Metal: Hellsinger (Xbox Series X)

In an energetic movement-heavy shooter like 2016’s Doom, you can occasionally find yourself entering something of a flow state. The rate of your weapon firing. The animation patterns of the enemy attacks. The timing on when you go in and tear the demon apart with your bare hands. It can all come together into a sort of rhythm even though each piece of the action is moving at the beat of its own drum, but Metal: Hellsinger decides the rhythm will be the point of its deadly dance, everything in this first-person shooter enhanced if you can keep up with the beat of the heavy metal music.

 

In Metal: Hellsinger, you are The Unknown, a demoness who’s tearing her way through Hell to try and reclaim her lost voice. Initially locked away by the ruling devil of Hell, the Red Judge, to end her demon-killing tirade, a talking skull called Paz ends up in her personal Hell and helps break her free so she can resume her crusade. The Unknown is unsurprisingly a silent protagonist due to her condition, but Paz serves as a wonderfully folksy narrator, his voice actor Troy Baker able to infuse him with the energy of an old cowboy talking about quite a different type of frontier. Paz will fill in the details on what’s going on in the different realms of Hell and most details in the menus are even written like he was telling you about them, even the level select given more character because the descriptions come from his perspective. Considering most of the narrative boils down to hearing which new ways the Red Judge is trying to impede The Unknown, the story ends up worth paying attention to mostly because of how it’s delivered.

The demon slaying action in this first person shooter is all tied to the beat, the game helpfully putting indicators near your crosshair to help you get back on rhythm should you ever slip up. Luckily, all the standard music in Metal: Hellsinger is bespoke and made to have a pretty clear beat to pick up, each song an original composition even when vocalists from bands like Lamb of God and System of a Down came in to give the soundtrack a bit more range. The pumping music serves its practical purpose well in helping you find the rhythm so you can make sure you fire your weapons at the right time, your attacks doing far more damage when properly in sync although there’s no pressure to be firing on every beat. If you need time to set up a shot you can let a few beats pass before you fire, but if you keep up the pressure and blast through enemy groups quickly without messing up your rhythm, you can start building up Fury. As you reach different layers of Fury, your attacks deal more damage and the music becomes more fleshed out, the vocals usually only kicking in when you are at the max level as a recognizable reward that feels satisfying to maintain. Hearing it disappear is disheartening, but being able to keep the metal music at its max intensity with your skillful shooting helps to immerse you in the high octane bloodshed, it easy to caught up in the energy of the song as you do feel like you’re truly becoming the effective and efficient slayer whose battles are like a coordinated dance of death.

 

The weapons are a great fit for this rhythm based shooting as well, none of them too similar and even interacting with the rhythm elements in a different way. Paz’s skull is able to launch fire at foes but is fairly weak, however if there’s no enemies around, you can use it like a metronome to maintain your Fury between fights so you never truly come down from that high.  Your sword is perhaps the riskiest tool though, it not only the only one that requires you to get in close but its combo swings have a slightly more complex rhythm. Using something like a shotgun, you just need to fire it at the pace the heavy weapon allows, and more imaginative tools like the two throwing scythes that return like boomerangs require you to get a feel for when they will be back in your hands for another throw.  You’ll eventually get to pick which weapons beyond the sword and Paz you bring into levels and they all have different perks and tempos to make it feel like a meaningful choice, but how you hold up in battle won’t just come down to how well you can fire weapons in rhythm. Double jumps and dashes become incredibly important as battlefields become busier and some bosses can even fill the skies with bullets, it sometimes a little tough to spot the openings in them but Metal: Hellsinger errs towards leniency during those moments so you don’t need to be absolutely exceptional to avoid injury.

 

Metal: Hellsinger won’t let you go on rampages for free just because you can follow along with the music though, the enemies gradually growing quite tough. Marionettes are basically the cannon fodder but even they move to the beat, swaying back and forth and coming in packs so they’re not totally straightforward, but they’re also the best source for healing too. If you can weaken an enemy enough without killing it, you can press in on the right control stick to Slaughter them, The Unknown launching to their spot and brutalizing them to earn some health drops. There are usually health crystals to break too in battle arenas, but this option definitely proves its use not only as a more renewable source of life but a way to quickly cross the battlefield or avoid incoming damage since you’re invulnerable during it. There are deeper considerations like that when approaching a battle that make this more than merely about keeping the rhythm, and enemies start getting introduced that require different tricks and strategies to overcome. Poison spitting flies will slow you down if they hit you and they zip around with incredible speed, Stalkers disappear periodically so you need to keep track of them or you’ll get painfully ambushed, and the upgraded Elite versions of enemies start mixing in shockwaves that really emphasize the need for some aerial dodging. The Shield Cambrian, a demon who hides behind an unbreakable shield to fire at you from afar, is perhaps the only enemy that feels a bit off, it a bit too smart in turning to follow you if you try to get around its defense so some fights slow down as you’re waiting for opportunities against that pesky foe, but most skirmishes are exciting tests of your ability to maintain the beat even under pressure.

There are eight true levels to conquer in Metal: Hellsinger after you clear the tutorial and each of them feel well-paced to dish out frequent battles without feeling exhausting. There aren’t many collectibles, but there is a level scoring system that rewards you for playing well in a stage that tracks things like how well you keep up your Fury and it seems forgiving enough if you’re damaged as long as you don’t die, a death extracting a big score penalty and it’s only allowed a certain amount of times per stage depending on your difficulty. Each level is capped off with a boss, but for most of them the game makes the odd choice of having them all be visually similar Aspects of the Red Judge. A floating skull with large wings, the Aspects do all have some visual differences but not to the degree they really look that different, but more importantly the fights are all at least distinct even if you’re firing upon something with the same face. One makes a shell of bricks to try and force you in close, but another relies on false decoys that can actually harm you with their shots, the battles distinct and presenting new and varied threats so you can’t say they’re unimaginative.

 

One of the best ideas Metal: Hellsinger has to add some longevity to the play though are the Torments. Most levels have three special challenges unlocked after you beat them, these taking place in small arenas and having certain limitations put on them to set them apart from regular play. You might be entirely unable to heal, have your weapons gradually stripped away, or only have your score counted if you kill enemies with a Slaughter or an Ultimate, each weapon having a special ability that can help out like a shotgun blast that tears through foes like butter or a clone of your character that can fire on some foes to keep them distracted. The Torments provide Sigils as their rewards, these able to provide passive bonuses like preventing you from dropping below a certain level of Fury or increasing your damage when your health is low, and by completing multiple Torments of a certain type you’ll even be able to upgrade those Sigils. More importantly though, the Torments are excellent challenges on their own, many of them having a high requirement for success while putting in boundaries like an incredibly low timer that only gets more time when you kill demons in the proper way. Easy to replay over and over if you fail, some require you to plan ahead to actually earn enough time to survive while others tap into the vein of being a constantly moving efficient killing machine, and since the game picks which weapons you use for each Torment, some tools you might have set aside can end up not only shaking up the gameplay, they can even find their footing in challenges based around their specific advantages. While the main levels are still exhilarating, Torments feel like where the game’s systems come together the best. Every element of the rhythmic shooting is designed around purposefully to make these challenges feel tough but not often discouraging in their difficulty since you know you can time things out better on the next retry when you do fail.

THE VERDICT: Metal: Hellsinger is a thrilling shooter that is finely tuned to make you feel like you’ve earned the metal music blaring at full force, the action even gripping your emotions well as you despair at missed beats but can bounce back and get back in the groove to continue the demon slaying action without intense punishment. A few ideas like the Shield Cambrian keep it from being fully cohesive, but over in the Torment challenges you also get to see how well-oiled its rhythm focused shooting is as they are tightly crafted to require skillful play without being obnoxiously difficult. Metal: Hellsinger both allows you to get swept up in the intensity of the music and action while still feeling like you’re going to need to play well to survive, it’s version of Hell exhilarating to tear through because its systems and world mesh together so well.

 

And so, I give Metal: Hellsinger for Xbox Series X…

A GREAT rating. While the Shield Cambrian can sometimes bring things down a bit when it’s being stubborn, most of your time with Metal: Hellsinger will likely be a thrilling series of battles where you can’t just blast your way through and be done with them. The rhythm system doesn’t require constant thought but it does shape the way you approach battle, both rewarding you for sticking with it and preventing its enemies from being easily mowed down since you do need to time things well or you’ll barely be effective. Levels are mostly a series of battles in different arenas with the environments more about providing new layouts for enemies to appear in, but they’re spaced well to give you breathers if you need them but you can quickly reach the next fight even if you don’t want to use Paz as a metronome too much. Having the intensity of the songs tied to your performance is a brilliant way of encouraging the player to perform well but also bringing them down in the right way if they are starting to flag, that motivation to get back to full force much stronger than a mere damage penalty would be. The weapons are also a smart mix with little overlap, this relevant not just in how you approach their use in time with the beat but also allowing the Torments to test you in multiple ways even when their basic challenge rules are repeated a few times.

 

Metal: Hellsinger aims to make its gunplay more thrilling by making it more than just a means of mowing through the enemies in your path, the rhythmic action satisfying through its actual immediate rewards like higher damage but also providing more bombastic animations and sound that really gel with the metal music and thematic crusade through Hell. Everything in the game moves to the beat, the fires of Hell pulsing, the enemies attacks like a macabre dance, and your own carnage the important core performance that helps sweep up the player to the point it’s hard not to resist moving along with the rhythm yourself.