What I played of it was fun, but it was far too buggy.
I recommend waiting till bugs are fixed.

Way too buggy for a full release. Great gameplay but it needed more time in the oven.

While I typically abhor checklists, I believe there's value in using one here. For a series long dormant like Metal Slug (Other than the brief belch of caustic dust that was Awakening), much of this game's appeal is how effectively it evokes its subject matter.

Thus, I've composed an objective list of criteria to measure this game against, after which it will receive an official Metal Slug rating.

☑ Has a Metal Slug
☑ Highly expressive, comedic pixel art and animation.
☑ War machines that look as if their engineering schematics were written in Comic Sans.
☐ Arcade hard difficulty.
☑ Military jazz soundtrack.
☑ Move-or-die gameplay.
☐ The guy says "Heavy Machine Gun"
☐ Discoverable power-ups mid level.
☑ Mummies!
☐ Zombies!
☑ Your guy screams "Noooooooooo" on death.
☑ Your girl screams shrilly on death.
☐ "See you in Hell"


[...]

Oh, you're still here? Did you want an actual review? Why would you come to the Steam review section for that?

Fiiiinnnnnnnne. First some quibbles. As a tactics game, it's a little lacking on content, with only four levels and a handful of enemies types. Characters offer different playstyles, but there's a lot of ability overlap to muddy those distinctions. I also wish the harder difficulties were unlockable right away, as you might need them to feel challenged. It's got some bugs (an overlapping music bug might force a restart on occasion), but patches have been squashing them so far.

All that aside, the emphasis on sync kills and moving as much as possible each round encourages tactical creativity. The game excels at presenting you with a seemingly hopeless starting situation, then making you feel like a genius when you scramble out a victory.

If you're the type who would play Metal Slug until you could 1CC it, I suspect you'll love this game. Alternatively, if you're the type who noted the FAT transformation was missing from my checklist, you may feel the content mass of this Slug is too light, and could use some more plating.

If you're not a Metal Slug fan, I'm not sure how you got here, but Into the Breach is three klicks west (stick around though if you've already conquered that warfront.)

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