Review: Metal: Hellsinger is head-banging, high score chasing excellence

videogameschronicle.com:

Video game fans and heavy metal fans feel like kindred spirits. They’re both something you discover at an impressionable age, you’re more than likely to have been bullied in school for your love of them, and the passion that fans feel about them respectively often oversteps the level of obsession into becoming that person’s entire personality.

Heavy metal is also aesthetically linked to the earliest days of video games. The most metal game of all time, Doom, is a cornerstone of the industry, and even its recent re-emergence in 2016. Although until now, the rhythm genre of video games has largely focussed on electronic music, outside of the licensed soundtracks of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games.

Metal: Hellsinger is a first-person shooter rhythm game which sees the player blast their way through several circles of hell, in order to defeat The Judge, the ruler of hell and the reason the protagonist, The Unknown, has lost her voice. The aim is to time your shots to the beat, which is indicated by symbols closing in around the reticle. Shoot and reload on the beat, and you’ll do extra damage, and build towards a special, devastating attack.

While you can fumble around the earlier levels without any rhythm, soon enough the game introduces beasts that can only be taken down if you’re perfectly on beat, increasing your damage and making sure you nail your reloads, otherwise you’ll be sent back to the start of the level soon enough.

This need for perfection also ties into the score-chasing aspect of the game, which is one of our favourite elements of Metal: Hellsinger. Every level ends with a leaderboard, showing exactly how metal you are compared to your friends. The levels are short enough wherein it doesn’t feel like a chore