Forgive me, writers, but I can’t recite a lyric from the Metal: Hellsinger soundtrack. I’d say it’s not about the individual – to be honest, I don’t remember any lyrics; maybe I’m just a bad listener – but it’s also a bit personal, actually.This is how metals work, how listen to metal Composition: A genre, like the classic music on which it has always relied, where each instrument plays a singer-like role in storytelling and expression. Focus on a gestalt that misses the whole, enveloping sound. You have to take it all at once, both frantically dialing in and completely disengaging, to get into the auditory equivalent of flow. Or at least, if Mr. Hetfield ever asked me why I could hum all 8 and a half minutes of The Puppet Master but only a few lines, I would say (Master, master, so-and-so … faster). More importantly, that’s why Metal: Hellsinger is so absolutely magical.
Metal: Hellsinger is a mashup of a rhythm game and a first-person shooter. Shooting in time to the beat of the music deals more damage and builds a multiplier, and missing a beat does the opposite. It sounds like it’s been around for a long time, like it makes sense, but I can actually see why, aside from a few lesser-known indie games, it hasn’t really done it before. You want your shots, in a shooter, to happen when you need them, to be responsive, to be able to burst and clear clips and shots when you need them – like, I think, a composer would want their accompaniment music Ups and downs in tension and difficulty, and illustrate the drama of everything on screen. The practicality of limiting the two to each other, the player, and their own needs sounds like a nightmare.
In Hellsinger, it’s a dream. Somehow this worked and I was reluctant to dig into it any further, but I also felt like I had to. Look closely and you’ll see the seams of this game, the way it’s pulled and stitched together, something that has to stay on the cutting room floor. Metal: Hellsinger’s levels are definitely linear, starting from the maze-side tunnels in Doom, for example, from which it would otherwise draw a lot of inspiration.In theory, this sounds bad, but in fact it’s totally sensible: you can’t explore the trails because that means having time to go look at For the trail, stop and ask yourself, “Left or right?”
There’s no time for anything but the Holocaust, so be it. Occasionally you can see the logic of enemy generation, just weird pauses, and then more waves pop up, like a musician only needs half a bar to go back in time in time. Some boss fights, mashing up Doom’s monsters and mixing it with bullet hell like Returnal, feel a little limited, like they can only throw so much at you at once, and it’s simply impossible to stay ahead. (Moving to 3rd person helps in some ways, allowing you to see more of your positioning in the world around you – but the immediacy and intensity of being an FPS is part of the point. Again: see the seams. )
The downside is that when you’re playing Metal: Hellsinger, there’s simply no time to get this close. You’re mostly concerned with how it feels, not how it works, though you can rightly argue that they’re impossible to separate. The basic idea is that around your crosshair, there is an indicator of the beat of the current song playing, and a series of chevrons close to the center like Dance Dance Revolution’s arrows. You have a few weapons to choose from, so when you shoot, swing, cast, or otherwise sync them to that beat – and hit your enemy – you’ll deal damage based on your timeliness, few Perfects and Goods again appears, such as DDR.
Attacking continuously with the beat will build a meter for your score multiplier – Hellsinger is a score attack game like Doom-clone, but it does have a lot of genres. When the meter is full and you kill an enemy, you go up a notch, doubling to x2, x4, x8 and x16, so kills and combos give you more points – and, most importantly, The complexity of the music goes up a notch, as well. So without the multiplier, you just get a kick drum beat, x2 a little bass guitar, x4 rhythm, x8 lead and x16 vocal. That’s what I see at the seams of Metal: Hellsinger – the musical layers are an ingenious solution to what you might call Guitar Hero’s problem; in fact, missing a note sounds horrible and feels punishing, like the game from The music starts and subtracts the same from it. Hellsinger is add-on, built on the positive reinforcement of extra little licks, drilled double kicks, screaming. Headbanging is a prize here – and, beyond my disbelief, I’ve gone through this whole thing without shame.
Meanwhile, there’s another combo meter that shows you how many hits you landed without taking damage or shooting yourself, and it rewards extra when you hit certain untouched numbers Bonuses, called boons, and have the ultimate meter for each weapon – cleverly placed separately so you can forge the ultimate for your sword, then switch to the shotgun and forge that one so you can link up instantly when you need it Lots of combos. And you need to grow them for health, like later Dooms post-2016, tap the analog stick (well, in time, though it feels weird at first) to zoom in on them and cut them into small pieces. Sometimes different enemies need to combine all of this – there could be more variety visually, but there’s enough action to push and pull your arsenal, pull you out of your comfort zone and force you Faster and more violent forward momentum. That’s the crux of it.
Metal: Hellsinger’s momentum, rhythm, and propulsion feel are top-notch. It talks about the “natural rhythm of the universe,” giving you a big hint in time (look at the pulse of exploding crystals, the flames spewing from the candlestick), but there’s just as much natural rhythm to anything great shooter. Especially something that Doom has always been around, Hellsinger as the origin of an idea, from the flowing bob of Doomguy in John Romero’s original to the kick-punch crunch of melee killing in Doom 2016, or just the well-choreographed sequence of moves of any dance, Halo’s shot grenade melee. It always feels wonderful when these things line up in perfect sync with the music, like a golden audio-visual ratio in motion, like finding the hidden Chrani figures in the code.
In turning this mechanical subtext into something so obvious—into the text itself—metal: Hellsinger runs the risk of almost sacrilegious by turning a body inside out and a cross upside down.Instead, it does the opposite and makes something that feels great correct. It’s hard to say a whole genre is ready here. Much of Metal: Hellsinger is defined by its limitations, and its backdrop is definitely a double-A, stemming from a shared trauma that has since been cancelled after so much time and effort in its last game, Darkborn, The kind of trauma that must resonate with developer The Outsiders has been put into it.
Hellsinger is a brisk game compared to most games, relatively short, though expands indefinitely on some side challenges and leaderboards, with a savage slaying tale of fallen angels and giant skeletons, like a moving Iron Maiden Same as the album cover. But it’s all infused with an irresistible seriousness, a utter, shameless, fearless, wholehearted sincerity. Although it feels like an ode to the genre, Metal: Hellsong also feels like an emotional outpouring, as if the game itself is a different, more personal gestalt. The kind that makes heavy metal a miracle, is necessary to get into a state of fabled fluidity — or even force mild-mannered people to headbutt in front of their TVs.
