Metal: Hellsinger, proven rhythmic FPS with an outstanding soundtrack

It’s certainly not easy to innovate in an age where almost everything is tried, and let alone how complicated it can be to do it in a popular genre like shooters. When it comes to the shooter, almost every idea has been put to the test: lack of gravity, portals, RPG elements, total destructibility, rainbow laser unicorns, and an endless array of other finds that are more or less roughly implemented. But among the hybridizations—we’re not surprised—one of the most successful was the one with rhythm games, which gave birth to hugely popular games like BPM (Bullet Per Bullet).

This is a very natural combination: almost any quality FPS has a certain “rhythm”, it follows a certain flow that causes the shots to turn into a kind of dance of bullets, blood and explosions. Having good designers on hand, having to force or somehow follow the mechanics to this beat is pretty automatic. And this is the case ForeignersA software house created in part by veterans from DICE and Overkill, now deciding to tackle this bizarre path, Metal: Hellsinger is a hellish shooter whose demons must be killed in time for metal.

Difference from others? Well, above all a remarkable expertise in this field, but also an outstanding soundtrack featuring some of the genre’s most established artists. we have Tried Metal: Hellsinger We talk about it today, thanks to a short but intense demo.

No one can destroy metal

In metal: as HellsingerUnknown, a demi-demon whose goal is to eliminate the red judge at the head of hell, which is as simple to define as it is difficult to achieve. Their motivations? Although it is unknown, it is narrated step by step by the famous voice of Troy Baker, who plays the role of narrator in various missions of the campaign. We, in particular, could just try. input frameit still managed to surprise us thanks to a variety of truly unexpected enemies and weapons for the first few sticks of a marksman.

Of course, it could also be in nature as a “demo demo” and we wouldn’t have been surprised by a smaller content audience in the first frame in the completed campaign, but everything flows naturally and could only be an indication. The willingness of the developers is a product that can instantly send maximum adrenaline.

unknown, almost various weapons It starts with a demonic sword, and at the end of the level, there is an enchanted skull named Paz with endless bullets, a shotgun named Persephone, and two powerful revolvers. As if all that wasn’t enough, as you progress, you encounter a handful of dangerous elite enemies, which eventually ends up with a pretty tough end boss. In short, Metal: Hellsinger is not designed to do things gradually, but to always throw different and very aggressive dangers in the player’s face. This is undoubtedly a philosophy in our strings.

But let’s move on gameplay, because that is the core of the experience and it feels really well managed. In fact, Hellsinger immediately calibrates the controls by adjusting the timing of the player’s click based on sound first and then visual cues. Once you find a frame, the game should not be run like a classic shooter, but with a clear flash of the main viewfinder acting as the main indicator, forcing you to shoot opponents to the beat of the music.

music to scream

If you hit the enemies in time, the guns will do the required damage, but missing the beat once is enough to result in negligible damage and very little chance of survival. I can assure you, as difficult as it may seem, in reality it almost instantly became second nature, and we found ourselves at half the level of alternate weapons, which also had different timings for accurately setting shots and the ability to dodge devastating secondary skills. on time. without too much trouble. Doing so is almost imperative, because even the weakest enemies are numerous and aggressive, and elites are equipped with teleporters, devastating ranged weapons, or a simple, overblown life bar.

this the last boss it was especially fun: a winged demon capable of throwing fireballs that do us a lot of damage (a few fireballs are enough to greet a life), and in our opinion is in the perfect position to give curry to players up to this point. they never used the move properly. We haven’t tried anything else, but they basically look pretty solid, so much so that we’re really curious as to what weapons, enemies, and theme variations will come to the next levels.

But the game’s best quality, paradoxically, isn’t the system, movie soundtrack, completely original and backed by names from System of a Down’s Serj Tankian or Arch Enemy’s Alyssa White-Gluz (whose song also penetrated the first level) caliber. For metal lovers, this title is a practical must-have, and even the soundtrack is dynamic, given that the sung tracks are only revealed when a certain level of anger multiplier is reached. Play by tempo and class and you will get big scores as well as full songs; get it all wrong and you’ll hardly have any background music to accompany you (which will also make things monstrous harder). There are also online rankings, so beware of dying a lot: doing this will drastically lower the final score without overly punishing progression.