Hell is Us - An Exploration Marvel

It's important to know a little about the reviewer before you read their review.

I like exploration in a game as long as it's rewarding and I enjoy melee combat especially if it involves parry and dodge.

I played Hell is us for about 25 hours on my Playstation 5. Did it meet my expectations? Let's find out and I hope this review helps you in making a decision about this game.

First Few hours

Going into the game there was one thing that was known for sure and that was that there will be no hand holding, to the point that they don't even give you a map to track your location. But that's not to say that there is nothing for you to figure out your next steps. They offer you a Compass, a paper map for regions and lots of people giving you clues about what should be your general direction to progress.

The best compliment I can give this game is it's like real life where if you were lost in a forest and all you had was a compass and a paper map, how would you figure your way out and I loved that about this game.

So along those lines you meet your first NPC in the game and you definitely need to pay attention to the conversations for your next clues. NPC informs me what I need to do to progress further but how I need to do it is all up to me. In the very first region they offer you a couple of puzzles to solve and solving them either opened up your path or gave you a very good reward.

You are also introduced to the combat early on, pretty standard - dodge, parry, swing and boom! And oh you also have a drone as your companion that assists you in fights.

As I Grew into the Game

As I continued exploring the world of Hadea and made my way through enemies, I discovered many locations in a region are inaccessible due to the current events of the game but the problem was that there was nothing telling me that, which resulted in running around the same places twice or thrice just to ensure I did not miss anything. But once I realized it I was more confident in skipping a puzzle assuming that something will give me the way to it to solve it later on and that's exactly what happens.

The regions in Hadea are interconnected through puzzles, you will find something in one area and then you will realize 'oh I can use this in another area to solve a puzzle', which was a nice feeling - a lot of light bulb moments!

You also find that apart from your main missions there are plenty of side quests known as 'Good Deeds'. If you help people you come across in Hadea, you get rewarded very nicely in the game, the only problem was that you don't get to know about the rewards until you have reached the 3rd region of the game.

Combat and Weapons

I found combat of the game to be satisfying as it aligns with my personal taste i.e. you could dodge, parry, swing through your enemies and on top of that you have a drone to assist you. Of course drone has a cooldown time and upgrades.

The enemy variation was dull, few basic enemy types and you just go over them over and over through out the game. You find a little bit of variations in their moves later on but that's pretty much it. Moreover the difficulty spike in the very last section of game was pretty outrageous but it was dealt with.

As for weapons you get 4 different kind of weapons Sword, Twin Axe, Great sword and Polearm. These weapons can then be assigned charms such as Grief, Rage, Terror and Ecstasy. Each weapon you discover is one of the 4 emotions and you can only attach the charms of the same emotion to the weapons and then there were universal charms as well that could be attached to any weapon.

Personally i found combat and feel of the weapon swing and contact very smooth but my only complaint remains the lack of enemy variation.

Story and Characters

I did not find the overall story of the game to be very interesting but it was good enough for me to keep going. As you all know I do not talk a whole lot about the story in my review because of the risk of spoilers so that's all I got to say.

As for characters, the game had some decent characters, the whole interaction with NPC and asking them various questions to find your way really brings them alive. As for main character, it was all straight forward and not too many ups and lows to go through his journey.

Gameplay

I feel like I already talked about the gameplay in 1st three sections of this article so I won't spend too much time on this. The overall gameplay for me was very satisfying. No maps, you go around talking to people to look for clues and do your best to figure out the right direction to go. There are plenty of puzzles to solve and there are plenty of mysteries to uncover as well. The combat aids the gameplay really well as I felt that up close melee combat for this game was a right approach.

Conclusion

Games like Hell is Us do not come around often. It's a proper gamer's game, a game that invokes your curiosity and implores you to explore. The game could have benefited from shorter game time because solving puzzles after puzzle eventually drains you out but hey, maybe you don't wanna finish a game in 1 week like me, so maybe it's all good there!

The game has very few boss fights but they sure are very unique. There were not enough enemy variations to go with the length of the game but at least the combat felt buttery smooth.

Rouge Factor have done a very good job of shipping out a well polished game, i did not encounter a single bug throughout my play. Overall the sense of satisfaction you get from playing this game is very high and I hope you all give this game a chance at some point because games like this is a rarity.

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SpwanYaard