CheckSum | Metal: Hellsinger review - almost dangling Doom's feet over the flames

As a rhythm game, the music serves as a war drum, starting off each level as only the basics and building to a full-blown metal cacophony as you successfully match movements, murder, and mayhem to the beat. Metal: Hellsinger features a surprising degree of mobility, with dashes, double-jumps, and dodges that can get you from one end of a stage to another in a few short beats, as long as you manage to hit the beat. 

As you successfully hit targets, shoot enemies, or make movements on-beat, your Fury score rises through x1, x2, x4, x8, and x16, and as your Fury rises, you deal more damage, and more layers of the soundtrack get added into the mix, culminating in ear-shredding vocals when you reach x16. One subtle thing that really adds to the rhythm mechanic is the feedback you get from weapons. When you miss a beat, your gunshots sound hollow and miserable, but when you manage to get a good or perfect match, things become much more visceral.

You don't just get extra damage and a more fulfilling experience by playing on-beat, though. Executing jumps and dashes on-beat allows you to execute them in rapid succession, massively boosting mobility, while reloading at the right time makes reloads faster, meaning you can get back to killing monsters quicker. Overall, the rhythm mechanics work flawlessly, and add to the FPS aspects, rather than detracting from it.The feedback loop of music and gameplay especially make chasing the beat more fun without ruining the game as an FPS.

Some parts of Metal: Hellsinger are reminiscent of a bullet-hell game — especially the boss fights — but most of it feels more akin to Doom thanks to the satisfying combat and an overwhelming power trip that settles in once you start to match the beat successfully. The variety of enemies is decent, and it's fairly easy to get over-run, especially in tighter levels with faster, more dangerous monsters.

When you inevitably are over-run, though, not all is lost, as you can choose between starting the level from scratch — this is the option for perfectionists and anyone after high scores — or sacrificing some of your accumulated points and pride for an on-the-spot resurrection. While encounters can be a tad overwhelming sometimes, the difficulty of it makes it extra rewarding when you do finally clear a room, even if it takes you half a dozen attempts.

Weapons and progression are a little less favourable than the enemy variety, but, subjectively, the options are plenty imaginative enough to be entertaining until the end of the game. By a little over halfway through the game, your loadout includes a skull that spits fireballs, a killer shotgun, dual revolvers, and a katana-style sword machete, the combination of which proved most useful for the majority of the game's encounters. After completing each of the hells, you get an opportunity to take on Torments, which are more difficult, single-room, timed challenges that grant you a power-up upon completion.

The Torments are short, but fun bursts of violence that meaningfully change the rest of your gameplay for the better, and enhance the otherwise fairly sparse progression system. The lack of progression isn't an obstacle, though, since your weapons are plenty powerful enough to kill almost everything in a handful of shots. Besides, it could be argued that the game is better off with as few power-ups as possible, since that forces players to focus on skill, which is a far more rewarding approach than spending hours in menus trying to min-max configs and loadouts. 

In terms of replayability, Metal: Hellsinger falls a little short, since, apart from the leaderboards, the admittedly banging soundtrack, and some hidden items, there's not much to compel you to play it again. There is a higher difficulty mode that unlocks when you complete the game on the highest difficulty mode, but you may have to be a masochist to attempt that. All-in-all, Metal: Hellsinger is an excellent, fast-paced, FPS rhythm game that nails the basics, doesn't overstay its welcome, and is well worth the US$29.99 and five-ish hours it demands of you.