War is ugly. Two sides in confrontation, with one trying to overthrow the other with tactical nous, until they are victorious.

Metal Slug Tactics is a strategic war game, that also just so happens to be beautifully ugly too.

Using characters from the much loved, long-running, run and gun 2D games, they now find themselves in an isometric strategy game.

It’s a genre of gaming that is pretty niche, despite big developers like Nintendo pushing titles such as Advance Wars and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope to attract gamers to it.

This title is likely to be just as niche then, borrowing form a series that began in 1996 in arcades.

You can control a team that has to make it way across a map, taking turns to move around, to complete missions. It is a game that relies on strategy to win, as it does in real life war, just with fewer casualties.

Admittedly turn-based games aren’t our bag, but Metal Slug Tactics has a gloriously retro visual quality to it, maintaining the 16-bit look of the characters from the original games. This makes it brimming with bold and colourful pixels, which are a feast for the eyes.

Where we had some struggles was with the user interface; there is a lot going on making the screen fairly busy, and although we managed to get through the tutorial unscathed, we soon came a cropper in the very first mission. There was a tank in the centre of the map that we clearly needed to get into, but despite our best efforts, which amounted to pressing all the buttons and triggers on the Xbox controller, we just couldn’t get anyone into the vehicle.

So we simply took the coward’s way out and waved the white flag.

What playing Metal Slug Tactics did was serve as a reminder at how much we’re not a fan of turn-based strategies like this (although thoroughly enjoyed the likes of Live A Live and Triangle Strategy). Perhaps it’s all that thinking that comes with them, or in this case, a control system that would make a NASA control panel look like child’s play.

It’s a game then that we wouldn’t necessarily recommend to beginners, with its clunky user interface, but having experience in the genre would no doubt make getting into far more appealing.

So if retro, turn-based strategy games with a pleasing art style is your bag, this is certainly worth a go, then wait your then, then another go...