Metal: Hellsinger Preview

Metal: Hellsinger is a heavy metal first-person shooter, narrated by none other than Troy Baker who you may know as Joel in The Last Of Us, Batman in the Telltale Batman series, or Joker from Batman: Arkham Origins. That is just a bit of the voice work he has done, and you know that this narration is going to be great. I originally thought it was a title like Doom or Wolfenstein until I realised that to be successful, you had to keep time with the music to inflict massive damage, if your timing is off, you can still damage the enemy, but chances are they will kill you before you can destroy them with your weak attacks. If your hits are not on beat, your attack will do 50 damage to your opponent, if you manage to have good or perfect timing the damage jumps up to 330! That is a huge difference!

You play as an Unknown soldier, who has been sent to the depths of hell to slay the demons and other creatures that take up residence there. The more you slaughter the more points you get. The premise sounds simple enough, but being overrun by these hellish creatures makes this a challenging feat! The game starts you off with a tutorial area, luckily your character is prepared for battle and is equipped with a sword and Paz’s skull; the skull will stun the enemy to make them susceptible to a larger attack with your sword so in the tutorial you can experimenting using them in tandem to do the most damage possible. When you destroy the demons, there will be items to collect that will fill your fury meter; and once your fury meter is full, you will be able to unleash a large attack on your foes. But that’s not the only good thing that happens when you get fury points; the more you earn the better the music becomes. At first, the heavy metal music is only instrumental; if you get enough fury points, the vocal track for the song will start playing; this was a really unique aspect of the game! It was nice knowing that once I heard the vocals, I must be doing pretty good. During the tutorial, you can die and be resurrected an unlimited amount of times for free, but once you start playing in the hells, you only get to be resurrected three times and every time you do, it will cost you the points you have earned. Once you die three times, your run is done, and you will get to see if your score was good enough to get you onto the online leaderboard. 

Besides the great narration, you will notice that this game looks gorgeous, so much so that I had to go into the settings and turn down the quality to medium so my system wouldn’t have issues playing the game. Even on medium and the FPS turned down, the demo still looks and plays great! The game's soundtrack is totally different from any other rhythm game I have played before, cheery pop music is not to be found here; instead, it’s replaced with aggressive heavy metal music, which is the perfect fit as you are trapped in hell battling demons and monsters. 

During your time in the hells, you will be challenged with torments. If you successfully beat a torment, you will unlock new powers and spoils for our Unknown warrior and increase their might in various ways. You can also get new weapons like a shotgun that will have to be reloaded after firing off a few shots, and dual-wielding revolvers. Even with the new weapons, my favourite were the swords since I don’t have to worry about reloading, though you will have to be closer to the enemy, so you will have to decide which fits your playstyle more. I’m sure as I attempt more runs, my weapon of choice may change as I get further and try out new techniques to improve on my score but that’s the fun part. Most of my runs did not last an incredibly long amount of time, so once I had to be resurrected it was a chance to change things up. My best run had me ranked at spot 60 on the leaderboards, I have to keep trying to improve and get closer to the top!

Metal: Hellsinger is a must-play title for anyone who loves metal music and rhythm games, you will be treated to a beautiful looking game full of challenge and great narration. I can’t wait to spend more time attempting to best my high score, all while listening to a kick-ass metal soundtrack! I’m looking forward to seeing what horrors await us in the full game once it releases.