I’m pretty easy to please. Give some fast paced action, some robot ninjas, a little bit of cyberpunk aesthetic, and some banging industrial tunes and I’m good to go. Morbid Metal aims to scratch that itch by serving up a heaping load of Devil May Cry inspired lightning-quick combo action, wrapped in a cyberpunk cyborg package, while layering on just enough spattering of Blue Stahli to put me right in my happy place. Our preview for Morbid Metal starts right now!
The demo we played for Morbid Metal is the same one that’s currently available on Steam right now, so if this sounds fun to you, please go grab the demo and check it out for yourself despite who the publisher is.
While I haven’t been happy with some of the more recent titles from Ubisoft, I did love their older games for their action and story. Seeing them take risks with fun new indie titles like Morbid Metal and The Rogue Prince of Persia goes a long way to getting them back on my side even after they’ve stripped the soul out of almost all of their beloved franchises.
In a nutshell, Morbid Metal is a roguelike race through a gauntlet of enemies. Each time you clear a wave of enemies, you can choose from three possible upgrades. There are also side paths to check out to find chests with anything from healing items, to additional upgrades for your current run, and unlockable trinkets that will likely function as currency used to unlock permanent upgrades once the game releases in Early Access later this year.
What sets Morbid Metal apart from the plethora of other roguelikes on the market is the ability to instantly swap to another character at any point during your run. During this demo, you can only unlock Ekku, who looks like Temple Jax from League of Legends but he’s got a big battle axe with a katana handle that does some very nice strong cleaves that lead to knock ups, allowing you to swap back to Flux and run some extremely satisfying air juggles.
Speaking of air juggles, the game grades you on a ranking system similar to Devil May Cry’s style meter, and the higher you score the more points you get. This encourages perfect dodging, stringing together combo chains, and refusing to stand still. I’m pretty bad at these games, yet I managed to run the demo in about eight minutes with a S rank, so it’s friendly enough for beginners but challenging enough that even the most seasoned veterans might struggle.
Each character has two unique abilities, such as Flux’s dashing strike or Ekku’s spinning overhead slash, and utilitizing those skills along with well-timed use of their ultimate attacks means you’ll be able to eliminate the most obnoxious of enemies quickly so you can focus on jumping around to target easier enemies to keep your combo alive.
Starting a fight as Flux by dash striking to a flying drone, only to drop down and then swap out to Ekku to ground smash a shield bearing brawler foe and knock them up into the air and then quickly swapping back to Flux and doing a jumping strike combo feels satisfying every single time and my guess this sensation will only get better once the full game lets you swap between four characters for maximum carnage.
While Morbid Metals is pretty flashy, there’s a lot of Warframe comparisons that can be made here, but since I didn’t really get into Warframe so aside from appearances, I don’t really see it.
Morbid Metals is unfortunately pretty barebones in its current form, but it’s a whole bunch of fun and we’re eagerly looking forward to seeing what’s next once it hits Early Access later this year.
