EleMetals: Death Metal Death Match!

Genre: Action-Platformer / Party Game

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

EleMetals is an arena-based Action-Platformer released on PC in 2020 and ported to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game has players taking the role of color-coded “metalheads” looking to take out all of the others in a deathtrap-filled series of arenas.

For a game that’s emphasizing its “metal“ nature, one would hope that this comes through in the presentation, and mostly it does. The game’s metal soundtrack isn’t especially distinctive, but it definitely fits the theme perfectly, with some excellent guitar-heavy rocking going on in the game’s soundtrack. As for the visuals, this game uses simple, abstract, slightly-cartoony 2D visuals for its characters and backgrounds, and this doesn’t seem quite as befitting the game’s theme, there’s plenty of blood, death, and bones flying around the arenas at any given time to make up for this. In fact, this can be a bit of a problem, as it’s easy to lose track of where you are in the smoke and flying debris.

The gameplay itself is simple but largely pretty fun. Players can jump, air dash, fire a limited number of projectiles, and mash a button to headbang. The air dash is multipurpose, not only helping you move around more easily, but also doubling as a deflector and an attack, allowing you to dash into projectiles and enemies. Headbanging refills depleted projectiles, and can also be used to return your spirit to your body after you die, allowing you to keep fighting. Each time you do this it becomes more difficult though, with players required to button-mash more quickly to restore their character. And it’s all for naught anyway if your body is destroyed by a random deathtrap.

Unfortunately, this leads to the game’s biggest issue. There’s a ton of fun to be had in this game, but it becomes a huge frustrating drag when you repeatedly have to button-mash. There’s a reason most games stopped doing this decades ago, and it takes an otherwise fantastic action-packed Party Game and makes it into an arthritis-causing ordeal.

I really wish there were some way to turn off the button-mashing, because otherwise EleMetals is an excellent game. However, as the game is now, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about the good parts when they’re interspersed with needless brutality, and not the fun on-screen kind.

tl;dr – EleMetals is an arena-based Action-Platformer that has players duking it out in deathtrap-filled arenas with a heavy metal theme. The action here is great… until you start to feel your hands suffering because of all the button-mashing the game requires. There are other good multiplayer Action-Platformers that don’t put you through this ordeal, you should probably play one of those instead.

Grade: C+

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