Metal: Hellsinger VR

My favorite part of this game is the music, so my review has some bias. I love metal and have picked up all the metal dlcs. The music intensifies as you progress through the level, which fits the game so well.

This is a rhythm based shooter game, you don't have to play to the rhythm but it feels more rewarding to see you kills unfold to the beat, plus you receive more points if you play to the rhythm.

The environment is beautiful, playing in various hellscapes filled with demons and monsters to shoot.

The downfall are the controls, it takes a little while to get used to and even when I revisit the game I feel like I need a refresher on the controls. Thankfully every other aspect of this game is so good, that I'll struggle to give it anything less than 5 stars.

Controls are awful entirely unintuitive, it's a game where you need to keep moving and it does everything on the same control as the movement meaning you have to stop to reload and activate special attacks. The swap weapon button is the movement stick meaning if like me you grip the controller tight your gonna constantly be swapping when you don't want to, the other control jumps and dashes all movement things that should really be with the movement stick, desperately needs a way to reprogram controls. It's a shame because I loved the non vr game

Update:

Months later and still no patch. It’s abandoned. But it’s so much fun I have to raise my score to five stars anyway. There are so few games that dare to have gameplay this intense and chaotic in VR. It really stands out as something very special.

Original Review:

Five stars for the art direction and intense combat, three stars for the technical implementation, four stars overall.

First off, ignore any reviews based on this game’s “future potential” because all signs indicate that this was a contract job and once the game was released the contract was complete and the code was abandoned. So what you get is likely all you’ll ever get.

Now that that’s out of the way, what’s here right now is a total blast to play if you can deal with some sloppy, unfinished elements.

There’s been a lot of criticism regarding the graphics. It looks like a Quest 2 game even if you’re running on a Quest 3. The visuals are greatly scaled down from the flat screen version and it uses ASW so it has the usual ASW visual artifacts.

If you’ve ever wanted to fight your way through a Hell populated with demons that look like Todd McFarlane figures come to life then hopefully you can look past the rendering technology to let the beautiful art direction shine through. As Quest games go, this is one of the better looking ones because of its skillful art direction.

I didn’t think I would enjoy the music since I’m more into nu metal bands than whatever this metal sub-genre is, but within the context of the game it’s great. The music is dynamic and as you level up during the battles vocals will kick in. Just like the art direction, the soundtrack is very well executed.

Unfortunately certain aspects of the game feel unfinished. The tutorials are sparse and sometimes confusing. The UI interactions in the hub world are super janky and frustrating. It’s difficult to get the selection buttons, (like the leaderboard display), to work when you click them. Picking up the books you use to change settings is also difficult, but on the plus side there are lots of settings you can tweak to customize the game once you do manage to grab a book.

The gameplay is a chaotic adrenaline rush and a hell of a lot of fun. Leaping through the air, dashing, and doing old school platform game double jumps while spinning around and targeting enemies is a total blast! (I highly recommend playing while standing and turning with your feet if you have the space.)

However some people strongly dislike the controls. It feels like a flat to VR port which it is, but aside from the finishing attack triggered by the X button which always feels disjointed, I’ve gotten used to the controls. You need to try to stay calm and focused and not overwork the thumb sticks since clicking them down activates the dash and weapon selection wheel. Being calm and focused is generally better anyway when the combat gets intense.

I’ve played through several levels so far and the bits of story provided by introductory cut scenes and the narrator are entertaining. The bosses are challenging and feel like old school arcade boss battles. I haven’t played all the levels yet because I keep going back and replaying earlier levels. Like any rhythm game the replayabilty is very high.

This is the kind of action I was hoping I would get from Hellsweeper and Dead Hook. Hellsweeper is an excellent game that has strong support from the developers, but its complex game mechanics have kept me from getting totally immersed. (I’m going to keep trying though.) Dead Hook’s environments never hooked me.

I waited for a sale and bought Metal Hellsinger during a 40% off promotion, but I would have been fine paying full price now that I’ve played it.

A few tips:

If you play with the built in speakers, skip the audio calibration.

Attack to the beat. For example if you swing the sword off beat it will do almost no damage. This is a rhythm game first and foremost, but you can disable the need to attack on the beat in the settings and turn it into just a combat game, (although your scores won’t make it to the leaderboards).

And again, try to stay calm and focused no matter how hellish it gets down there. 😁

I’m a bit stunned how pixelated it looks on Meta Quest 2. Could we get a texture pack or something? My cellphone could run these graphics.

Like others say this game is so so good. Music hits hard and really drives up the action and that action is top notch.

Needs tweaks to the weapons - the boomerangs are worthless, and really only the two pistols, skull and regular shotgun allow you to build combos. Not even the sword is usable for anything other than the finishing move. They could honestly delete all other weapons and just build combos around the three basic guns.

Lastly, more enemy variety is needed. Personally I'd like if there were certain enemies with ballistic shields requiring you to do combo sequences with the sword like until you fall. That would make this game a real goat.

This is still a must play VR experience regardless of these small flaws. One of the best VR games ever made imo in terms of taking VR mechanics and movement to the max. If the devs keep releasing updates it should elevate to a permanent classic for VR.

It’s like if pistol whip had free movement, the music was metal and the enemies were demons.

Just needs bhaptics support. It would work really well with this game