While rhythm games have certainly had their turn dominating the cultural zeitgeist over the last 20 years — from Guitar Hero to Dance Dance Revolution to the VR darling Beat Saber — they largely remain a polarizing proposition in 2024. Swedish studio The Outsiders are yet another in a long line of developers who’ve attempted to reinvent the wheel and breathe life into an otherwise niche genre, and in the process have created a briefly engaging, certainly flawed, but reasonably entertaining proof of concept in Metal: Hellsinger.
The game’s core gameplay loop is all about hacking, slashing, and shooting your way out of the depths of hell, with each successive strike performed in sync with the rhythm of a song increasing the strength of your attack. At its best, the game thrusts players into a satisfying flow-like state, creating an exhilarating dance that sees you rocking with a steady wave of enemies and moving with the music. My satisfaction at landing the killing blow on an elite level demon just as the chorus dropped was immense, and I relished in the destruction when unleashing an ultimate attack that cleared an entire wave of enemies all at once. Unfortunately, despite a reasonable latency calibration process, the beat matching is not always flawless in its execution, and what could be a consistently satisfying, free flowing combat system instead oscillates between grin-inducing stupidity and break-your-hand-on-the-arm-of-the-couch frustration. Hitting your attack button in time to the beat is easy enough, but staying locked in the pocket through stretches of an entire level becomes difficult as animations and sound effects regularly play out of sync — even when your HUD is screaming ‘PERFECT’ after each hit — easily overwhelming your sense of rhythm. Attempting to land an attack on the upbeat will result in an imperfect input, yet spamming eighth notes will force some of your weapons into an animation that skips a count or two before sometimes finishing on the upbeat anyway. The messaging about what’s allowed within the flow of combat is often unclear, making for an uneven experience.
Aesthetically, fans of horror-adjacent, apocalyptic inspired Giger-esque gore-fests will find nothing new here. It’s DOOM without the budget, its setting and enemy variety paling in comparison to that of its inspiration. Boss fights are all various flavors of the same nebulous apparition firing projectiles that turn these segments into bullet hell-lites — a fine first encounter that doesn’t do enough to justify itself in subsequent iterations. These battles are made obnoxious by the relative lack of weapon diversity, as loadouts are (mostly) comprised of close-range firearms that force you front and center as hellfire rains down upon you, a desperate antagonist attempting to thwart your escape from hell. The story serves more as bloat though, a poor attempt at padding out an already meager runtime, and becomes an unwelcome distraction during gameplay as the narrator interjects, causing the song to almost completely fade into the background for brief periods of active combat. Cutscenes are scarcely animated exposition dumps, adding little value to what may otherwise be a relatively concise package for FPS fans, metalheads, and achievement hunters alike.
The trophy list does offer its share of challenges though, even while clocking in under 10 hours to complete. ‘Not Shaken, Nor Stirred’ requires that you don’t miss a beat for an entire level, which is something that I attempted an unreasonable number of times before finally enabling an accessibility option that times all of the hits for you — a feature I opted to leave on for most of the miscellaneous trophies, as this game turned out to be more fun as a DOOM clone than a rhythm game. The aptly named ‘This Pounding Heart I-IV’ sees you tenuously building hit streaks all the way up to 50 without taking any damage, and ‘Pazifist’ asks that you use the weakest weapon in the game to clear an entire level. Getting a few multikills, finishing the story, and completing all of the Torments — timed challenge arenas that can be replayed with various modifiers — round out a reasonable list that will keep you in the world and listening to the OST just a little bit longer.
And what a ripper of an OST it is. Two Feathers Studio has composed a uniquely outstanding soundtrack for Metal: Hellsinger, providing a crushing and consistent rhythmic backbone that practically begs you to move with it. It’s assaulting from beginning to end, but demonstrates a profound understanding of melody. In other words — they know bangers. Showcasing collaborations with artists such as Serj Tankian of System of a Down, Matt Heafy of Trivium, and Will Ramos of Lorna Shore, this all-star cast bridges the gap between generations of metal and transcends the genre, feeling like a massive, modern production while still honoring its roots in the early aughts. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but understands and serves its role to perfection, managing to retain a strong identity despite not featuring a consistent voice (something to which I am uniquely qualified to attest.) Unfortunately, when taking damage or failing to maintain a hit streak, the game will drop vocals out of a track entirely; robbing players of these performances might seem adequate for a dev team looking to dole out cruel and unusual punishment, but intentionally handicapping the best element of the entire package feels like a strange design choice. Every time my rage meter filled and the song kicked into high gear, however, I was reminded what a crying shame it was that this OST didn’t take any hardware home at The Game Awards in 2022. It’s an absolute crime that it’s not currently available online in any official capacity.
As a musician, avid listener of metal music, and fan of several names attached to the OST, I’m inclined to recommend this title on its emphasis of the genre alone. But — despite having a blast once turning off beat matching entirely — the issues with its core mechanics and a short campaign make it seem more like an interesting proof of concept than a fully fledged experience. There’s a lot to enjoy about Metal: Hellsinger, but a number of these problems prevent it from being considered rhythm game royalty. Metal fans would still be remiss not to check it out (or the soundtrack, at least), but general fans of the FPS genre should approach this game with tempered expectations.
Verdict
This frenetic first person shooter is one whose strengths lie more in the OST and its star-studded list of features than it does in its inconsistent gameplay, but for those musically inclined, it’s a reasonably entertaining 6-10 hour romp.
