Metal Revolution Tips and Tricks to Win All Your Fights
Fighting games like Metal Revolution are in a very different category than the rest, not only because they play differently, but because the underlying concepts, fundamentals, and strategies are also very unique and exclusive to the genre. As such, you can’t really play a fighting game with the same gung-ho attitude or approach that you could use in a shooter. Instead, players must not only learn the properties and skills of their characters, but also work on the foundations of the game such as footsies, spacing, hit-confirms, mixups, oki, and many other terms.
If this all seems quite intimidating for fighting game newcomers, it’s because it is. Nevertheless, while there’s a lot you’ll need to learn if you want to dominate, it actually doesn’t translate to a very difficult style of gameplay. After all, we ARE talking about a mobile game. And though Metal Revolution does an excellent job of translating the standard fighting game formula to the mobile platform, it’s much simpler than its console and PC counterparts.
With all that being said, in this guide, we are going to share a few Metal Revolution tips and tricks to help you win battles. Whether you’re a newcomer to fighting games, or a veteran looking to brush up on the basics, you’ll find everything you need in the following paragraphs.
Play on BlueStacks to Get Gamepad Controls
The point of every fighting game is that you fight against the enemy, and not against the controls. Your defeats should come from the fact that you’re not good enough yet, and so your enemies can outplay you. However, when you lose because you were playing with bad controls, then it’s much more frustrating, to say the least.
For many players, the definitive ways to play fighting games are either with a gamepad, or with a fight stick, and when it comes to this game in particular, you can play Metal Revolution on PC with BlueStacks, and also get access to a much better control scheme using your gamepad.
Installing Metal Revolution on PC is quite easy and takes only a few steps. Configuring your controls is a bit more involved, though it’s still very simple. Feel free to check out our BlueStacks setup guide for Metal Revolution to learn how to get started. The important thing here is that you end up playing this game with a gamepad, since that will make it much easier to control your character and win battles.
Practice the Fundamentals
Now that you’ve set up an appropriate control scheme for Metal Revolution using your gamepad, let’s go ahead and talk briefly about the fundamentals.
When it comes to fighting games like this one, the “fundamentals” refers to a series of principles and concepts that apply to many fighting games, including Metal Revolution. These fundamentals include things like proper spacing in relation to your opponent, how to move and keep your distance so that they can’t hit you with any of their attacks, but give you an opportunity to counterattack if they whiff, and how to make the most out of your attack opportunities after a hit-confirm, to name a few.
Footsies
The first fundamental that you should know about are the footsies. This term simply refers to the act of moving around the stage to match your opponent’s movements. In this manner, you’ll always keep the same spacing between both your characters, which should always be just beyond your enemy’s attacking distance. This back and forth between both fighters ends whenever one of the combatants manages to land a blow on the others, which is called a hit-confirm.
While always staying on the offensive might seem like a good choice—and depending on your character, it could be—you must always do so while keeping the fundamentals in mind. In this sense, if you’re walking near the enemy with no intention of attacking, there’s a good chance that you might get hit, or at least get put on the defensive by blocking, which is another unfavorable position.
It’s worth pointing out that, whenever neither of the two fighters are attacking, and are simply engaging in footsies, this is called the neutral game.
Hit-Confirms
As we mentioned just now, hit-confirms are the ultimate outcome of footsies and spacing. In fact, the idea of footsies is to make an enemy whiff an attack, after which you can punish with your own move during their recovery animation. The very first blow that you deal to the enemy is called a hit-confirm, and it is called this way since it’s the first attack that will ensure that you can land other subsequent hits.
The way hit-confirms work is that, whenever you hit an enemy with an attack—any attack—they will get stunned for a fraction of a second. This stun is aptly-named hitstun, and its duration will vary depending on the attack that caused it, though it’s usually no more than a quarter of a second in most games. During this stun period, players are completely defenseless and are open for more attacks. In this sense, a successful hit-confirm will open the player up for combos, which in turn will increase the damage they take.
Successfully capitalizing on a hit-confirm is something you’ll want to practice a lot, particularly since it takes quite a bit of skill to know exactly when you’re going to hit, so that you can follow up with a longer combo. The reason this is important is because, if you simply mash attacks without a hit-confirm, you’re leaving yourself completely open to counters.
Mixups
Another vital concept that every fighting game player worth their salt needs to know about.
The term mixup refers to the variety of attacks that a character can launch, in order to cause a hit-confirm. This variety depends both on the character, as well as on the player’s personal skill and mastery over the game. The idea of a mixup is that you always keep the enemy guessing as to where your attacks are going to come from; whether it’s from a straight jab, a low kick, or a jumping overhead attack, your enemy must guess correctly in order to know where they must be blocking or defending.
Mixups are particularly important not only in the neutral game, but also when you’re on the defensive. In this sense, if you’re pressured against a corner and the enemy won’t stop attacking, properly predicting where their attacks will come from will let you defend correctly, and possibly even counterattack with a fast attack while they’re stuck in their recovery animation.
Keep in mind that all the attacks in Metal Revolution have a startup animation, an active phase that deals damage, and a final recovery animation, which is when the animation completes and your character returns to neutral. The length of this animation depends on the attack, which means that some moves are NOT safe on block. In other words, if you use your slowest attacks on a blocking enemy, you’ll leave yourself completely open for counterattacks while you’re stuck in your recovery animation.
Learning mixups is not easy, though, and takes a lot of time. This is partially due to the fact that the number of mixups varies by character, which means that you’ll need to learn the mixups of each fighter individually. Furthermore, clever players will always find new ways to mix up their attacks, which can definitely throw you off guard if you’re not careful and overextend your offensive.
Pressure (Oki)
This is possibly one of the most straightforward concepts on this list, as it simply refers to attacking your enemy non-stop with various types of mixups, in the hopes that they make a mistake and drop their defense, and leave themselves open for a hit-confirm.
When you’re pressuring an enemy, you’ll likely always push them back into a corner as they continue to block and dodge your moves. And by keeping your attacks varied and mixed, you’ll always keep them guessing on how to defend, which in turn might lead them to make mistakes. However, properly pressuring the enemy also requires you to know the ins and outs of your characters, as making mistakes or using the wrong moves means that you’ll leave holes in your attacks that the enemy could exploit.
More often than not, when it comes to Metal Revolution, you’ll always want to be attacking. In this sense, make sure to practice your combo strings so that you can learn to unleash proper attacks to keep the enemy pressured and on the defensive.
Learn the Different Characters
This pretty much goes without saying, but when it comes to any fighting game, you’re only ever as good as your knowledge of your fighter allows. In this sense, aside from studying the fundamentals, one of our most important suggestions would be to choose a character that appeals to you the most, and stick with it in order to learn their moves, including their attack distances, mixups, and basic combo strings.
Proper knowledge of the fundamentals can get you a very long way, even letting you play with any character, and win a few matches in the process. However, in order to properly capitalize on your attack opportunities and openings, you would obviously benefit greatly from actually knowing a combo or two.
We suggest starting out with Jamal Ritter, the flame boxer. This character has a very good kit, including cross-ups, projectile attacks, and several good and fast combos. Though he lacks the flair of other, more technical fighters, he has everything you’ll ever need to win your matches. And once you master the fundamentals, you can move onto other more complex fighters if you wish.
Complete Missions to Earn Rewards
Despite being a fighting game first and foremost, Metal Revolution is also a mobile game, which means that most of its content will be locked at first. And in order to unlock new things like characters, you’ll often need to purchase them from the store using different types of currency. Though players who don’t mind investing real money in their games can probably unlock most fighters quickly, those who play for free will essentially need to work for their fighters.
Luckily, there are many different missions that anyone can complete in the game, which grant tons of different rewards, including currency that you can use for purchasing fighters. You can find these tasks by clicking on “Missions” in the main menu. We strongly recommend working on these whenever you can as they will give you important resources.
Another aspect that can also give you lots of rewards are the in-game events, which you can find on the main menu screen as well, by clicking on the “Events” button. These events are particularly important since, while missions are a one-time thing and include milestones like reaching certain levels, the events include daily missions that refresh every 24 hours and that offer plenty of rewards, including premium currency.
Whenever you’re not in practice mode, or fighting in ranked matches, you should always be working on your missions. And in the case of the daily tasks, we strongly suggest doing them every single day without fail.
Hit the Training Mode Whenever Possible
This last one is just a quick reminder that Metal Revolution has a training mode that you can access at any time. This mode lets you revisit old tutorials, and even gives you an area where you can freely train with every single character in the game, including the ones you haven’t unlocked yet. In this sense, not only can you get better at the fighters you already own, but you can also try out locked fighters to see who you want to unlock next.
You can find the training mode through the main menu screen, by clicking on “Local”, and then on “Training”. We recommend spending an hour or two here with your character of choice before moving onto ranked matches. This will let you get a grasp of their moves, and even learn some combos and mixups.
