago: Only in Japan did Metal Slug Tactics appear for smartphones in 2009. With the current Metal Slug Tactics, which should come onto the market in 2022, everyone is allowed to run, and not on the mobile phone, but on all possible consoles, including the Nintendo Switch. Among other things, the Dotemu studio is behind the project. Retro fans will listen carefully at this point, because the French team not only has a soft spot for retro games, but also has a knack for skilfully transporting them to the present.

Table of contents

1 Morden does not stop killing 2 Rossi's slaughterhouse 3 Stronger, bigger, better The wonderful Streets of Rage 4 is about on their cap, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, which will be released later this year. Also on board are Leikir Studios, of which you haven't heard or played much apart from a bullet hell and arena action game. But that might change next year, because what these two studios want to serve us is already making our mouths water.

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Morden doesn’t let killing

At least some of the missions should be generated randomly so that you can play the levels over and over again. Hopefully it'll stay fair! Source: DotEmu Anyone who knows Advance Wars or Final Fantasy Tactics - or who has played the demo for the still outstanding Project Triangle Strategy - will certainly feel at home when looking at Metal Slug Tactics. You can see your battlefield from the iso view. As befits a metal slug game, you have to sabotage the machinations of the nasty Donald Murden. He went into hiding after his last defeat and used the time in hiding to raise an army. He returns abruptly in a coup in which he usurps the power of a country and once again it is up to the trigger-happy metal slug fighters to put the villain in his place. Only this time not with classic run & gun gameplay, but turn-based and with RPG and rogue-like elements.

Rossi's slaughterhouse

Narrow street canyons and roadblocks are not exactly ideal for the attacking Political party. With the right tactics you can still achieve victory! Source: DotEmu In addition to Morden, of course, all the other important characters in the series appear, for example Marco Rossi, one of the best-known faces of the series, the brisk Fio or the blonde Eri, are in your team. The different heroes have different, practical skills according to their equipment and character. In so-called sync attacks, the strengths of two characters can also be linked in order to achieve particularly effective results. One of these abilities is likely to be an air strike, with which Marco can attack enemy tanks on the upper floor of a ruin in the game scenes shown. The fact that the bombed projectile collapses and also damages or eliminates units in the radius and under the structure is promising.

The sync attack will cause a lot of damage to the opponents. The positioning of the heroes is important, they have to be close to each other. Source: DotEmu Fans of the genre know that tactically it is very important to place the troops cleverly and that differences in height can turn supposedly weak units into bulwarks. With the possibility of not only exploiting the terrain, but also being able to influence it through special maneuvers, exciting, new possibilities open up. And so that the missions don't get boring on the second run, the developers decided to have them generated at least partially by chance. This is a double-edged sword and requires a lot of attention on the part of the studios, so that in the end neither levels that are too similar nor jobs that cannot be achieved due to unfavorable starting conditions.

Stronger, bigger, better

The role-play elements come into play at the end of the battles. Your characters and your team gain experience, which not only improves your firepower, but also your special talents. The armament also needs to be considered: In order to win the war, you should only equip yourself with the best utensils you can afford.

So far there have been three scenes in the game: a desert, a big city , a kind of western settlement and the jungle. There are sure to be more areas waiting in the finished game. Already an almost forbidden good figure is made by the look, which is strongly based on the retro templates, but really looks very lively, detailed and classy. The hand-animated 2D cutscenes and character portraits that appear on the screen when a special ability is activated are also a real delight. The fact that Metal Slug Tactics will deliver is not yet set in stone, but the scenes shown give hope. It remains to be seen how well the random generation of the missions works and of course whether the game is fun - because that can only be assessed when it is released next year.