Hell is Us Review – Brains Over Brawn

For many triple-A video games, appealing to a wide audience often means ensuring players can see a game to its conclusion. That sometimes translates to sanding down combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving to make it as approachable as possible. But this can also veer into making games too guided for their own good. Hell is Us tosses all of these conventions out of the window. Goodbye quest logs, maps, and objective arrows telling you where to go. By trusting players to figure things out, Hell is Us’ smart level and puzzle design shine to create compelling and rewarding discoveries, despite middling combat and uneven storytelling.

The game follows Remi, a soldier who sneaks into Hadea, a mysterious country isolated from the rest of the world. Remi returns to his homeland to meet his parents and learn why they smuggled him out of the country as a child. But with little memory of his parents, nor knowledge of their current status or whereabouts, Remi must rely on his wits to piece together answers within a nation gripped by a brutal civil war and invaded, for some reason, by otherworldly monsters. This setup lays the groundwork for what Hell is Us does best: letting players uncover leads to figure things out.  

The absence of traditional forms of guidance forces a genuine immersion in Hadea’s open hubs that feels refreshing and rewarding. While not a true open world, each zone offers a strong assortment of hidden dungeons, environmental puzzles, and distressed citizens often begging for aid. Unraveling mysteries becomes an engrossing exercise of finding clues, such as curious letters, ancient relics, or lost keys, while gleaning information from dense character conversations inspired by classic point-and-click adventures.

Whether it’s figuring out where to find milk to deliver to a starving infant or uncovering the location of multiple hidden switches to open a mysterious door, puzzle-solving always manages to be fun and logical without being obtuse. Most everything you find matters in some way, making each discovery, no matter how seemingly insignificant, feel worthwhile and exciting because you know it’s a potential solution awaiting a problem yet to be uncovered. 

Hell is Us’ puzzle variety is also commendable. Some problems rely on using your compass to follow a specific path, utilizing visual cues such as landmarks to stay on track. Others hew closer to traditional dungeon puzzles evoking The Legend of Zelda, such as stepping on spike traps in a correct sequence to offer a blood sacrifice to open a door. Only a few puzzle types repeat themselves, such as special hidden doors locked behind enigmatic symbols, but most appear only once, lending their locations a unique flavor. Plus, solving certain smaller puzzles chips away at larger, more tantalizing mysteries, creating an even greater sense of purpose and incentive. 

Despite refusing to hold players’ hands, Hell is Us throws a bone via helpful flowcharts tracking the main bullet points of the primary story objectives, such as relevant persons or objects. I never needed more help than this, as the game merely displays key facts while trusting me to figure out how to use this knowledge accordingly. I only wish the overwhelmingly dense menu tabs had better filtering options to make reviewing specific clues less of a hassle.

Sidequests, however, have no such tracking other than the menu vaguely stating they exist. Everything else regarding the nature of an optional request must be committed to memory (or note-taking), including the location of an NPC and their dilemma. While that may seem like a hassle, I love how Hell is Us rewards you for paying attention. Solving many puzzles requires spotting telltale visual cues about a person, place, or object not explicitly highlighted, then making educated deductions and the occasional leap of faith. The game manages to do all of this without ever feeling oppressively difficult, frustrating, or opaque. That’s a very tricky line to walk, and developer Rogue Factor effortlessly struts along it.

Even when I found something I couldn’t immediately access, it fueled my desire to comb every inch of Hell is Us’ environments, as nooks and crannies often yield new clues. Revisiting areas is a necessity, and I was always eager to backtrack to unlock the solution to an hours-old problem.  While I understand encouraging players to study their surroundings, the lack of widespread fast travel wore on me when I just wanted to return to a spot I’d visited multiple times. If I didn’t find the correct key, I’d find a relic yielding fascinating lore expanding on Hadea’s history. This is its own treat, as the setting has a compelling history rooted in a cultural and religious schism that is admirably fleshed out in well-written and compelling lore materials.

Puzzle-solving thankfully makes up the bulk of Hell is Us, as the game’s combat doesn’t hit the same highs. While competent, the action is simple to the point of becoming mind-numbing as players spam a one-button combo ad nauseam to drop the game’s fascinatingly strange monsters. Commanding Remi’s drone offers helpful crowd-control assists, such as distracting an enemy, unleashing a pulse to stun multiple targets, or even spinning Remi around like a saw to mow through mobs. The most unique element of battle is a neat health regeneration mechanic that functions like an active reload in a shooter, letting you heal by timing a button press. Although this adds a nice intensity to encounters, the enemy variety stagnates in the game’s second act, causing battles to grow stale. I began avoiding monsters once my weapons were sufficiently leveled.

I only found one of the four weapon types – a pair of axes – fun to use, and while you can equip two at a time, the game never encourages experimentation with loadouts. That’s a shame, because this trivializes the thematically interesting emotion-themed weapon abilities. Each weapon can be augmented with up to three color-coded categories of special powers: Crimson rage abilities deal tons of damage, like unleashing a fiery energy missile. Grief-themed blue abilities hinder targets with debilitating effects. Some of these powers are entertaining, so I wish they mattered more, especially because the creatures are pretty cool and unlike anything else I’ve seen before. Their pearl, eerie forms resemble a melted abstract sculpture, and the way they eject haunting manifestations of human emotion to assault Remi feels like something out of the 2018 Alex Garland film, Annihilation, in a complimentary way.  

Despite being enamored by Hell is Us’ world-building, I was less enthused by the plot. Remi is a bland hero, and his primary character trait of being an emotionless sociopath isn’t utilized effectively in the narrative; it merely serves as an excuse for his dullness. His partnership with a strong-willed journalist doesn’t evolve substantially, and the true nature of the game’s intimidating and seemingly important main villain is brushed aside in baffling fashion. While the game begins with a strong introductory act and hits its stride in a lengthy second act, the third act feels rushed, focuses far too much on the so-so combat, and culminates in a flat conclusion that betrays the epic promise built up prior.

Hell is Us feels like a modernized spin on the classic action/adventure game that, as a third-person game, feels obligated to include combat. The game’s investigation elements are much more fleshed out in comparison to the action, which is, at least, passable enough to endure while I enjoy the main treat of running around and solving puzzles. I’ll be deciphering the game’s remaining riddles well after I rolled credits, and I can’t wait to see what revelations await. Hell is Us isn’t perfect, but it’s a bold and respectable debut that largely delivers on its promise, laying a strong foundation for future stories in its fascinating world.