Hell is Us review: "The lack of waypoints and explicit objectives is a double-edged magical sword that pulls me deep into its harsh world"

One of your first questions regarding Hell is Us may be: Is it a soulsike? Well no, it's not. It's a soulsish. It has a dark and powerful atmosphere, healing items are rare, you need to work hard to fully unravel the story, and combat usually means going toe-to-toe with unnerving enemies through a combination of melee weapons, blocks, parries, special abilities, and nervousness. However, death is not a part of the fundamental gameplay loop here. It is – get this – something that you're encouraged to view as undesirable rather than inevitable.

Prominent in the marketing for Hell is Us has been the lack of hand-holding. There are no waypoints, no interactive maps, and you'll never even be given any kind of explicit instruction. This is all explained and justified rather neatly by the premise. Your character, Remi, was smuggled out of the war-torn country of Hadea when he was just five years old. He sneaks back in as an adult as a military deserter with nothing more than the name of his birthplace, his father's occupation, and a mysterious necklace. Of course he doesn't know where anything is or how to get there.

Before I take you any further into the world of Hell is Us, it's very important that you understand this: Hadea is an awful, miserable place. That title isn't just a few words thrown together to look cool. To varying degrees, both on the surface and buried within the mountain of lore-engorging notes, subjects such as murder, war crimes, sexual assault, suicide, and grieving a child are explored. If any of these are particularly sensitive subjects for you, be aware, as there will be no warning when they appear.

The dark side of humanity drives the entire experience, something made clear at a very early stage in an unintentionally amusing way. When Remi first encounters one of the mysterious creatures plaguing Hadea, he finds that the gun he's brought along is useless against it. Just when it looks like this will be a very short game indeed, a woman appears out of nowhere to save him, killing the creature with a strange sword just before dying herself. How does Remi react? Does he see if she's still breathing? Thank the woman for saving his life out of a sense of respect and gratitude, even though she can no longer hear him? Nope; he immediately loots the still-warm corpse for her weapon, her drone, and – for some reason – her poncho.

Chappell drone

Ah yes, the drone. Initially it can be used to temporarily distract an enemy, but there are more modules to be found that allow it to be used to stun or damage foes (and yes, there is an explanation to be found for why the drone is effective against these things but guns aren't). The weapons you'll find, meanwhile – swords, axes, greatswords, polearms – can be empowered and modified in emotional flavors.

Grief, Rage, Ecstasy, and Terror loom large in the world of Hell is Us. In addition to being color coding for weapon, ability, item, and enemy types, they also fit into a wider landscape of emotions that form the foundations of mythology and cults. The invasion of the creatures known as Hollow Walkers is also somehow tied to human emotion, a mystery that you cannot fully solve without finding a lot of missable info and putting the pieces together yourself.

The Hollow Walkers, a variety of white humanoid creatures with gaping holes where their faces should be, remind me much more of Silent Hill than Dark Souls. Their appearances are unnerving, with one particular variant moving through a combination of brief teleportation and dance that is intoxicatingly disturbing. With the exception of only vaguely formed manifestations of emotion that they are occasionally linked to, which must be defeated before their Hollow Walkers will fall, these disturbing creatures are the only enemies you'll ever fight. Nonetheless, I never find myself becoming tired of them. I'm all in on this brutal world and its thematically appropriate foes.

Combat features a parry system – I think it's the law now that games have to have one, I'm expecting to see parrying in Sonic Racing: Crossworlds – but I never seemed to quite get the hang of it. If this sounds like an issue you're likely to have yourself, don't worry! I did just fine when I gave up and concentrated on dodging and brute force attacks, with the occasional block. There is, mercifully, no enemy type that demands you master parrying in order to have a chance of defeating it (though if you can, of course, it's a great tool in your arsenal).

Axe me anything

Different weapons handle in the ways you'd probably expect – dual-wielded axes are faster but weaker, greatswords are slow but pack a punch, etc – and all can be levelled up with the right items to maximise their stats. They can also be enhanced with abilities via glyphs, and it's here – in conjunction with the fact that you can equip one passive and one active relic – that your best chance of success lies.

Trust me, it's worth taking the time to chase down optional quests and inessential routes during your journey, as this is where some of the most useful goodies are to be found. I ended up with a very strong build which allowed me to heal myself regularly without consumables, and deal good damage from a distance to Hollow Walkers. Should you ever find that the experience is too harsh or too simple, you can jump between available difficulties at any time (though I found that the default setting worked well for me).

Now look, I know I've already said this is a grim world telling a grim story, but this bears repeating. There's an optional quest where, if you fail to complete it in time, a baby dies (fortunately, I'd already finished it in time before discovering this). Side quests are split between Mysteries (puzzles and investigations) and Good Deeds (helping NPCs out, which usually boil down to fetch quests).

Some Good Deeds have time limits, but you're not told which, and you're certainly not told what the time limit – in reality, a certain point in the main story - is. I've failed some of these quests by only discovering them after the time limit has passed, which feels rather unfair.

The lack of waypoints and explicit objectives is a double-edged magical sword. It's a bold and risky decision, and it must be said that the design is, for the most part, fantastic. I almost never found myself wondering what to do or where to go next, and some of the many puzzles left me feeling smug for figuring them out. Most environments are designed in a way that lets you find the right path fairly easily so long as you've been paying attention. But.

After a certain point, you'll find that you need to take notes (or, as I do, screenshots) for important details such as passwords or environmental clues that aren't recorded in the menus. Personally I'm not a fan of this approach (why not take advantage of the fact that you're playing a video game?), and I do find it odd that most but not all detail is recorded within the game itself. Still, it's infrequent enough to not irk even somebody as grumpy as me. The problem with this presents itself when you find that you have incorrect or incomplete information to complete a puzzle or crack a code.

Code and chips

Environments are big, clues are sometimes scattered far apart from one another, and they could be anywhere. The game doesn't give you waypoints, but you can't create your own either. Finding a few specific square feet of space to revisit, let alone finding a corner or a shelf you'd previously missed, can become tedious if you have to find it in order to progress the story.

It doesn't help that text is fairly small, and a lot of it is a shade of CRT green that somehow makes the issue even worse. With no accessibility option to increase text size, anybody with less than perfect vision may struggle to read important information, and possibly even misread letters or digits (as I did on one occasion, preventing me from completing a puzzle I later learned I had in fact worked out the correct solution to).

So much is done to support a smooth experience in the absence of direct instruction, these missteps are particularly frustrating. Collectible items are small glowing lights, making them very hard to miss. What a great idea, especially given the dark environments! Most save points outside of dungeons allow you to teleport straight back to the APC which transports you between areas on the world map. Very useful! A two-way teleport system would have been even more useful, though…

If you're looking for an escape from the horrors of modern life, this sure as Hell is Us ain't it. If you're looking for an adventure soaked in a dark atmosphere however, specifically one that refuses to hold your hand and allows you to give your brain a bit of exercise, this is just the misery-flavored fun you've been looking for.

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