Hell is Us: The First Preview

ign.com:

Let’s get this one out of the way: Hell is Us isn’t a soulslike. Nor is it an open-world game. Instead, it aims to separate itself from other action adventures by emphasising investigation and discovery, ushering you to get lost in its weirdness. That’s exactly what happened to me during my two-hour hands-on with developer Rogue Factor’s latest, an arresting mixture of medieval and sci-fi aesthetics set against a 90s European civil war backdrop. I enjoyed its approach to tense melee combat encounters and information-gathering puzzles, but what excites me the most is what I don’t know – where its intriguing story will lead me next.

Hell is Us is one of the bleaker games I’ve played in a while. Upon entering a village surrounded by muddy marshland, I’m greeted by a mass grave, bodies hanging from a tree, and the yearnful strings of a local’s violins. You’ll become used to such scenes during the early hours of venturing through the fictional European nation of Hadea, circa an alternate 1990s. It’s a country ravaged by civil war that has cut itself off from the rest of the world, and the place that main character Rémi fled as a child. Fast forward years later and he’s back in his homeland having smuggled himself over the border in search of the parents who sent him off for a better life.

The first step of the mystery brings me to a lonely farmhouse, the basement of which the owner now calls home. Through conversation about my father and the larger conflict at play, I’m able to pull on a thread that eventually reveals the village of Jova as his last known location. Hell is Us wants you to take your time talking to people and investigating every avenue of conversation. Indeed, being a wandering detective appears to be as much a part of its gameplay as its punishing combat (more on that in a bit). It forces you to observe its world and the people trapped in it. You are deprived of map markers, waypoints, and – thanks to that 90s setting – a mobile phone. Instead of those