No maps. No markers. Those two sentences really stand out to me about Hell Is Us, the new “action-adventure” game by Rogue Factor, comprised of veteran developers including some talents from Eidos Montreal that worked on Deus Ex.
There is an appeal to a game designed not to be consumed easily with too many a quality-of-life features. Ask a car enthusiast why they like driving stick shift. There’s fun to be had by having to use a little bit more effort into doing things, even when it comes to the joyous act of pressing buttons when playing a video game.
But what really is Hell Is Us? The demo gives a good glimpse of what it is. It’s not-so secretly a soulslike, but it’s mashed together elements you wouldn’t have expected from an action-RPG of this ilk, making it quite the fascinating experience.
I appreciate the slow build-up to what kind of game Hell Is Us is. For a good 20 minutes or so you’re just allowed to traverse around the Sadean Forest relatively peacefully. The setup of the game is already foreboding. The protagonist, whose never is never mentioned in the demo but his voice immediately recognisable as of one Elias Toufexis, is being interrogated while strapped in a chair while being drip fed truth serum. The setting of the game, the fictional country of Hadea, is suffering from a modern-day civil war (which explains the strong warning at the start of the game that this is a work of fiction, because you know, the world right now isn’t exactly peaceful if you look at the right places). And here you are somehow smuggled yourself in a closed-bordered country as one of the peacekeeper soldiers only because you need to find your long-lost parents. For reasons that are not clear.
If the setup hasn’t intrigued you, the soundtrack will. The electronic synths are eerie, discomforting and heightens the tension of what lies ahead. It’s certainly one of the memorable aspects of the demo for me, alongside the excellent voice acting.
The first few peaceful minutes is supposed to drill you in how the game has no maps and markers so you must rely on your navigation skills. There’s no conveniently placed yellow markers. That being said, this early part of the tutorial don’t quite sell the premise properly. It’s not like you’re dropped into an open world. The seemingly labyrinthian paths are linear with many dead ends so you don’t really have much room to lose your bearing. And counter-intuitively, I’ve been rewarded for going off the path. There’s a sequence where you have to follow a trail of marked trees to get something for an NPC, but you can’t really get too lost, the markers are way too many and by purposefully going the wrong way, I found a secret that unlocks a piece of gear early.
All throughout this early part of the demo, my head keeps saying “Is this a soulslike?” Or rather, “this is a soulslike but I can’t prove it yet.” Before I get my answer to this question, another one arrived because that NPC I mentioned asked me to open the door. And this injured military man gave his designation in numbers and letters, the numbers being… 0451. Helping this guy lets you open the first proper locked door in the game. Is this an immersive sim? It’s not, actually. But I find it touching that the 0451 reference, a mark of the immersive sims, a branch of action-RPGs pioneered by Looking Glass, somehow ended up in another, now dominant branch of action-RPGs, the soulslikes.
And yes, Hell Is Us is a soulslike, despite the marketing never describing it as such, the moment you got past the 0451 door. All of a sudden you’re in a medieval ruin, unnatural beings that can’t be killed with conventional weaponry appears and now you have a poncho, a drone and a sword. There’s a health and stamina meter. Yep.
But what kind of flavour of soulslike we’re talking about here? Fascinatingly, Hell Is Us borrows more of the sensibilities of a Team Ninja souslike rather than a FromSoftware, but not the pacing. So the light and heavy attacks are on the face buttons instead of the shoulder buttons of the controller. You can equip multiple skills via the drone. And the attack animations don’t have much lag to them. But the fights don’t feel fast as a Nioh or Wo Long, however. You’ll likely get one or two hits before dodging or blocking if you don’t want to get hit. And while you can do deflects/parries, you’re not expected to Evo Moment 37 the hell out of your opponent’s combo strings.
There are some neat ideas with Hell Is Us, combat wise. You know the Ki Pulse mechanic from Nioh? In those games, doing consecutive attacks and then press a specific button at the right time regains lost stamina, faster than having it recover naturally. In Hell Is Us, the mechanic is even more crucial as not only does it recover stamina, but also health. And in this game, your stamina gauge can’t exceed the current health gauge, so the lower your health is the less movement you can do. On the flip side, if you’re good at managing the enemies, you can effectively recover health to maximum this way, without using any consumables.
But in other aspects, I get why Hell Is Us doesn’t want to market itself as a soulslike. You’re not collecting souls or levelling up your blonde soldier dude here. Instead, weapons passively gain experience the more you use them to take out enemies. The enemies themselves are not too overwhelming. Based on my experience playing a bunch of soulslikes recently, including Lies Of P, Elden Ring Nightreign and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Hell Is Us is more on the easier side on normal difficulty (should’ve played this on hard instead). There’s no shortcut-opening euphoria to be had. Enemies don’t respawn, from what I understand. And in the demo, there are no boss fights, a staple for soulslikes.
Maybe this is more of a Soulsian adventure like how I describe Blades Of Fire, a game that also don’t call itself a soulslike yet has elements that will remind you as such.
As long as you don’t expect Hell Is Us to tick all the checkboxes of a particular game genre, the gameplay is fine. It refuses to be boxed in to any particular genre, hence why it’s marketed as an action-adventure title. Plus, there’s definitely a lot of adventure-game style puzzles with you having to align specific symbol combinations to open doors based on cryptic clues.
So what really is Hell Is Us then? It’s neither a proper immersive sim (there’s no alternate paths or different approaches to gameplay available here) nor is it a proper soulslike. But yet, it’s intriguing all the same. The worldbuilding has elements of religious tension that leads to prejudice, religious prophecies coming true, military intervention, and the bleakness of war.
This is supposed to be an introspection piece of the human nature. The title, Hell Is Us, is a statement, and from the demo I’ve played, it’s trying its best to explore and send this statement to the hearts of its players. I’m absolutely intrigued at where the story and worldbuilding plays out in the full game. And this mish-mash of modern and medieval aesthetics truly is unique for a soulslike.
The Hell Is Us demo is only available for a limited-time until August 28, so if this sounds interesting in any way, you better play it now. The intriguing setting and story makes up for its wishy-washy genre-blend gameplay.
Hell Is Us will be out on September 4 for the PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store) and Xbox Series X|S.