Recent reviews by Fred

Great game! Has a lot of charm to it - including odd & funny characters & enemies and lots of door kicking!

Gameplay-wise, this is a turn based RPG at its core. The game does take a lot of liberties though, and it's very different from your run of the mill RPG!

Grinding isn't really necessary and enemy battles are avoidable while walking around in the world. While there aren't an excessive amount of battles, they can however be quite long at times.

You have a lot of options for customizing your 3 party members as well! Their stats can be changed a lot with class mods and there's a wide variety of attacks / abilities / passives that lets you try many different play styles.

As one could have hoped for a game themed around music, the soundtrack does deliver! 🎵

All in all, this game is definitely worth a play!

A game that used to be a bit rough around the edges but consistently kept (and keeps!) improving.
If you've never given the game a try, your time is soon! The game is set to get a massive update (new campaign called Path of Exile 2, new skill system, etc) some time in the near future!

This game follows closely in the footsteps of SOTN and the DSvanias and adds in some new fun movement abilities and skills. There's also a wide array of items and equipment to find. The environment, enemies and the music are just great!

This is the IGAvania we asked for, I'm glad I backed this game!

This is a fantastic soundtrack. It's a comfy, atmospheric blanket of synth layers that sets the tone perfectly for the game. I definitely recommend turning down voice and sfx to 70% or so for a better audio experience!

Mainly composed on old analog synthesizers, this is a love letter to old sci-fi soundtracks and early synth music. David Earl (the composer) mentions Vangelis, Wendy Carlos and old Kubrick movies for inspiration, among others.
There's a YT video titled "Double Fine Action Show! // Episode 1: Headlander Launch!!" which features David Earl talking some about the soundtrack and doing a live performance. Starts at 1:31:15.

Two things to mention:
1. The soundtrack isn't identical to what's heard in the game. "Rebel Base" sticks out to me, with the bass guitar being heavily toned down here compared to in the game.

2. The last few tracks doesn't have their name field filled in, and the steam store track listing doesn't match the actual files. Luckily it seems like the filenames are correct and the steam store is wrong. It's just a bit tilting.

(I wrote this mostly to discuss the port, less so the gameplay.)


Wow! This port is pretty bad! I didn't even go into this expecting much.
With official ports you simply have to accept that it will be subpar to other alternatives, that's just how it is. But sometimes they can be almost good! Sadly, that was not the case here. I had no problems playing the actual game, at least.

First off, the game was only able to map about 50% of my controller's buttons. OK. That's to be expected, I can work with that. At least there was an attempt at DirectInput support.

Video options are a letdown. Scaling can be set to nearest neighbor, or bilinear without any form of prescaling. Needless to say, neither option is very attractive.

Sound is not emulated correctly. This shows most on the various beeps in the game, and the music not being able to keep a stable tempo.


As for the actual game... I'm kinda biased against arcade games, so there's that.

The game, like most arcade games, will eventually throw everything it has at you and say "we want more money now". If you don't know what's coming ahead of time, chances are you'll be putting in a lot of credits. The port features an "infinite credits" mode, however.

The controls aren't terrible, but they're not good. Whose idea was it to make fire+jump the self-destruct command for vehicles!? Completely baffling.
Sometimes it's harder than it should be to turn around.
The original game doesn't have autofire, the port adds an autofire however. I can't complain - my sore gaming wrists are happy to see this! Remember to stretch, kids.

The game lags quite a bit... the game is laggy by itself, but I'm no Metal Slug expert so I can't say how much of it is poor emulation.

Ultimately, it's a somewhat fun and short run n' gun hampered by being an arcade game (my own negative opinion of arcade games, as mentioned earlier). The game features splendid 2D art, which looks less splendid after the port does job.


I wouldn't recommend Metal Slug X. The port is not very good, and I personally can't recommend it for the gameplay either (which isn't to say it's a downright bad game).

Very imprecise controls when timing and placement matters. No thanks.

I tried to write a long review, but steam ate it. So here's the short version.

It's good. Really good, it's like an 12/10. The story is a bit so-so, also unfortunate that there are less MGS cutscenes than in previous games. The gameplay well makes up for it, however.

YOU'RE PRETTY GOOD!

I don't think I ever quite got how to play this game. Still, shooting everyone to open the next area was pretty fun.

Stuff to find, bad guys to shoot and some optional puzzle mini dungeons to solve. Great game!

Fantastic game! Some puzzles totally went past me, but hey! That's what the Internet is for.