Review of Metal: Hellsinger – a shooter straight out of hell

Ah, the bitter taste of disappointment and subsequent vexation. You know, you go online, you open up a video game magazine (like Zing, I hope) and you find a title that immediately jumps out at you. Be it a sample, a description, an idea. That’s why you immediately begin to look forward to it, even if you absorb all the other pieces of information about it, with which your curiosity grows higher and higher. Well, then it finally comes. That D-Day when the title comes out, you light it up with excitement, and after playing for a while, you start to notice that your expectations aren’t quite met and you don’t get the feeling you were hoping for. This is exactly what happened to me at the moment with the new release of the Swedish studio The Outsiders. And I confess right away that I am not writing this review with a light heart. But let’s try not to get ahead of ourselves.

• Platform: PC (Tested), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S
• Publication date: September 15, 2022
• Developer: Losers
• Genre: rhythm shooter
• Czech localization: Not
• Multiplayer: No (leaderboards only)
• Data to download: 12.16 GB (PC)
• Game time: Less than 5 hours
• Sales version: Digital
• Price: €29.99 PC / €39.99 Console

Journey to Hell

If you haven’t heard of Metal: Hellsinger yet, this is a metal rhythm shooter that sends you as the Unknown into Hell itself, where you try to defeat the Devil (or rather the Devil?) and get your voice back. In addition, you will be accompanied by a flaming skull, voiced by none other than the now somewhat corrupted Troy Baker, which means he certainly does not lose character. But besides being a companion, it also has the function of a weapon and a narrator, who will gradually tell you here the whole backstory of the story and explain the various details, through cutscenes consisting of moving images or during loading screens.

Troy Baker is also present.

However, there is a good chance that you won’t play this game due to the story that the creators know about. This means that its qualities are not at all dizzying when it looks a bit like something dreamed up by a twelve year old boy who has just found his way into metal. You just have to consider that this is more of a simple glue that tries to tie the individual levels here, in which the most important thing happens, that is, the gameplay itself.

Shooting that won’t stop the head

The game offers a total of 8 levels (+ quick guide), each representing one of the hells, with slightly different visuals, in which, accompanied by one of several available songs (each level works with a designated song), you begin to eliminate the local demonic gang . So the absolute basis is that basically all of your actions like shooting or jumping should be perfectly done to the rhythm of the music, where if you do well you will increase the score multiplier as well as the damage you deal. But the cool thing is that as the multiplier increases, the song being played dynamically changes as well, the higher it is, the more metal it becomes, and at the highest multiplier level, vocals from various metal icons are also added, such as Serge Tankien (System of a Down), Matt Heafy (Trivium), Alyssa White-Gluz (nemesis) or Dennis Liksen (Refused and INVSN).

In any case, it is at this level that the name causes absolute delight. The action is extremely dynamic, exciting and memorable, while the creators manage to maintain clarity, which is key to such a hectic shooting and even somewhat surprising. Because you will be shaking your head non-stop while you may have the urge to lift the cuckold in your lower abdomen. In addition, I dare say that the authors managed to make the game as accessible as possible, and almost anyone can immediately jump into it and have fun. For example, in the competitive BPM: Bullets Per Minute, I had to get used to both movement and shooting for some time, but here I almost immediately reached the fun. In any case, for the highest score, and therefore the best position in the local ranking, you still need to train hard. And those feelings when you manage to maintain the maximum multiplier throughout the level with the help of precisely executed movements and various combinations are absolutely priceless.

The action is dynamic, exciting and memorable.

As well as the absolutely brilliant soundtrack from the duet Two Feathers, which beats at a colossal pace, and, in principle, you cannot find a weak piece in it. I dare to suggest that more than one edgy music lover will add this album to their playlists. Also, the way the game handles the transitions between the individual versions of a given song should be commended, as it doesn’t feel distracting. On the contrary, in most cases they are completely even and natural, so they will not knock you out of the set pace at all. I want to apologize to the neighbors right away, because during the review I got a little off the chain and really “bent” my speaker. But maybe I at least pulled them over to the right side of the force.

holding back tears

At this point, you might think that I’m praising a disappointed person too much, when in fact I sound just as enthusiastic as I did with my impressions of the demo. And this is where we ran into the biggest problem I’ve had with the game. During all my activities, I couldn’t shake the impression that when I played the demo, I was actually playing the full version. I really missed the extra layers that would make the whole process somehow special, and you did not do the same thing over and over again. Some mechanics, an idea, whatever. But I didn’t get it. It’s just that your only task is to shoot the current room, move on to the next one, shoot at it, and so on, and so on, and so on in a completely identical direction. Nothing more. Unfortunately, in addition to the main levels, you will also find arena challenges in which you unlock power-ups that can be used to equip the protagonist (before each mission, you create your own equipment consisting of two firearms and two power-ups). However, these calls are short and do not abound with too much variety. Of course, I don’t want to blame the shooter for the fact that its main component is shooting, but the player still needs to be surprised somehow. But that’s not what’s happening here.

I couldn’t shake the impression that when I played the demo, I also played the full version.

And in general, I have a small problem with mutability. You’ll find a total of six weapons (respectively five, because you’d rather use the previously mentioned skull just to keep the multiplier high) that can’t be upgraded in any way, several types of enemies, and scenery that are well-designed but still built on the same principles. . But what I regretted, perhaps most of all, was the approach I had taken with my superiors. He is waiting for you at the end of each level when I don’t know why but the creators decided that you would fight against seven variants of the same boss where each time he had slightly different attacks and abilities, but I found it extremely lazy and boring in terms of gameplay. At the same time, the final skirmish shows just how interesting it could have been if the studio had gone a little further off the chain.

Material fatigue

Also, it’s quite problematic that it will take you less than five hours to get through everything the game has to offer on medium difficulty (the game offers three difficulties), when any further play will only motivate a better position in the local rankings. ratings. If you’re a Zing reader, you probably know that I’m not at all against short games. After all, we can remember Shadow Warrior 3. However, she still somehow managed to surprise or captivate. Here, thanks to the above, I already began to feel a slight fatigue from the material during these five hours. And the imaginary crown was put on by a conclusion that, I dare say, will not be able to satisfy almost anyone. He’s more likely to annoy you.

It will take you less than five hours to get through everything the title has to offer.

However, in order to at least briefly comment on the technical condition, I will say that I played on a laptop with an RTX 3060 (6 GB of VRAM) and in Full HD, when everything was set to ultra, except for the shadows, while there were some failures, but nothing that really would bother you while playing. It was a little worse with bugs, when in this type of game it is not entirely desirable for enemies to sometimes move over textures or hit them, which, unfortunately, happened here. I also noticed a few inaccuracies with hitboxes (mainly when attacking you). In general, however, I was able to overcome these issues while playing, as they either happened from time to time or didn’t bother me much while playing. But personally, I highly recommend getting the PC version. I tried playing with a gamepad and the experience was twice as bad.

Bitter goodbye

In conclusion, however, I must say that, despite my indignation and somewhat harsh words in the previous paragraphs, you must not misunderstand me. What the title has to offer, it does absolutely brilliantly, and the gameplay alone can fool you, as well as the absolutely obvious love for metal that oozes from every note. And I really enjoyed the game a lot. Throughout this, I just kept thinking that if the developers had given us a slightly more layered experience, we might have a clear contender for Game of the Year. However, this is “only” a beautiful canape that will probably only be written into the annals of games for die-hard fans. Which is not small, but I was hoping for more.