Morbid Metal Early Access Review - Hack And Slash Feels Perfect With Roguelike Elements

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Morbid Metal was provided by Ubisoft for review. Thank you!

There aren’t a lot of games that I play now that shocked me as I’m playing them. Whether it be in gameplay or performance on the Steam Deck, there aren’t many that almost immediately hook me in when I wasn’t expecting it. However, there are a few games that do break through the mold, and Morbid Metal is one of them. This new hack-and-slash roguelike wowed me from the trailers, and I am elated to say it’s exactly as it seems.

Fans of games like Devil May Cry will definitely see some influence throughout Morbid Metal and fall in love with it. The combat is tight, giving us one basic attack, two skills, and an ultimate. Utilizing and swapping between all of these are necessary to defeat the foes we encounter, but that’s not all. As we play, we will also unlock Shapeshifting, which gives us a completely different moveset with different skills. Swapping between forms is immediate, which means we can utilize them in our combos.

And it’s very encouraging to make sure we do this. We have a style rank that goes up as we attack enemies, and will increase faster by utilizing different attacks, skills, and shapeshifting. The higher our rank, the more currency we get after defeating the wave of enemies, and it’s so satisfying to see that rank go up.

Fighting enemies feels great, with so much movement required to do tax, flashy effects from all of our different types of attacks, and the variety that will allow us to keep on going despite the distance between them. The roguelike mechanics are wonderfully implemented to change up our strategy and fighting style.

After defeating each batch of enemies, we will get an upgrade that will augment our moves or give us some extra perks. These could include things like having a drone that attacks, enemies and intervals, making it so we can shoot out blades after using one of our skills, or even putting debuffs on enemies as we attack. We can also find chess that has completely new skills to replace the current ones we have equipped. Both of these elements keep us on our toes as we continue to survive the waves of attacks from enemies, and with some of these being upgraded versions, we can help get stronger.

And of course, with this being a rogue life, there are going to be currencies that we can get to make us permanently stronger. In the run, we have currency where we can buy some temporary upgrades, while the other currency can give us permanent upgrades like more health, new abilities, like a perfect dodge, and even blessings to help our runs further.

Still, even with all of this, skill is going to be needed to come out on top. Yes, we can get stronger and give us some edges in combat, but the skill we need to dodge and fight, while trying to keep our style rank up, will take precedence. These kinds of games reward skill-based gameplay above all else, while the upgrades can help with some skills that deal more damage or give us more health, it doesn’t detract from the fact that you need to be on your toes, time your dodge well, and stylishly utilize your arsenal. That focal point is key, and making sure the skill stays in plain sight is quite important.

Even the platform aspects of Morbid Metal are pretty fun. To get between some of the platforms, we will have to jump and dash long distances to get there. This feeds well into some of the exploration, where we can find some currency, health, and other chests with abilities lying around. It’s a small but rewarding aspect of the game that complements it well.

As this is an early access release, there are still some minor grievances here and there. Some of the locations are repeated, making it feel like there’s a lack of variety of times, and there’s definitely some little bits here and there that need to be refined a little bit further. But for an initial release into early access, it’s a strong showing of what the game could become. And even though it is a little bit repetitive, I still find myself justifying continuing to come back for more because of how much fun the combat is.

Morbid Metal - Steam Deck Performance So Far

What really got me, though, is how well Morbid Metal actually performs on the Steam Deck, despite all the very obvious compromises that need to be made. It seems like the team is trying to target 60 FPS, though it isn’t there quite yet, but the fact that it gets so close most of the time was awesome.

The game defaults to low settings and uses upscaling, which ultimately makes the game look a little worse for wear. The game also uses FSR 1 for upscaling, which does make the game run a little bit faster, but looks way more shimmery. This is the only upscaling option we have on the Deck, which is just not great. It’s not unplayable, and I don’t feel an impacted my fights, but it feels like we’re missing a lot in the visuals department. This was even more apparent after seeing the comparison between high settings and low.

However, this does help a lot with performance. Most fights and places I ran around and did hit 60 FPS and stayed there, which is pretty great. There were some moments later on and later stages where the frame rate did drop, but keeping it to 45 FPS was much more doable. It did lose some of that smoothness from 60, but it still felt good, and I was able to play it without issue.

Still, I have to give them props for getting the game into such a performant state, even though it’s releasing into early access. This means that it can only get better, and I can see that happening. I hope they bring in some new ops skiing options, because FSR 3 would look leagues better, but I would deal with this if we can get a solid 60 FPS the whole time.

And as for the game itself, it shows a ton of promise. The core gameplay group is addictive and is extremely tight, with lots of ways to improve and customize our arsenal as we keep playing. I can’t wait to see how this game will turn out. It’s already such a great experience that has me borderline addicted, so adding in more content is just going to be a treat.

Morbid Metal can be wishlisted on Steam ahead of its April 8th release date.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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