Hell Is Us isn’t exactly subtle when dealing with its philosophy regarding people, especially when they’re in the midst of war and conflict. Drawing its name from Jean Paul Sartre’s famous line from the play No Exit, “Hell is other people”, Hell Is Us wants you to know that human-based conflict is a zero-sum game. It’s an interesting game with clearly a lot to say, but the main discussion points play as the background to a somewhat mediocre Soulslike core.
Set in the fictional nation of Hadea, which has been cut off from the rest of the world for centuries, you control Remi, who was smuggled out of the country as a small child but has been trying to re-enter their whole life. Remi finally manages to cross the borders, finding a country torn down the middle by a war between two religious factions, the Palomists and the Sabinians. Both of them believe in the same god, but have their own individual differences, and it’s those differences that have forced the two of them into constant back and forth war over a millenium. One ends up on top, persecutes the other, and repeats the cycle.
War alone would be bad enough for Hadea, but to add an extra wrinkle, Hadea is also being attacked by weird, Hollow Walker monsters that have seemingly appeared from out of nowhere. Ancient Hadean texts consider it a Calamity, and Remi’s goal is to get to the bottom of what’s caused the Calamity and how to stop it. The course of stopping the Calamity and learning how it began eventually feeds into how the current war got started, but again, the story is more concerned with a relic hunt than it is the actual war.
The war itself does a great job selling the tone and atmosphere of the game, with each area having an overwhelming and oppressive sense of dread and foreboding. The lighting and smoke in some levels is gorgeous, yet grim and haunting in a way only war can be, though there are other levels where the devs manage to capture the quiet in the chaos too. The music and sound design are also unsettling too, designed to make sure you’re always on your toes, never resting for a second.
For the war itself, Hell Is Us takes the approach that both sides of the conflict are just as bad as each other. You see both sides committing war crimes and atrocities like mass murder, rape and all the usual stuff you’d see today. It’s scarily relevant in that way. You also see how both Palomists and Sabinians have been conditioned via both propaganda and generational bigotry to just fear and hate the other side. The war essentially serves as the boiling point for decades of simmering tensions; the next stage in the seemingly endless cycle of violence and death, but trapped in the middle are just regular citizens on both sides who aren’t concerned with hating their neighbour and just want to solve their own problems.
There’s a whole side quest of the game called Good Deeds, where Remi can help various citizens. You’re usually helping through fetch quests or killing enemies, and all of these people are those who haven’t lost themselves to the hatred that war brings. Some who play the game might think that Hell Is Us playing both sides is bad just leads to a piece of art that has nothing to say, but I think the real message of Hell Is Us is that people should focus on helping those who want to be helped. There are always going to be people who are willing to throw their problems onto another group of people and refuse to budge on that, so we should instead spend our time focusing on helping those more willing to accept a helping hand, even if it’s from someone they don’t necessarily agree with.
Moving back to the core gameplay, Remi’s Relic Hunt sees you travelling to different open world areas across Hadea. As Remi, you can talk to different people that he encounters throughout his journey, piecing together the mystery of the country’s past and present in order to actually secure its future. The bulk of the game is spent exploring dungeons filled with monsters and solving environmental puzzles, following breadcrumbs that lead you to different ruins or secret labs and so on, finding the relics you need to solve the main issue.
The main quest puzzles themselves are interesting enough, riding the right mix between somewhat difficult and “too obtuse to be fun”. You might be scratching your brain for a bit trying to solve them, but never for too long, leading to a nice cycle of “it’s so over” and “we’re so back” across the game’s 25+ hour runtime. The side quests are a little less fun, largely because they involve trying to find one specific item while often being given no proper indication on where to find that item. During my playthrough, I failed two Good Deed quests because I stupidly didn’t know there were suitcases between a giant serpent statue next to an ambush convoy. You can have that hint for free, lads.
As for the combat, that’s where things start to fall flat. Again, while there’s a war going on, you never actually fight other humans, with combat focusing on the Hollow Walker monsters plaguing Hadea. These monsters are cool to look at, and there’s a couple of different forms to deal with as you progress, but you kind of see all of them after a few hours. More interesting are the Hazes, ethereal monsters that share a cord with the Hollows and are based on different extreme emotions, but again, you run the gamut of those long before the credits roll. There’s a dearth of enemy variety here, and that extends to the weapons too.
Because conventional weapons don’t work, Remi is forced to use Lymbic Weapons, made of mysterious materials that can defeat the monsters. These come in multiple forms, which are basic Swords, Twin Axes, Greatswords and Polearms, but that’s your lot. You can craft and upgrade those weapons, and even imbue them with the different emotions that the Hazes exhibit, which dictates the glyphs (special moves) you can equip, but there’s no additional forms or new basic movesets. Core combat basically becomes samey about halfway through the game, which is not what you want when it’s like half of the game’s appeal.
You do get some extra tools, like the aforementioned glyphs, and an accompanying drone that can be equipped with its own abilities, but it feels like the game is missing some key abilities. Some dedicated ranged weapons would be a good start, as the levels often stick ranged enemies on high ground, but the projectile glyphs you’re given don’t deal with the problem well enough. As far as the combat is concerned, there’s a sense that Hell Is Us could do with some kind of enhanced edition or Director’s Cut in about a year with new weapons and enemy types that would really flesh out the experience, particularly in the back half.
There’s no denying that Hell Is Us is an ambitious game, and a Soulslike that focuses just as much on puzzles as it does combat is definitely a worthwhile endeavour. I just wish the execution was a bit better when it came to combat. Still, Hell Is Us feels like an important exploration of the effects of war on humanity, especially in today’s climate, with puzzles that’ll make you feel like you’ve got the biggest brain in the galaxy.
An Xbox Series key was provided by PR for this review
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