• Hell Is Us is a surprisingly enjoyable and accessible semi-soulsl

    From TechnologyDaily@1337:1/100 to All on Mon Sep 1 16:30:09 2025
    Hell Is Us is a surprisingly enjoyable and accessible semi-soulslike - just don't expect a cheerful story

    Date:
    Mon, 01 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

    Description:
    It might not be a true soulslike, but Hell Is Us takes just the right amount of inspiration from the genre to create something new and interesting.

    FULL STORY ======================================================================

    Another month, another attempt to capture the magic of FromSofts genre-defining epic (even if French-Canadian developer Rogue Factor claims it isnt). Yes, action-adventure game Hell Is Us sits with one foot in the soulslike category, but that's not a criticism; it takes what it needs from Dark Souls and its ilk, discards what it doesn't, then absconds in the night with a suitcase full of dodge-rolls and ominous-sounding characters. Review info Platform reviewed: PC
    Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
    Release date: August 12, 2025

    See, as a big fan of FromSofts games, I've come to the conclusion that it's almost impossible to properly capture the magic of a game like Bloodborne or Elden Ring . Many have tried, and there have been some successes; Lies of P and Remnant II were two recent standout examples for me. I think the trick is not trying to mirror exactly what FromSoft does; it's taking the formula and doing your own thing with it.

    Does Hell Is Us succeed in this regard? For the most part, yes. If you're a fan of either action-adventure or the best soulslike games - or are curious about getting into the oft-impenetrable latter genre - it's worth a look. The setting is unique and interesting, the gameplay is enjoyable, and it's more forgiving overall than most games within the soulslike genre, even if the underlying DNA is impossible not to notice. Needless to say, the 'Week of Peace' did not go so well. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon) Hard times

    Straight off the bat, this game is bleak - the world you inhabit feels dark and dangerous, poised to collapse into unmitigated chaos at any moment, with only small glimmers of hope left. Wracked by a long and bloody civil war, the setting of Hadea is an insular, vaguely eastern European nation with a rich history of animosity between two religious factions, the traditionalist Palomists and the more progressive (but still pretty damn zealous) Sabinians.

    By 1992, the war has reached a fever point, with brutal pogroms, fighting in the streets, and virtually every crime against humanity you could care to list. Seriously, this game is not for the faint-hearted; you're going to see some pretty visceral evidence of those crimes against humanity. Yep, that's a mass grave. Don't expect a cheery time in Hadea. (Image credit: Rogue Factor
    / Nacon)

    It's all rather horrible, but it does have a purpose. Although Rogue Factor didnt seek to evoke any singular real-world conflict, the setting certainly echoes events like the Bosnian War, the Georgian Civil War, and the Croatian War of Independence. There's even a thinly-veiled UN imitator called the Organized Nations, characterised by their blue helmets just like in real
    life. Considering that Hadea is entirely fictional, there's an unsettling weight of reality to it all that stands as a testament to the quality of the world-building.

    Our protagonist, Remi, doesn't really give a shit about any of this, though. He's come back to Hadea to find his parents, from whom he was separated as a young child. Naturally, said parents turn out to be entwined in the core narrative. See, that civil war is merely the backdrop; the real meat of the story here concerns an outbreak of bizarre, violent creatures, an ancient religious order, and a mysterious black-ops group doing nefarious things
    under the cover of Hadeas present conflict. The framing narrative is well-implemented, even if they do use the 'well, that's not how it happened' joke sometimes when you die. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon) Uncovering the mystery

    The story is told via a framing narrative, which sees Remi - immediately recognisable as Elias Toufexis, best known as the iconic baritone of Adam I Never Asked For This Jensen in the newer Deus Ex games - being drugged and interrogated by a deeply unpleasant man with a chainsmoking habit and about sixteen chins. See, Hell Is Us loves its classic environmental storytelling, but it's also not above using actual cutscenes. There are also proper
    dialogue scenes with some (non-player characters) NPCs, which serve to both progress the story and deliver optional exposition about the world.

    For the most part, I found the characters believable and (usually) likable. From sardonic war journalist Tania to the kind-hearted Abbot Jaffer, these NPCs inject the world with humanity and authenticity. Unfortunately, Remi himself doesn't have quite the same screen presence. He's the cold, brooding type, which mercifully does mean that he doesn't chatter to himself
    constantly while you're exploring or solving puzzles, but also results in him feeling a bit flat. Early in the story, it's revealed that he's a diagnosed sociopath with a military past, but this seems to serve mainly as a
    convenient reason to make him largely unbothered by the insanity unfolding around him. Best Bit (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon) A handful of sections later in the game pit you against literal hordes of weaker enemies, which are so much fun to carve through with reckless abandon.

    Many of the people you encounter while journeying across Hadea have side-quests to offer you, though this is usually done in a roundabout way; in typical soulslike fashion, there's no world map or objective markers.
    Instead, you might hear a soldier complaining about running low on his medication - and wouldn't you know it, later on, you'll find a bottle of the very pills he needs. Sometimes, the clock is ticking; I found a woman with a starving infant hiding from Sabinian soldiers, and by the time I returned
    with some bottles of baby formula, I was met with a shoebox with a pacifier
    on top. That hurt a little, honestly. You can talk to many characters, but don't expect them all to be friendly or helpful - there's a war on, after
    all. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

    There's little handholding here, which admittedly had me wishing for a wiki
    on a few occasions while I was reviewing the game, but it's not quite as oblique as the average Souls series entry, instead feeling strangely more
    like a retro point-and-click adventure game. Remi has a chunky tablet device that doubles as an inventory screen and investigation log, noting down key information you come across and helpfully sorting the stuff you find into quest-critical items and the many, many lore snippets you can uncover.

    Often, the pace is slowed by the inclusion of a puzzle, and these range from laughably easy to moderately head-scratching. Thankfully, these puzzles
    rarely outstay their welcome; even when you're hunting for the right combination of arcane sigils to unlock a door in some ancient ruin, you can expect to be set upon by ravenous monsters at any given moment. Remi's stolen APC takes you from A to B across Hadea, and also serves as a sort of mobile base of investigations. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon) Fight for your life

    Speaking of monsters: let's talk combat. This is where Hell Is Us cribs from FromSofts homework the most, with the classic block-dodge-parry mechanics
    that should feel immediately familiar to any soulslike enjoyer. Of course, virtually every action consumes stamina, which is tied directly to your
    health bar, meaning that taking even a single hit immediately makes the fight harder.

    Simply put, the combat gameplay is solid. Attacks that can be countered are telegraphed by the enemy pulsing red, with a reasonably generous parry
    window, but Rogue Factor still manages to distinguish itself from the usual business thanks to the healing pulse mechanic. Theres no refillable healing flask here, and actual healing items are relatively sparse; instead, dealing damage to enemies releases particles, which periodically coalesce into a ring around you. At this point, you can tap a button to regain a bit of health based on the damage youve dealt, but you have to be fast, as the ring dissipates after barely a second. As is typical of soulslike combat, you can lock onto enemies to more easily dodge and parry their attacks. (Image
    credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

    You also get a gradually expanding suite of extra abilities. These take three forms: glyphs that can be slotted into your weapons and consume Lymbic
    Energy' (read: mana), powerful relics with long cooldown timers, and programs for the owl-like tricopter drone that perches on Remis shoulder and doubles
    as your flashlight in dark areas. You get three glyphs each across two equipped weapons, one relic, and four drone slots, making for a total of eleven abilities equipped at once - meaning there's plenty of build diversity available here, even if Remi doesn't have a traditional stat sheet. Most of these abilities are pretty fun - I was particularly partial to the drone
    skill that let me grab onto it and zoom forward, dealing heavy damage to anything in my path.

    The creatures besieging Hadea are invulnerable to conventional weaponry, with the only way to kill them being Lymbic weapons. Unfortunately, there's not a huge amount of variety here: you get a regular sword, twin axes, a polearm, and a hulking great sword, filling the usual melee weapon archetypes. These can be upgraded and imbued with elements (Grief, Rage, Terror, and Elation), but all this does is make them hit harder and determine which type of glyphs you can equip on them. I quickly settled into using a Polearm of Terror and Twin Axes of Rage, but if you're the sort of gamer who enjoys experimenting with every new weapon you find, you might be disappointed here. Some of the boss battle arenas are visually striking. (Image credit: Rogue Factor /
    Nacon)

    There's another issue with the combat that doesn't emerge until later in the game, though: some of those special abilities are pretty dang overtuned. For example, once I got my hands on the max-level Rage Spike glyph (an explosive ranged attack), most fights became comically easy, with Remi repeatedly blasting enemies to smithereens from far outside melee range. It's not a massive issue for me, since you have to conquer a good chunk of the game to become that powerful, but it did trivialize the majority of encounters
    towards the tail end of the story. Rise to the challenge - or don't

    Speaking of difficulty, Hell Is Us isn't overly punishing. I experimented
    with all three difficulty levels (described as Lenient, Balanced, and Merciless), which purely affect the combat and can be further fine-tuned in the settings to adjust enemy health, damage, and aggression, and found that the highest difficulty gave the truest soulslike experience. Yeah, I know
    that customizable difficulty options are a personal affront to the most die-hard fans of the genre, but I honestly think it's a good inclusion: on Lenient difficulty, even someone who has never played a soulslike before
    could have a good time here. There's no shortage of ominous tombs to plunder in Hadea. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

    There's also no real penalty for dying; you just respawn at your most recent save point, and the enemies you killed remain dead (although there is an optional setting to make death fully reset any progress from your previous save). Hostiles *do* respawn, however, if you leave one of the games many areas by travelling between them in the armored vehicle Remi commandeers in the opening act. You can stop this - and render an area permanently safe - by collapsing Timeloops, which are large ferrofluid-looking orbs that sustain
    the creatures you face.

    To do this, you have to track down specific enemies marked as Timeloop Guardians, kill them, then take a special item to the Timeloop and chuck it inside. These are mostly optional, but you do get loot for each Timeloop you shut down, and doing so is its own reward anyway; there's a lot of backtracking to be done if you're shooting for 100% completion, so it's nice to return to a region and find it free of enemies.

    Then again, the hostiles you face are actually pretty fun to fight. The
    Hollow Walkers are a brilliantly creepy piece of enemy design, feeling like something straight out of the SCP Foundation universe, with unsettling, jerky movements and eerie vocalizations. Some Hollow Walkers are paired with a
    Haze, a floating ball of the aforementioned elemental emotions which must be slain before its linked Walker can be harmed - and if you're not quick
    enough, the Haze will reform and you'll have to kill it again.

    These are another good example of strong audiovisual design, with the Rage Haze unleashing a barrage of attacks and screaming with fury, while the Elation Haze cackles maniacally as it zooms around. The creatures were unleashed by the negative human emotions that spiked because of the Hadean civil war, and that plays nicely into their design. That's a Timeloop: kill the guardians nearby to shut it down and stop them from coming back for good. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

    Sadly, a lack of diversity again hampers enjoyment a little here, as you basically fight the same measly selection of enemies over and over throughout the game. There are three tiers of enemy threat levels, but only the Hazes actually change in appearance and moveset from tier to tier; the Hollow Walkers merely get bigger health bars and more damaging attacks, and there
    are only five types of Walker to encounter. There's also a surprising dearth of boss fights - a common staple of both the action-adventure and soulslike genres - with only four real bosses to be found throughout the entire course of the game. The final boss, disappointingly, is just four much bigger versions of a basic enemy type. Clearly, no lessons were learned here from
    the final boss of the original Destiny campaign. Hadean tourism

    If Im being honest, though, my criticisms are small. I really enjoyed my time with Hell Is Us , which clocked in at just shy of 30 hours for my review -
    and I was doing my best to do and see everything, which is possibly why I ended up being so overpowered. I played with both a gamepad and my usual
    mouse and keyboard, and although the game advises using a controller, I didnt have any problems playing with the latter.

    The biggest issue I have with the game is that I want more, which is quite
    the double-edged sword. The game is divided into three acts, but the third
    act is essentially just the underwhelming final battle, followed by a ten-minute cutscene that didnt quite wrap things up to my satisfaction. Sure, it leaves things open for downloadable content (DLC) or an expansion and perhaps even a sequel (which I genuinely hope we get), but the finale feels a bit rushed, and its a shame not to end on a high note. Arriving on the shores of the peaceful Lake Cynon reminds the player that underneath the violence of the civil war, this world can be quite beautiful. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

    Still, its a super experience overall that Id recommend to anyone who enjoys either soulslikes specifically or just dark action-adventure games in
    general. It runs on Unreal Engine 5 (which may set off alarm bells for some gamers), but I found it to be reasonably well-optimized, with no noticeable performance issues at 1440p on my RTX 5060 desktop or at 1080p on the RTX
    4060 gaming laptop I also used for testing. Hadea is genuinely beautiful at times, too. For every dank cave and bombed-out village, theres a vibrant
    field of flowers or the crumbling majesty of an antediluvian ruin.

    If you like good melee combat and wont be turned off by graphic depictions of war crimes, Hell Is Us is definitely worth a shot. Just be prepared to
    consult Google from time to time - or, like I did, keep a pen and notepad handy, so you dont forget exactly where you were supposed to take those baby formula bottles. Should you play Hell Is Us? Play it if...

    You love brutal melee combat
    The combat in Hell Is Us is a definite strength of the game, with a
    satisfying weight to your strikes and (on higher difficulties) a constant feeling of peril, meaning every enemy needs to be taken seriously.

    Youre keen to get into soulslikes
    As a sort of almost-soulslike action-adventure with fully customizable difficulty, Hell Is Us could provide a more accessible avenue into the frequently gatekept genre spawned by FromSoft's legendary series.

    You want to get lost in a dark world
    The setting of Hadea is grim and unsettling in the best of ways, making for a seriously engrossing gameworld - provided you can stomach some of the bleaker stuff on show here. Don't play it if...

    You want in-depth RPG mechanics
    One of my main criticisms of Hell Is Us is the lack of diversity in its
    weapon selection, and with no customizable stats for Remi himself, this isn't a game that encourages deep buildcrafting - though there is a decent range of equippable special abilities.

    Youre looking for a chill game
    This game is anything but relaxing. The combat is challenging, and the gameworld is bleak and filled with horrors both man-made and beyond human comprehension. Accessibility

    We've got the usual selection of accessibility options here, with three color blind modes - Deuteranope, Protanope, and Tritanope - which can be adjusted
    to varying degrees of color correction, as well as being able to reduce or disable motion blur and camera shake.

    There are also gameplay accessibility options, which let you independently adjust the health, damage, and aggression of enemies, plus some customization options for the HUD and the ability to automate enemy lock-ons.

    Of note is a directional audio indicator: this displays an on-screen marker denoting the direction and distance of gameplay-related sounds, including enemy attack sounds in combat and the identifying noise emitted by Timeloop Guardians. Considering how important directional sound can be in Hell Is Us , this is a good inclusion for hearing-impaired players. How I reviewed Hell Is Us

    I played Hell Is Us from start to finish, which took me a little under 30 hours - though I was being very thorough in my exploration, and a speedy player less concerned with 100% completion could likely beat the game far quicker.

    I used my gaming desktop, which uses an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Nvidia RTX 5060 with 32GB of RAM, as well as an Acer Predator gaming laptop with an
    Intel Core i7, RTX 4060, and 16GB of RAM. On desktop, I used an Asus ROG keyboard and mouse and a Razer Raptor 27 gaming monitor. With the laptop, I used a Scuf Instinct Pro gamepad.

    I frequently took the time to adjust both the difficulty level and graphical settings in several in-game locations to get a good idea of both how much challenge the game presents and how well it runs. I naturally also tested out each new weapon and ability the game gave me - though I quickly found my favorites and stuck with those for the majority of the game.

    First reviewed August 2025



    ======================================================================
    Link to news story:
    https://www.techradar.com/gaming/hell-is-us-is-review


    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100)