Metallic: Hellsinger Assessment (PS5) | Push Sq.

The idea behind Metallic: Hellsinger is straightforward sufficient: marry the traditional shooter gunplay of DOOM with a rhythm recreation. And developer The Outsiders completely nail this factor of its recreation: the gunplay feels incredible. Capturing, dodging, biking weapons, all of it feels nice. You are able to do nearly all the things within the recreation to the rhythm of every degree’s tune, and also you get bonus factors, in addition to bonus harm, for holding in time to the music.

The entire music has a definite drum beat that’s simple to maintain monitor of whereas within the warmth of battle, and every degree incorporates a visitor vocalist from some fairly well-known bands, reminiscent of Trivium and System of a Down. The songs begin with primary drum beats, including layers of vocals, guitars, and so forth as your combo meter goes up. It’s a very nice contact, and the implementation is seamless. The music is the actual star, because the threadbare narrative is tucked into bland cutscenes that bookend every degree.

The cracks begin to present up once you look past the core gameplay. The title doesn’t do something poorly per se, however all the things comes throughout as barebones. The environments throughout all eight ranges blur collectively and have related color grading with uninteresting degree design. Every degree quantities to a sequence of arenas linked by hallways ending in a boss, and so they do little in the best way to encourage artistic or differing fight approaches. You possibly can efficiently beat the sport with solely the shotgun in the event you so select.

The encounter design virtually stops evolving after the second degree, solely sometimes introducing variations of enemies thereafter. Lots of the enemies aren’t terribly enjoyable to combat, which is one other massive drawback. As enjoyable because the weapons could also be to make use of — each weapon is satisfying, and a blast to mess around with — all the things begins to stale rapidly. Finishing torments — mini-dungeons that unlock and improve perks — add some selection to the affair, however these are temporary distractions at greatest. You possibly can 100 per cent the sport in about 6-7 hours, too, making the $39.99 price ticket astonishingly steep.

In the end, you’ve a recreation with one masterfully designed core factor — the rhythm gunplay — surrounded by various components that, whereas not horrible, are mediocre at greatest.