Every time something is announced where “metal” is its main selling point, the first reaction is typically one of trepidation. When ones has spent about three quarters of their life as a metalhead, it becomes apparent that some of these products are true love letters to the genre, while many others are simply using it as a marketing term to appeal to casual fans or cater to what they believe non-metalheads perceive to be metal. Metal: Hellsinger naturally garnered this reaction, especially since Doom already covered going to hell to shoot demons to a metal-inspired soundtrack. But the curiosity eventually became irresistible, especially since Metal: Hellsinger is a FPS/rhythm game hybrid and one wonders how such a mashup would work.
To help establish a proper metal pedigree, Metal incorporates vocalists from several well known bands into the soundtrack. There’s Tatiana Shmayluk from Jinger, Björn Strid from Soilwork, Randy Blythe from Lamb of God, Matt Heafy from Trivium, Serj Tankian from System of a Down, Dennis Lyxen from INVSN, James Dorton from Black Crown Initiate, Alyssa White-Gluz from Arch Enemy and Mikael Stanne from personal favorite Dark Tranquility. The soundtrack sticks to fairly well-known bands, but a lot of them are heavy enough where it straddles the line between commercial viability while having to appeal to fans of the more extreme stuff.
The story of Hellsinger isn’t its strongest element. The player takes on the role of the Unknown, a resident of Hell who has lost her voice. In order to get her voice back to sing again, she needs to go to war against the Red Judge, three guesses on who that is, and fight her way through nine levels which has to be a deliberate reference to Dante Alighieri. The idea of having a heavy metal theme game taking place in hell is about as original as combining peanut butter with jelly. That being said, can you say anything bad about PB and J? The story works well enough for this game, and with the soundtrack and addictive gameplay as the main attractions, a “good enough” story is sufficient, and Troy Baker’s narration helps give the game the feel of a classic western.
The gameplay of Metal is what saves it from being a derivative Doom clone and what makes it so gosh darn fun. Music is an essential part of gameplay. The player does more damage when they shoot on beat, which can be found either by listening to the soundtrack or following the visual indicators on screen. Both are fine, but it’s a good accessibility option. Musicians will likely want to follow the audio cues whereas others may find the cursors easier. Early layers of Hell are merciful enough to make learning the game mechanics easy, but it isn’t too long where there’s so much chaos on screen that staying on beat while trying to survive can get about as frantic as sight reading Necrophagist sheet music.
To elaborate more on how this mechanic works, the music starts off sounding sparse with the visual metronome in the crosshairs. As the player shoots on beat they’ll get good or perfect hits that can raise the multiplier. As the multiplier increases the sound fills out, increasing the guitar and bass volume with vocals kicking in once the player hits the 16x multiplayer. This mechanic helps make the player feel more powerful as they blow all their demon enemies to Hell, er, well they’re already in Hell so wherever people go when they die in Hell. Once the beat is found in theory it’s pretty easy to keep. The difficulty comes in with the fact there are multiple targets that aren’t stationary and fire back, so maintaining the beat while dodging and jumping multiple threats from all directions can get pretty challenging. Falling off beat is the worst as panic can cause the survival instinct to just go trigger happy. Just like real music performance, this is a bad idea and it’s much better to take a second to find the beat again.
To paraphrase the wisdom of an extremely intellectual duo from the ’90s, Metal: Hellsinger rules. On paper combining Doom and Dance Dance Revolution sounds patently absurd, but Metal nailed the execution of it. From the first level on the gameplay was highly addicting, looking to find the beat and lay waste to everything that moves in Hell. Some of the areas get challenging in later stages, but knowing that you can overpower them if you stay on beat can help keep the player motivated. The player starts with a sword and a talking skull named Paz, but there are other weapons to find like dual pistols and a crossbow. Of course not everything is perfect in Hell. Some of the levels feel like excessively spawning enemies is used to artificially extend things and the bosses could have benefited from more variety. The game is relatively short too, which isn’t necessary a bad thing. Overall the time spent in Hell was enjoyable.
Music plays an important role in setting the tone for the Unknown’s battle through hell. The soundtrack was scored by the game composer duo Two Feathers, with each of the guest vocalists contributing to a level. Those familiar with the respective bands associated with Metal: Hellsinger know how diverse their vocals are from each other, so having Two Feathers lay down the music helps give the soundtrack cohesion while the vocalists bring an element of uniqueness to each area. The result is a fantastic soundtrack for eternal damnation, where it’s hard not to headbang while shooting the myriad demons. Metal: Hellsinger isn’t a game that would get called easy, but getting into the groove makes dispatching the hellions so much quicker.
Closing Comments:
Metal: Hellsinger is the first-person shooter/rhythm game mashup I had no idea I wanted. Being a fan of metal helps as metalheads are clearly the target demographic, but the developers didn’t use metal as a gimmick to sell an unremarkable game. The gameplay in Metal is fast paced and unforgiving where the player constantly has to fight for their own survival. This a great first-person shooter regardless of what an individual’s taste in music might be. Metal: Hellsinger combines great FPS and rhythm game mechanics in way that brings challenging and rewarding gameplay to a hellscape any metalhead would love to visit.
