If you’ve been reading Zing more closely and regularly, you might have noticed that rhythm games are one of my favorites. Whether it’s classics like Guitar Hero, Rock Band or Beat Saber, it’s a little more unconventional like Crypt of the Necrodancer and BPM: Bullets Per Minute, I’ll do it all with passion. After all, just a few weeks ago, I fell in love with the new Soundfall on our podcast. So it’s no surprise that when you pair this favorite sub-genre of mine with my other favorites like metal, you automatically land on my video game radar, perhaps the top positions of the most anticipated games.
This is exactly what the creators from The Outsiders studio are doing, who have been working on the title Metal: Hellsinger for some time. It was supposed to appear last year, but in the end, the development was a little delayed and we will not see it until this year, when the exact date was announced at this year’s Summer Game Fest. However, during it another very pleasant thing surfaced – the release of a demo version on all future platforms. So, of course, I didn’t waste a minute and vigorously launched the trial version. And I immediately found myself in seventh heaven with happiness. Or rather hell.
- Platform: PC (Tested), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S
- Publication date: September 15 (pre-orders will get access 48 hours earlier)
- Producer: Losers
- Genre: rhythm shooter
- Czech location: Not
- Multiplayer: Not
- Availability: 18+
- Price: I have not installed a PC yet, it is expected to be 39.99 euros / console 1049 kroons, respectively 1149 kroons
Shooting, damn the rhythm
The demo is not long at all. Basically, it offers content for about 20 minutes of play, consisting of two levels. The first works exclusively as a tutorial in which we get to know the main “characters”, but above all with individual mechanics. The basis is to eliminate the enemies of the enemies in each level, basically in the style of a crazy shooter like DOOM. For this elimination, you will then use a variety of weapons, where the demo offers quads in the form of a narrative and shooting skulls, swords, dual pistols and shotguns, each offering its own ultimate ability. The joke, of course, is that you must do all your actions perfectly to the rhythm of the song that is currently playing, when with the right hit you will inflict more damage, and at the same time increase your score multiplier that you get for a given level (its value at the end will be recorded in local tables so you can compete with other players). Gradually, you will learn how to correctly combine various actions and means in order to score as many points as possible and keep the multiplier at the top for as long as possible.
The demo version offers two levels.
So, once you master these basics in the tutorial, you can move on to the next, this time a full-fledged level, where you will meet different types of enemies, go through 4 battle arenas and end it with a successful duel with the boss, which shows that the creators are a little inspired arcade shooters, the difficulty cannot be completely picked up (but after death you can be reborn twice at the cost of losing points). And it is this level that clearly shows that it will be a very big race.
metal pleasure
Yes, it’s true that the gameplay template is actually quite simple, but it’s playable and incredibly well crafted. I was amazed at how quickly the shooting got into my veins here, as it usually takes me a while for these titles to sink in and acclimate. But then I immediately started creating individual combos and mixing different attacks, which in turn immediately rewarded me with an extremely pleasant feeling and a huge dose of fun, thanks to which I rode the demo 10 times. And I will probably go a few more times. The shooting is intuitive, the movements are fluid, and I never lost full control of my actions, which is important because 99% of the game time you will be banging your head on the screen.
The title will reward you with a huge dose of pleasure.
In addition, these sensations of metallic nirvana are very successful in reinforcing the other three key things. The first is, of course, a great cut of original music from the duo Two Feathers. Personally, I think that after playing, the album of this game will fall into the permanent playlist of many fans of heavier tones. The second key thing is related to this soundtrack. Increasing the score multiplier changes the currently playing song, which gradually becomes sharper in riffs and becomes “more metal” overall. But the bottom line is that once you hit the highest multiplier, you’ll also get vocals from top metal artists as Alyssa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy and Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquility blow a hole in your head in the demo. Because of this fact alone, you will always be trying to score as many points as possible as this is an increasingly sharp track that adds a whole new dimension to the game. Also, the title does a very good job of dealing with the differences between the various versions of the song, which most of the time don’t sound disturbing at all.
hellish fast food
And the last important element – the constant influx of music – is associated with this intervention. While the difficulty of the title probably won’t be entirely picky, if you don’t manage too much, whether it’s hitting the right beat or avoiding local attacks, you’ll never be penalized for interrupting/destroying the music in any way. It’s an element that’s still quite common in other rhythm games that I don’t fully understand, as it’s quite disturbing in general and throws you out of your set tempo. But your punishment here is simply death, or the aforementioned adaptive music change based on the reduction of the multiplier. At the same time, no unnecessary “shrinkage”.
You will never be punished for interrupting music.
However, I was also very pleasantly surprised by the production values. Of course, this is not a AAA problem, but visually the name looks quite good. The levels are properly hellish, the enemy designs are stylish, the weapons have a certain dose of personality. The dubbing was also successful, pleasantly emphasizing the local atmosphere.
Game of the year?
In any case, it’s quite clear to me that this text is written in a very subjective way, and I can glorify the title too much when the optimization on the PC, for example, definitely withstands additional fine-tuning. my side). However, to be honest, I have not experienced such pure enthusiasm in the game for a very long time. I expected a lot from this combination, but in the end I got even more, which has not happened to me in games lately. And I’m openly stating here that if the writers of the full release hold the bar as high as this demo suggests, I have a clear personal nominee for the title of the year. September suddenly seems too far away.
If you’d like to try the demo yourself, you can download it for free from Steam, PlayStation Store, and Microsoft Store.
Source :Indian TV
