Latest news with #HollowWalkers
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Hell is Us' mysterious world doesn't need Soulslike combat to be interesting
While its combat might leave a little to be desired, Hell is Us is shaping up to be a remedy to gaming's current run of samey Soulslikes thanks to its unique approach to navigation. Much more than just another Soulslike, by removing the mini-map and quest markers Hell is Us drops you into an oppressive sci-fi world far more gratifying to explore and discover. Prior to getting hands on with it, I couldn't bring myself to believe that Hell is Us isn't a soulslike. A mysterious protagonist; heavily emphasised melee combat; and a dark, mysterious world full of several interconnected biomes to explore and root around in. On a pure surface level, Rogue Factor's upcoming title ticks a lot of the same boxes seen from the genre's top stalwarts. Dig a little deeper, though, and it doesn't take long to realise that Hell is Us asks much more of the player than the need to simply parry, block, and dodge with accuracy. After two-and-a-half hours of playtime, I can already see how lateral thinking will be the most important weapon in your arsenal – a sentiment further reinforced by the lack of map and the investigative-led 'player-plattering' system. Crucial to the mystery running throughout Hell is Us is the inherent otherworldliness felt in the location in which it's set. Based in an alternate version of 1993 where analogue technology is heavily contrasted by alien-like invaders, the fictional country of Hadea plays host to several monstrous sights and enemies. You'd think taking place in an Eastern European-inspired location on Earth would bring a sense of safety and certainty, yet an ongoing civil war divides the remaining human factions trying to survive, and the monolithic structures that surround such life also aren't helping morale. The truth is that, even without traditional quest markers or map designed to stoke curiosity, Hadea already presents the type of landscapes I wouldn't be able to stop chipping away at. Luckily, the setup of Hell is Us gives you plenty of reason to want to do so as well. Cast in the shoes of Remi, he's on a mission to find his parents to find out why they abandoned him so long ago as a kid. Doing so means coming face-to-face with countless ghoulish nasties while equipped with a serious of increasingly robust melee weapons and the most basic compass needed to try and navigate Hadea's constant rainy atmosphere. Right now, Remi is falling into the trap of being almost too gruff-voiced for my personal liking, yet I can forgive this due to an incredibly torturous opening (literally) that takes place in media res, as well as the fact that Remi's fighting actions speak louder than his words anyway. It's true that the bulk of your time facing enemies is spent continuously taking big swings at them, trying not to deplete your stamina (tied to health here) while trying to stagger them and land a big blow. This sequence of events becomes more difficult, however, as new types of Hollow Walkers are introduced, specifically the ones who are attached to a crystallised aggressive force by an umbilical cord, which must be killed to start dealing damage to the main enemy and are a lot more erratic to fight. That said, while most enemies are paired up in this way, Remi is also, thanks to the addition of a flying drone you can command to engage passive attacks and abilities. Much more than just a flying assistant attacking on its own, the accompanying drone proves itself far more useful right out of the gate. The first ability I unlocked after finding it, for instance, is a simple distraction technique, whereby Remi can command the drone to blind one enemy and keep them temporarily pinned as he faces off against another. A later save game file teased the true extent of what the drone is capable of, particularly once I engaged the skill that saw it attach to Remi to see him spin around to attack foes with all the force of a bladed cyclone or tornado. Much like weapons that grow stronger as you attach new relics and level them up, the drone proves equally as powerful. Trust your instincts Combat in Hell is Us is somewhat standard but solid at the very least, then, with the potential to let players craft their own builds based on their intended weapon. That said, where the game truly comes to life is in its navigation and exploration, where for the most part you're almost entirely left to your own devices. Aiding this fact is the 'player-plattering' system, being a made-up term that essentially means having to move closer to your goal by gaining information in organic ways a lot of other third-person action games wouldn't attempt. Speaking to NPCs to unlock clues, completing environmental puzzles to discover key items, and using your compass to head into directions unexplored… Hell is Us isn't the type of adventure to hold your hand. Thankfully, the developers at Rogue Factor don't want to be too cruel, and so have equipped Remi with a tablet that will track and remember any information you might miss. Even from just a few short hours playing I can already tell Hell is Us is the sort of game a lot of people will want to play with a pen and notebook. Yet players wanting to merely uncover Hedea's surface-level secrets should get on just fine. To my surprise, I really didn't miss the presence of a mini-map or quest markers while playing my demo, which is a testament to how well the studio has designed the game's independent locations. Rather than serve as one continuous map, you'll travel between them via an APC – a factor that should make tracking down all this semi open world's secrets far more alluring and, dare I say, bearable. The biggest compliment I can pay Hell is Us following my short time playing the preview build, is that I can't wait to jump back in again to try and uncover even more of its mysteries. Between its incredibly unsettling atmosphere, twisty narrative, and eerie enemy designs there appears to be much to sink your teeth into, and all that's outside of what so far comes across as exceptional world design backed up by solid combat. Hell is Us might not be a Soulslike, at least a true one, but it is shaping up to be an engaging action-adventure twist that elects to place great trust in the player's own instincts, outside of combat as well as in. So far, a lot more has been added simply by taking away, and that's plenty enough reason to keep an eye on what Rogue Factor is cooking up.
Metro
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Hell Is Us hands-on preview: ‘AAA games are so bloody bland'
GameCentral goes hands-on with an original sci-fi action adventure where the emphasis is on unguided exploration, with some throwback Zelda inspirations. You might already have heard the name Hell Is Us, as the game was first announced way back in April 2022. We previewed the sci-fi tinged adventure title, developed by Rogue Factor, for the first time last year but now it's now on the home-straight, with a launch slated for September 4, and it's shaping up to be a peculiar but intriguing mix of influences and ideas. Our original preview covered the opening portion of the game, so we'll avoid recycling the same beats here. But for the general gist, you play as a United Nations peacekeeper named Rémi who absconds to the war-torn country of Hadea to track down his parents. A stroll through the tutorial woods later, however, and you realise this isn't your average civil war. If you're a fan of Alex Garland's Annihilation, the strange, faceless alien from the film's conclusion seems to have been a major influence here. The Hollow Walkers, as they're called, are very creepy, as they lurch towards you unpredictably, with morphing limbs which give way to vivid, crystallised attacks or, in some cases, attached entities you have to kill first. Their glossy white exteriors act as a stark contrast to the muted eastern European landscapes and dungeons you explore. As a game, Hell Is Us is somewhere between Bloodborne and The Elder Scrolls. Combat wise, it's pulling from the former, as you manage a stamina bar, study enemy patterns for the best moment to strike, and rely on aggressive play to replenish a magic gauge for special skills. You also have access to a drone which has various uses tied to cooldown meters, between distracting enemies for crowd control andmaking a charging lunge to dash across the field. Rogue Factor has stressed Hell Is Us isn't a Soulslike though. You're not scrambling for bonfires or any equivalent, but exploring and chatting with characters to piece together where you need to go next, discovering new places of interest, and encountering side objectives which bleed into the overall experience of navigating each semi-open world area. The ethos behind Hell Is Us is discovery and the organic feeling of finding your feet through clues in the world, rather than using obvious quest markers. This might bring to mind acclaimed games like Elden Ring and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, in their attempt to declutter open world exploration, but the game's director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, believes the roots of what Hell Is Us is aiming for goes much further back. 'Honestly, something like Zelda: A Link To The Past is much closer to what we're doing now than a Breath Of The Wild,' said Jacques-Belletête. 'Sometimes people are like: 'I really can't put my finger on what kind of game it is, what is it?' It's just a bloody adventure game man. Look, you've got a combat system, you've got enemies, you've got a world to explore, there's a mystery, you're not exactly sure of this and that, there's some secrets, there's some dungeons, we did a game like that. It's called an adventure game,' he laughs. 'There were even side-quests in A Link To The Past that didn't tell you they were side-quests.' Hell Is Us might have roots in classic adventure games but Jacques-Belletête, is keen to highlight the fatigue around Ubisoft style open world bloat, where checklists and quest markers are traditionally used in abundance. With the success of Elden Ring, there's a sense many players are craving a return to the hands-off approach, where you discover and navigate without guidance – something which Hell Is Us is hoping to capitalise on after being in development for five years. 'It's so much of the same thing,' he says, when talking about Ubisoft style open worlds. 'It loses all meaning. Things within these open worlds lose a lot of their taste because too much is like not enough. Do you know what I mean? You have to fill up these spaces with stuff and they just become a bit bland. Like once you've seen one, you've seen all of them. 'It's not Assassin's Creed, it's not that, it's all these things. We've all played them. I've got hundreds of hours in Elder Scrolls, all the Elder Scrolls, and that's not the point. It's not that I don't like them. It's just trends do their time and then you have other ideas. It's a pendulum as well. Games used to be a lot more hardcore that way, we're trying to go back to that.' The crux of my time in Hell Is Us is spent in the Acasa Marshes, the second semi-open area where the game lets you off the leash. The swampy lands are crawling with Hollow Walkers in various forms, from hulking monstrosities to mage-like foes that hurl projectiles from clifftops. A swirling black vortex is a key focal point but it's surrounded by enemies, while a settlement of villagers sits on a hill in the distance. According to the developer, this area is one of the largest areas in the game, 'if not the biggest one', and it seems pretty expansive. We found ourselves heading towards the village, whose militaristic leader points you towards your main objective with only a vague mention of going 'north east'. You have to dig out your compass to get a grasp on your position, as you try and navigate towards, and identify, the next location based on this information. The lack of quest markers makes the experience more involving, as you have to pay more attention to your surroundings and what characters say, but I wasn't entirely sold on the story or writing. It's something which will hopefully become more engrossing as you get a better grasp of what's going on, but I wish I was drawn to interact with the characters based on something beyond the need to progress. When you are exploring aimlessly though, Hell Is Us offers some captivating chaos – even if some areas did appear to be gated off. We fought our way to the aforementioned swirling black vortex, encountering enemies beyond our skill level, only to find it was inaccessible due to not having a specific item. We later found an underground tunnel filled with enemies, where an individual connected to a side0quest was trapped at the other end. Along with these open areas, Hell Is Us also offers dungeons built around puzzles and combat encounters. Aside from the opening introduction, we were shown a later example in the Lymbic Forge, which offered a nice dose of visual variety, with flowery gardens surrounding the boggy marshes. We didn't get a whole lot of time to explore, but it did highlight the breadth of the combat upgrades and customisation with late-game weapons. Hell Is Us is a melting pot of influences, and while we're not sold on everything it's trying to accomplish, it's certainly another AA game with big, exciting ambitions – a trend amplified this year by the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. For the game's director, who has a long history in the AAA space working at Eidos Montreal, the jump to AA, with a smaller team and less financial pressure, means you have a better chance of striking gold. More Trending 'Look at what's happened to the industry over the past few years,' Jacques-Belletête said. 'Everything is crumbling. The big ones are crumbling. It's unsustainable. And the games are so bloody bland, man. Everything is starting to taste the same. 'I find there's nothing worse than starting a game and right away, in the first two minutes, you know how everything's going to work. You know how every single mechanic is going to work. They might have a little [extra] in how it's going to feel, or this and that, the user interface will change a bit, but you've gone through the ropes a dozen times. 'A game has to occupy a space in your brain that your brain can't really compute just yet. When you turn your console off and it stays there, that's because something is going on. Your brain is processing. And I think that's a lot easier to do in the AA space than the AAA.' Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PCPrice: £49.99Publisher: NaconDeveloper: Rogue FactorRelease Date: 4th September 2025 Age Rating: 16 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Cyberpunk 2 release date narrowed down as production ramps up MORE: Xbox handheld delayed claims report as Microsoft refocuses on Windows MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 fans expecting secret Christmas game at Summer Game Fest 2025
