Metal: Hellsinger hands-on: first-person demon slaying, cranked to 11

When video games add music, rhythm, and tempo to their action, I’m usually first in line to try them. That has been the case since PaRappa the Rapper kicked and punched its way into my heart in late 1996. Since then, I’ve strapped myself into VR, testing plastic instruments, touring extensive arcades, and doing the genre’s biggest and smallest experiments.

Over the decades, though, my dream peanut butter and chocolate game combo still hasn’t worked out: a first-person rhythm game. The indie roguelike BPM: bullets per minute tried to nail that merger in 2020 only to falter because, apparently, deliver disaster-like battles to the beat require a graceful touch.

Hence I doubted when another contender on this unclaimed throne, Metal: Hellsinger, was billed as a similar search for “slay demons to the rhythm of heavy metal”. The developers at Swedish upstart The Outsiders seem to understand those fears ahead of its launch on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation towards the end of 2022, as they’ve come forward with the exact hands-on demo needed to put an exclamation point on. to post their pitch . This game is not only better than BPM† As much as I have loved the modern disaster reboot series, I wonder if Metal: Hellsinger might be the most headbang-worthy demon-blasting game ever.

Pace of the beast

BPM deserves credit for mastering some basics: take overloaded weapons into a demonic landscape, shoot, reload and dodge to the beat of background music in battles against aliens. Metal: Hellsinger follows that path and uses a BPM-like on-screen interface of tick marks converging in the center of the screen like a macabre metronome.

But this newer game differs in important ways. Metal: Hellsinger has custom pre-built levels instead of BPMrandomly generated underground caves. As a result, Metal: Hellsinger approaches Eternal doomThe aesthetics, whether it be because a battle arena features carefully laid out jump-and-dash paths or between combat moments, sees players rush through mood-setting passages where vistas stretch to a stark, black-and-orange horizon.

enlarge † Each Metal: Hellsinger level revealed so far resembles an album cover from the 80s metal heyday, usually somewhere in the Iron Maiden, Megadeth or Slayer camps.

In the case of this demo, levels eventually lead to an impressive boss encounter, where waves of enemies are popped by a monstrous, floating beast (seen at the top of the article) that unleashes waves of “bullet hell” attacks. By the time you’ve mastered combat with the game’s first four weapons, this boss forces you to switch between those implements and contend with a satisfying difficulty.

In this limited demo, at least the game’s rhythmic action feels more attuned to a solid battle flow than the overly fast-paced BPM† I wouldn’t be surprised if later Metal: Hellsinger levels resemble the double kick drum setup of an average death metal drummer, but the satisfying introductory levels land at a more stable “groove metal” tempo similar to Black Sabbath or Pantera. Each time you swipe a sword or cast some other fiery spell (as launched from a glowing skull in your hands), the music gives way to a light, satisfying pause, as if taking a moment to spin a drumstick before firing it up. a bow.

Carry a demo, like ’90s shareware

You can attack off the beat if you want, but the game rewards fighting at the pace in a few key ways. First, there’s the brutal impact of attacks within a “good” or “perfect” tempo window, combined with a louder, crunchier sound effect and clear visuals that indicate your timely attacks have done more damage. More important to this game’s metallic pastiche, though, is the reward for keeping your hit multiplier intact, which stacks up more “layers” of a backing track’s mix. The better you do, the more rhythm guitar, bass and additional drumming effects appear – while a max tempo meter switches a song’s vocal mix, which in the case of this demo alternates between Cookie Monster growls and Evanescence-esque howl above the demonic reverie .

The game’s publishers at Funcom are already eager to sell the finished product’s packed soundtrack, which features members of fairly well-known bands like Trivium, Lamb of God, and System of a Down. The demo only has two songs to blast with, and one level, unfortunately, stretches a single song a little too long, requiring the vocal chorus to be repeated if you stick to a “16x” rhythm combo. But the developers understand where to emphasize the mix of the metal instruments and where to free up frequency space so that in-rhythm strikes give a punchy impact to the entire audio mix. So I’m grudgingly optimistic that the catchy, driving metal in this demo is an indication of how rocking the final product will sound.

The demo for Metal: Hellsinger landed in my inbox three weeks ago, and it takes about 15 minutes to meet the single level and boss. Still, I found myself playing it all over again – like I was a teenager in the ’90s, with a precious shareware version of Downfall 1 and save money to eventually buy the rest of the game.

In my three weeks, I’ve only grown to love the four weapons available so far (sword, fire spell, shotgun, and twin pistols). I’ve also gotten better at reloading and dodging to the beat – and spreading my damage so I can land more consistent “killing blow” taps to gain much-needed health at higher difficulty levels. I also learned how by consistently switching weapons, players can build different meters so they can more often drop crucial super attacks, including a light striker and a temporary sentry rifle that can chew through waves of peony peonies.

And I appreciate a meaningful distinction from BPM: Enemy Generation, Placement and AI. Rather than letting players pick out swarms of scattered enemies, especially those flying in the sky, Metal: HellsingerThe waves of enemies allow players to focus on the tempo of the background music. There’s plenty of first-person challenge to juggle here in terms of battling varied AI by enemy type – some rushing you, others hanging back with ranged explosions – and doubling down on evasive mechanics in ways that feel satisfying, not sloppy.

Will the final game maintain the fun-to-play momentum of a single level? That depends on factors I haven’t tested so far, including additional weapons, new songs, and questions like whether hostile diversity will breathe new life into later levels or whether the audio team will figure out how to deal with repeating vocal tracks in later levels. the musical mix . In any case, I’m convinced I’ll want to try the final game and find out when Funcom decides it will be later this year.