Not content to just sit around, the developers behind Metal: Hellsinger have once again put together a significant bundle of free and paid DLCs. The paid DLC, Purgatory, adds a trio of new songs to the game as well as a fantastic new weapon and three new cosmetic skins. Meanwhile, the free DLC adds the new Leviathan game mode, which is a horde mode with a progression system that is a nice complement to the campaign mode.

Diving into the paid stuff first, the three newly added songs fit right into the game's roster. Matt Heafy of Trivium gets tapped a second time, performing "Goodbye My Morning Star." Melissa Bonny of Ad Infinitum debuts in the game with "Swallow the Fire," and rounding out the three is Joe Bad from Fit for an Autopsy performing "Mouth of Hell." The three songs have a nice variation of speeds and tone, but Swallow the Fire is the most standout song of the three.

The new weapon is a recurve bow called Telos, and it quickly became one of my favorite weapons in the game. Keeping with the same musicality of every weapon, you must hold down the attack button on the beat to even pull back the bowstring. However, from there, you can immediately let go on that same beat to fire a weak but fast shot, or you can hold it down for one or two full beats to give the shot increasingly more power. This lets you dial in the power for the enemy you intend to hit and offers a lot of flexibility to pull back shots before stepping out from cover or to delay a pulled-back shot for a slightly better opportunity.

Releasing the shot on the beat is what gets scored for your timing, and with all of these things combined, the Telos is a tricky weapon that is quite rewarding to use. Headshots deal extra headshot damage, so fully pulled arrows launched with perfect timing that hit the head of a strong enemy can drop them in a couple of hits. It's also a challenge to do that, so it's not like the game suddenly has an overpowered weapon to guarantee victory, either. Once you've caused enough carnage with it to fill the ultimate bar, you can call in its ultimate on any spot in the level. This causes dozens of flaming arrows to rain down from above, dealing constant damage to any enemies in the area and often presenting many slaughter opportunities.

The three new cosmetic skins are one of the few letdowns of the DLC. The new skins are "Amethyst," "Chromatica" and "Obsidian," and while they have some slight material effects to how the Chosen look, they are otherwise closer to palette swaps than the previous cosmetic skins that have been added. This DLC also costs a bit more than the previous one at $5.99, but the three new songs and the Telos bow justify the DLC even if the new cosmetics are underwhelming.

On the free side, all players received the new Leviathan mode as part of a recent patch. The Leviathan mode is a fantastic idea in theory that could use some further balancing. In the new mode, you find yourself in relatively small, arena-like levels in which you must murder waves of demons and collect crystals that they drop to charge up the altar in the middle. When you first enter the arena, you only have your trusty sword and Paz as weapons, but before the first wave begins — and in between each wave thereafter — you can pick a new boon to help you on that particular run. These can be bonuses to dealing damage with certain types of weapons, making it so headshots can cause enemies to be slowed, or temporarily granting you the ability to use an additional weapon. At first, these weapons only last for four waves, so you might grab The Hounds and lay waste for a little while, but four waves later, you may find yourself back to the basics.

The issue with the Leviathan mode is that it's rather punishing at first, since you lack the ability to dash or slaughter, which are core abilities that are otherwise present in the rest of the game. This not only makes it much harder to dodge enemy attacks and takes away an important traversal tool, but without slaughter, you also lose a primary means of getting health back. While there are a few Styx crystal formations to break and get health back, ultimately the key aspect of the Leviathan game mode is to avoid taking as much damage as possible, since health is otherwise a finite resource.

As you play Leviathan, you have the chance to gather void crystals, which can be spent between runs to permanently unlock benefits such as the ability to dash/slaughter, start with a particular weapon, grant more total health, etc. These can be gathered from certain enemies, by breaking void crystals, or by certain boons that can cause the crystals to be dropped.

The issue is that initially, the game is incredibly stingy with doling out these opportunities to get crystals. In my experience, it took the better part of 10 run attempts before I gained enough to unlock the dash. If a run only nets you five crystals, and basic benefits take 20-30 crystals to unlock, it makes the early attempts feel like a slog. Some runs where you manage to get far, lucky or both will net more, and you'll come away with a small pile of 20-30 crystals — at which point you realize that some things cost 150. Basically, making progress in the Leviathan mode will take many run attempts, so overall, it seems too slow.

The new Leviathan mode in Metal: Hellsinger is a whole lot of fun, though. It lets you jump into the game and engage with the combat in a way that feels less static than playing through one of the story levels again. The randomized boons make every run different and may sometimes push you to play with a different style than you normally would, and that's also a fun aspect of the mode. Meanwhile, the paid Purgatory DLC adds a great new weapon and a solid trio of songs, and between all of this, it's a decent excuse to spend six bucks and have a bunch of new fun with the game. I'm hopeful that the devs will tweak the ability to get those void crystals, though.

Score: 8.5/10

Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32 GB RAM, NVidia RTX 4070 Ti