Doom has a lot to answer for. Be it the nightmares of children who encountered a Pinky sprite far too young in ‘93 or the now inextricable link between metal beats and FPS demon-slaying, we’ll be blaming the godfather of shooty-bangs for a lot. Metal: Hellsinger is the latest attempt to take that mix of music and blasting and actually combine the two in gameplay – the big difference to all the other attempts is it actually works, despite all the complexities in the way.
Hellsinger challenges you to make it through various arenas while shooting, dashing, reloading, and activating special abilities, but you do it to a beat. The music swells as you keep to it, and big, satisfying points pop out of enemies as you headshot, slice, slaughter, shotgun, and otherwise destroy your daemonic opponents. Get to a x16 multiplier and the vocals kick in, your job being to hold it there as long as possible.
