The Outsiders and Funcom have revealed Metal: Hellsinger, a rhythm shooter coming to PS4, Xbox One, PC and next-gen consoles PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2021.
There’s some really interesting ideas at play here, with the FPS gameplay merged to the music by the rhythm action style pulses in the central crosshair. The music adapts and shifts depending on how well you do this, with scoring boosted if you match actions to the beat, from shooting and killing enemies to maintaining the flow by using items.
You’ll be aiming to earn as high a score as possible to climb the leaderboards, as well as to feed your upgrades as you venture deeper into Hell. It’s definitely a skill-based shooter, rewarding you for precise shooting
You play as the Unknown, who is descending into Hell to overturn the order of the realm, fighting through the demons to battle the Red Judge.
The game features vocal performances from Matt Heafy of Trivium, Mikael Stanne or Dark Tranquillity, Bjorn Strid of Soilwork, Alissa White-Gluz or Arch Enemy, and more. That’s sure to appeal to a fair few metal fans.
The game is in development at The Outsiders in Stockholm, a studio made up of industry veterans from the area. It was founded by David Goldfarb, game director on Payday 2, and Benjamin Cousins, who he had previously worked alongside at DICE.
It was Goldfarb who joined IGN’s stream to explain a bit more about the game:
The studio had previously been working on Darkborn, which initially went by the codename Project Wight. This cast players as monsters in the Viking era, fighting to survive while being hunted by humans. In development since 2016, with the first gameplay reveal coming from a 16 minute video released via IGN last year. However, by April 2020, the studio announced that Darkborn was being cancelled. Few details were given, but it came alongside optimism for the studio’s future, and now we see why.
