Metal: Hellsinger Review (G00N3R)
Metal Hellsinger is a first person shooter where the player is a demon trying to escape from hell. The unique gameplay twist is that you have to fire your guns in time to the beat of heavy metal music to build up your damage multiplier, allowing you to kill enemies quickly.
The Good
• Feels like an old school shooter where the movement is fast, there are lots of enemies in each encounter, and you have to always be moving to avoid taking damage.
• The beat matching gameplay mechanic is fun. I found that I didn’t really have to look at the on screen timing indicator, I was able to use my ears to track the beat, so my eyes could focus on aiming at the demons.
• There are four main weapons including dual pistols, shotgun, explosive crossbow and dual throwing axes. I mostly used the shotgun because its click click boom click click boom firing speed is a close match to the music beat, while the pistols’ longer effective range makes them more useful against bosses.
• A couple of other mechanics add a tactical element to the combat. Successful attacks build up your weapon’s ultimate meter, allowing you to use a special attack powerful enough to one hit kill most enemies, which I would save for the more dangerous demons. And when an enemy is near death, you can press a button to quickly fly over and execute them, causing them to drop shards which restore your health (similar to the modern Doom games).
• I played on the medium (“goat”) difficulty because I wasn’t sure how tricky the beat matching mechanic would be. Regular encounters can get intense on the later levels, while the bosses are quite challenging because of their bullet hell style attacks.
• I didn’t have any problems with bugs, crashes or framerate. Controls are fully rebindable and work great with mouse and keyboard.
The Bad
• The game is incredibly short, as I completed it in just 3.4 hours. It seems like the developers intend the player to replay the same levels over and over again chasing high scores for the leaderboards, which isn’t really what I’m looking for in a single player FPS, although I suppose I’ll have to do it to salvage some value for money.
The Recommendation
If you like your shooters fast and your music loud, Metal Hellsinger is definitely the game for you. Its just a massive shame that the game is so short, and because of this I can only recommend it on a deep sale.