Metal Review: Hellsinger – Melodic Carnage

Metal: Hellsinger takes you on a journey through hell as you battle your way through waves of demons to the beat of a metal soundtrack. We already know this formula works – after all, Doom Eternal was our 2020 Game of the Year – but Metal: Hellsinger adds a musical twist to the mix. As with BPM: Bullets Per Minute, you are encouraged to time your actions to the beat of the song – the more you sync to the music, the more damage you deal. But are these mechanics enough to separate Metal: Hellsinger from its influence?

Narrated by Troy Baker, Metal: Hellsinger tells the story of the Stranger, a demon seeking to restore the voice of the Red Judge, ruler of the underworld. While Baker’s cowboy feel is fantastic, it’s not enough to make the story interesting. In short, the unknown is an unstoppable force that goes to great lengths to get what it wants.

You can’t survive this game without creating a hit streak, and the only way to do that is to kill enemies to the beat of the track. Metal: Hellsinger forces you to focus on that while avoiding, I think intentionally, complex level design and unique enemy types. You rarely have to think too hard about your next move, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the music.

Metal: Hellsinger can get away with this core game loop through some enjoyable combat. The game is packed with huge stages, giving you space to fly through the air as you experience how agile your character is. While you can’t technically fly, you can keep your character in the air for long periods of time by properly timing your runs and jumps. Pairs Well With Your Sword: Weaving between groups of demons, killing them with a quick swipe as you run across the battlefield is exciting.

It is not all the chaos. There are plenty of opportunities to breathe between a break and a break. If he’s taken damage, he can “knock down” shiny enemies, much like Doom’s glory destruction system, it sees itself ripping apart demons in particularly gruesome ways and replenishing their health. Each weapon has its own ult, as well as a separate ult meter, and in theory you should take this into account for a coordinated attack against certain types of enemies, but this level of strategy isn’t usually necessary outside of the difficulty setting. more difficult. .

Here’s how it works throughout the 3-hour campaign: clear a room full of sponge ball demons, follow the glowing red marker on the map to find another one, eliminate it, and repeat until you fight the final boss. It sounds tedious, and it would be if it weren’t for the title. Each the action syncs with the beat of the music, even charging. You will experience many special moments when your attacks fit so well with the song that it seems to be written.

These moments come when you master the rhythm mechanics and learn to seamlessly connect the lines as they converge in the middle of the screen. I’ve been playing classic ’80s metal tracks on my guitar since I was a teenager, so syncing my actions to the beat of the soundtrack was pretty easy. Metal: Hellsinger offers three difficulty levels, but if you like music. , you can immediately start with the most difficult. I only failed a mission once during a campaign against a boss that forces you to think about where you fire your weapons.

The campaign is very short, but perhaps it’s best that it doesn’t get a chance to be prolonged, as my main criticisms relate to the overall lack of variety in the experience. It would be interesting to see how songs with a lot of fast and slow passages can affect gameplay: longer pauses between actions gave players room to think about what to do next and allowed developers to design more complex fights. Similarly, faster gusts could be used to curb hesitation and encourage instinctive outbursts to really increase tension and adrenaline.

The uniformity of battle is reflected in the choice of weapons. By default, you start each mission with a skull that doubles as a melee weapon and sword. You can also select two additional weapons, sigils (see below), and combo gifts on the loadout screen before diving into the level. Don’t expect some RPGs or plasma guns to juggle though; instead, you’re stuck with two pistols, a shotgun, and a crossbow that behave very similarly rather than seem like unique tools for experimentation. But then again, enemy types generally don’t require much variety.

To increase play time, it is clear that this game was designed for multiple games from the very beginning. After completing the first mission, you will have access to three challenges that will only take a few minutes. These challenges contain powerful sigils that make you considerably stronger without creating negative effects; they range from protecting your combo multiple times to adding more ammo to your weapon. The only problem is that if you don’t aim for high scores on the leaderboard, you’ll never feel the need to get stronger.

The gameplay of this game will also depend on how much you like the soundtrack. I don’t mind listening to it alone, but I don’t feel like it an experience Start over by playing the level. Will it change if songs from famous metal bands are played instead of the soundtrack? Absolutely, but the music does presque certainement être structurée d’una certaine manière pour s’adapter au gameplay, et cela sans parler des problems de licence, donc nous n’avons probably aucune chance de faire exploser des demons en synchronization avec votre grand nom prefer. soon metal bands.

Metal: Hellsinger, like BPM, looks like an exciting proof of concept for the rhythmic FPS formula, as well as a perfect example of why it needs expansion and refinement to see its true potential. The short campaign gives players a taste of what this new sub-genre has to offer, and while there is post-game content to play, it’s clear that there is much more to play. could make into a possible bigger sequel.