Metal Tales Overkill by Zerouno Games promises an action-adventure game infused with everything metal. A topdown 3D roguelike guitar-shooter sounded appealing enough for me to try.

Devote fans

There is something about metal fans – and I don’t mean the ones who supply you with a fresh breeze of air. The devotion they show for “their band(s)” is phenomenal. I experienced firsthand what it’s like to be in front of a crowd of crazy metalheads. It’s intense seeing the passion of fans belting out every word from your songs like it’s gospel while moving to every odd meter tempo thrown at them with razor-sharp precision. Zerouno Games used that devotion as the premise as a base for their new game titled Metal Tales Overkill. Evil god Kuk possesses all the guitar heroes and uses them to brainwash the metalheads into a zombie-like state. For some reason, you stayed unaffected and are the only one left to rid the world of Kuk.

Get slaying

There are four characters to choose from with two “balanced” ones being available at the start of the game. The other two characters are unlockable through playing the game. These two aren’t all that balanced and offer a different playing style when replaying the game. After picking your character, you enter a battle of the band’s type of show and get slaying. You see your character from the top down in a 3D environment. Each stage – pun intended – features different rooms all randomly generated at the start of each game cycle. Although the layout might change from game to game, the general feel stays more or less the same. Most rooms feature enemies you’ll need to shoot with your guitar in order to unlock the room and make progress possible.

Twin-Stick shooter

Metal Tales Overkill uses the twin-stick shooter controls. The left stick controls the character, the right stick shoots “pure power” from your guitar in the direction you’re pointing in. The settings can be altered to only allow the buttons to shoot in different directions like in the old days. I tried it but the novelty of going old skool was not the ideal way to conquer the mayhem being thrown at you in each room. When destroying the enemies you might earn some special items. Smashing the surroundings can also yield some much-needed upgrades. Some of these buff up your stats permanently while others can only be used once to unleash an epic attack when things get tough.

Get the band back together

After exploring the metal dungeon for a while you’ll encounter the boss room. These feature a guitar god who uses a ton of different attack patterns to destroy you. Avoiding this bullet hell is not easy but once you do, you’ll earn one of your band members back. These help you out during the rest of the game with a one-time intervention. Some of these help you heal, others offer more of the destructive kind of help. So getting the band back together can be vital to your survival and the demise of Kuk.

Repetitive

Metal Tales Overkill uses a lot of metal clichés that made me chuckle a bit. The names and descriptions of the power-ups/upgrades show the makers of this game know their metal. The soundtrack is not the greatest but without a big budget, I can’t really hope for more. Despite the metalhead approving all things “metal” in this game, the gameplay was sadly not all that great. Battling rooms with the same backgrounds and the same enemies, again and again, became repetitive real fast. The action was just not diverse enough to make me care enough to battle through it. Being a rogue-like, a “run” was often too hard or too soft because of the random nature of these games. The balance could’ve been tweaked a bit better to get a nice experience with more consistency.

Conclusion

Metal Tales Overkill doesn’t deliver the greatest rogue-like twin-shooter experience. It works and you’ll have fun but you’ll surely notice the room for improvement.

6/10

tested on Xbox Series S