Metal Tales: Overkill [Xbox]
A new tale of metal, Zerouno Games’ Metal Tales: Overkill is a roguelike dungeon crawler with a strong emphasis on its heavy metal soundtrack. Funded via Kickstarter, it’s a sort-of upgraded version of a previous title, Metal Tales: Fury of the Guitar Gods (under a different developer). The God ‘Kuk’ has possessed all of your metalhead brethren, so it’s up to you to rescue them. To begin with, you can choose from two playable characters: Axel and Eve, with an additional two to unlock upon defeating Timo and Kuk, respectively. Characters have stats for Life, Speed, Cadency and Damage, with their own starting guitar (that can be swapped out for alternates as you find them), and items such as guitar amps (bombs) and keys. You can play alone, or with a friend, with each of you taking on the role of different characters, however we did find that the intro oddly focuses on one particular character (as if it’s you), despite not being an available option - either at the beginning, or later.
There’s an opening comic scene that has no music, which we found to be a surprisingly odd choice, given the whole premise of the game. But, upon going into the Options menu for Sound, we discovered that by default all options are turned down to the minimum - so we started over and found that the opening scene actually does have music and voice acting. There is also an option to change the scale of the user interface, with it being set to the minimum by default as well - however this makes it very difficult to see. Additionally, there’s an ‘End Room Animation’ for when you’ve cleared a room of all enemies, and this was also switched off - meaning people that don’t explore these options at the start are gonna miss out. I’m not sure why the options were this way when we began, but bear that in mind if you’re going to play! The controls can be done in two ways, either as a twin stick shooter (with or without the right trigger to shoot - another menu option) or using the face buttons to shoot in any particular direction, and this can feel decent with some characters - but frustrating with others due to slow speeds.
You can draw a lot of parallels to The Binding of Isaac (which the developers state that they were inspired by), from the Jukebox that spits out items within the Shop after every so many coins put in, to the almost-purposefully vague item descriptions to force you to learn the items that work best. Even how some items work feels very similar to Isaac, with guitar strings being similar to the Pills, and an item available to skip through to the next stage. Obviously many of these elements will be available across a variety of roguelikes, but it definitely has a very sort-of watered-down Isaac feel (or maybe Isaac just spoiled us?). The shopkeeper is just a fairly static character, with no personality and no chat, so it feels like there’s almost no reason for them to be there - it would have been good for them to maybe explain an item or offer discounts, but nope - nada. Sadly, the items you pick up and the stuff available to buy at the shops will always remain somewhat of a mystery, as you don’t really get much in the way of guidance as to what they do. Some will be clear that they increase your speed, or boost your life, but others have such vague wording that you’ll just be kinda guessing what they do - and there’s no Collection screen to look over unlocked items afterwards. There also seems to be a severe lack of items, so you’ll find yourself picking up the same few items repeatedly as you work your way through the game, and whilst this does help you to gain an understanding of those items, it takes away that excitement of coming across a new item and hoping it will be something effective - or maybe even overpowered!
The key art for the game looks fantastic, so we were underwhelmed by the slightly generic and repetitive level designs within the game itself. There’s not a great deal of enemies to fight either, with most of the available designs found right the way through, with only a couple of new types added as you progress. Boss designs are quite cool, and each boss has their own music track that plays during their fight - but they sadly don’t offer much challenge, often being defeated in under a minute, without dealing us any damage in the process. After defeating a boss, you will gain a Summon that can be called upon when required via the D-Pad; such as Sirtania, who can heal wounds; and Abigail, who has a powerful ‘ten finger chord’. The soundtrack is fantastic, though this should be expected for a game so heavily inspired by heavy metal! With a variety of actual real-world bands providing the music for the soundtrack, you’re bound to find some tracks you like - especially if you’re a metal fan. The Extras section has an overview of all of the bands with music in the game, if you’re looking to find out who any of them are - there’s certainly a few that I hadn’t heard of prior to now.
A minor gripe we had was when it came to the layout of the map - most rooms made sense when it came to the map, however we noticed that entering the boss room would frequently cause us to come in from a different direction than the door we’d just entered. Sometimes you will find danger directly on the other side of a door, such as gaseous corpses (if you’ve previously cleared the room), that will cause you to take damage as soon as you go near them, which quickly becomes frustrating! Each time you die, you’ll earn Metalium, which can be spent on permanent upgrades for your character, including a power-slide dodge that comes in handy when there’s a lot going on on-screen. There are also Missions to complete as you work through the levels, and doing so earns you more Metalium, though it seems that most of these are either glitched currently, as completing the objective doesn’t mark them off (or give you the reward); or maybe they just aren’t designed to be collected during co-op play - as playing solo seemed to trigger some of them just fine. Playing in co-op feels a tad strange, as having both characters moving at once will often cause one or both players to stutter around a little, throwing the animations off somewhat.
We had really high hopes for this, but it instead turned out to be a great idea that is just executed poorly, with minimal content to keep us going back for more. If more content keeps getting added, and a bit more challenge gets flung our way, then we could really see this being something special, but as it currently stands, it just feels like it is missing a lot. Available for £12.49 on the Xbox Store, it’s an okay price for what you get - though it would be better if more was included. If you’re a fan of roguelikes but struggle with the difficulty of many of them (like I often do), then this might be a good starting point for you - if you can nab it on sale.
In the end, we decided to give Metal Tales: Overkill the Collecting Asylum rating of 6.5/10.
Are you interested in Metal Tales: Overkill? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Zerouno Games for the Metal Tales: Overkill Xbox review code!
