Hell is Us Review — Cruelty Within

When you work as a professional game reviewer, covering four or more new titles a week, two things begin to happen. First, you start to notice a lot of repeating patterns in games. Be it in their themes, mechanics, narratives, or settings, many creative works are inspired by others and take from them in certain ways, and games are no exception. It gets to a point where you can make assumptions about what a game might be with minimal information, and while I’m always eager to be proven wrong, I’d say just over half the time I know what a game is going to be before I review it, just based on its title, promotional art, and genre.

The second thing that happens is that you find yourself reviewing a lot of games that you don’t really have the time to look into beforehand. With my busy schedule, I often only get to see a game’s title, promotional art, and genre before I play it. I actually prefer it this way, because while I do have a good idea of what to expect in many of the games I play, I feel like my best reviews come from when I experience a title with no bias or expectations beforehand.

With all of that being said, you have Hell is Us, a game that I could not have predicted and one that mocked my preconceived notions of what it might be, both in ways that I found impressive and a few utterly comical times.

Hell is Us is a third-person action-adventure game set in the midst of a violent civil war, one which has unknowingly released an ancient evil on the land. Our protagonist, a native who was smuggled out of the dictatorship as a child, returns and braves the chaos to learn one thing: the fate of his parents.

Something Hell is Us is very vocal about is the fact that the game features no minimap, waypoints, or quest markers. All of the information you gather is done by investigating the environment or talking to NPCs, requiring a keen eye, attention to detail, and memory to progress.

If Hell is Us was a truly open-world game, with no boundaries or limitations and quests that sent you to the other end of the map without any pointers or direction, I would find this system really groundbreaking and interesting. The truth is, however, that with the game’s semi-open-world stages, direct pathing options, and choice of storytelling, you realize that this innovative feature is actually just a staple of the game’s genre: a soulslike.

Hell is Us is essentially a Dark Souls title, where all information is gathered through conversation or notes, and you navigate a multitude of non-linear, closed levels to complete them. The game also plays like a soulslike and proudly bears the genre’s tag, so it’s not like I just blew the lid off some big secret; it’s just odd to me that the game accentuates the presence of this feature, which would actually be pretty familiar storytelling to fans of the genre.

Speaking of storytelling, the narrative of Hell is Us is incredibly weird. It’s not that it’s written badly or that it doesn’t make sense, but the choices it makes in characters and their decisions are incredibly odd. One such example happens early on, where our protagonist is saved by a woman in a hood, wielding a strange sword and drone, who subsequently dies in the fight in front of him. The game then suddenly cuts to our protagonist wearing her clothes, wielding her sword, and using her high-tech drone as if he knows exactly what it is—no bypass or training needed.

There are a lot of moments of strange disconnect between the characters and the actions around them throughout the story. Our protagonist, for example, is incredibly accepting of the strange monsters that inhabit the earth now and does very little to question them or anything else he’s seeing. I think the game avoids having characters ask questions because they want all of the answers to be delivered through subtext and in-world discoveries, which makes sense for the genre, but is kind of fought when you have cutscenes with the characters themselves.

It becomes harder to believe we are an actual person when we just witnessed reality-defying nightmare creatures, and the next time we talk to someone, it isn’t brought up or thought about in the slightest.

On the actual mechanical side of things, Hell is Us plays pretty great for a roguelike. Weapons level up as you use them, enemies are interesting both visually and mechanically, and there is a wealth of little skill-based mechanics and abilities available to help our protagonist in fights. One I particularly enjoyed was this little timing-based minigame where you can heal yourself from recently received damage, but only in a very brief window that requires you to be paying attention and have fast reflexes.

The game’s setting is also incredible, especially for the genre. It seamlessly and unapologetically combines otherworldly horrors with a civil-war-torn country that feels shockingly real. The game makes a point, I think, to show that in the middle of this horrible cataclysm, the worst acts of cruelty and violence are done by people, in their pointless little war. The game is visually amazing and runs incredibly well, and I found myself often taking time just to explore the scenery more than anything else.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Hell is Us. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Hell is Us is available September 4th on Steam, Epic Games, Xbox, and PlayStation.