Ever since the original Dark Souls was released, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the genre it spawned. Countless imitations have been released since its inception, and each time I am usually left with sore thumbs, stress levels that add at least a few new grey hairs with each death, and at least a few new combinations of swear words no one outside of my household has heard or even thought of. Despite the unforgiving difficulty and lack of proper direction the genre is known for, I can’t help but want to try each of the releases hoping that I will finally find one that I can make my figurative bitch, only to get a little payback for all the times I’ve been on the receiving end of the punishment. Is the newest addition to the list, Hellpoint, the one that I could finally master? The short answer is no, but at least I made it outside of the first few rooms this time.

I started my journey into the world of Hellpoint as a nameless being that strongly resembles an emaciated version of The Engineer from the Prometheus/Alien franchise with little direction or backstory outside of a vague, ominous cut scene narrated in an alien language (with English subtitles). From here, the game is almost a play for play reskin of the original Souls, from the strange rifts found within the world that work as save/upgrade points akin to the bonfires, to the ultra-vague messages left on walls by other players – everything feels familiar, yet slightly different. The one thing that really sets it apart is the sci-fi, borderline horror elements that stray greatly from the fantasy setting of the former title. As I set forth through the vast space ship that makes up the game world, I was given no waypoint, objective, or inkling of where to start outside of the obvious path forward where I quickly came face to face with one of the more common enemies, this zombie looking husk that strongly resembled my character that put up a decent fight, but succumbed to my frail-looking punches. I’ll admit that at this point, I really thought this was going to be a cakewalk and finally be the one I could tread right through. As you can probably guess, I was terribly mistaken.

This a little more accessible in terms of your base stamina and health, but even sitting at a respectable level 22, I am getting my ass handed to me in the third major area. This is in part to my lack of patience and desire to go in head first swinging until my opponent keels over dead, but a major factor seems to be my equipment. I have replayed the same few segments to the point that I could easily give you a verbal layout of the entire map, including every possible secondary path and static enemy placement, but can’t seem to get any weapons or armor of substance. As of this writing, I have 14 of the same headpiece (all with the same stats) and at least a dozen of essentially the same melee weapons that only differ in appearance and very minor stat differences that don’t seem to elevate my attacks in the slightest. I’m not sure if this is limited to the area I am exploring or a simple miscalculation in the drops, but it’s frustrating to pick up the same piece of equipment over and over, making my attempts at over-leveling to the point I could hopefully overpower the enemy feel fruitless and like a complete waste of time. I can now make it effortlessly from the first rift to the subsequent boss, only to have my breakfast pushed so far up my insides I can taste it right before bed while sitting at a level where I’d be well into the meat of similar games.

Every time you die, which will likely be often, you’ll be able to retain all of your base/upgraded stats and equipment (yay I guess?), but lose all unassigned XP. If you can make it back to where you died, you can retrieve the lost XP and return it to the rift to store it in one of the token upgrade paths. The downside is you’ll now have a carbon copy of your character with the only change being a slight green tint hunting you in the same area. As further proof I am garbage at these types of games, the AI is much better at using my build than I am, putting up a really challenging fight that I would fail just as often as I’d win.

Outside of the time fighting my doppelganger, I’ve faced off with the zombified husks of what appears to be another member of whatever race you originate from, as well as some Godly looking beings that resemble those from Egyptian history and a major boss that looks like a mash-up of the Wizards from Destiny and the Valkyries from God of War. Each enemy type has its own strengths, like doing varying amounts of damage that never seems to be consistent, and weaknesses, like staring blindly at a wall ignoring you until you beat them upside the head with a pipe, but in most cases requires you to really learn its patterns and attack at the perfect moment (or in my case, over level the hell out of your character so they die in one hit) which is par for the course in this type of game. While they serve their purpose, they look thematically different to the point that they look like they belong in different games. Much like the environments you visit.

Every nook and cranny of this game seeps with a foreboding sense of dread, even more so in the lower depths that resemble the works of H.R. Giger or elements from the Dead Space franchise. These transition well from the dark and dreary to the sleek blueish steel textures of the higher floors, but just look like they were meant to be used in a different game, akin to going from Silent Hill to Halo 4 in one elevator sequence. Overall, the visuals impress, even more so coming from an indie studio, but every now and again there are weird flickers and light sources that seem to be coming from nowhere that knock the presentation down a few pegs. The technical issues don’t end there.

For the most part, Hellpoint runs well, but every now and then there is just enough of an annoyance to break the immersion completely and sour what would be a rather decent run, such as falling through an invisible floor and being locked into an endless free fall loop. This wouldn’t be so frustrating if I didn’t have to close the software completely and start fresh, since you can’t pause the game (even interacting with a rift to upgrade your character, you’re open to attack), and lose all progress since my last stop at the previous rift. Lesser problems like intermittent frame rate issues (dropping down to around 10FPS) and audio looping are present as well. I will mention these issues seemed much more prevalent in the full release which I played on a standard PS4 than the demo, which was running on my Xbox One X.

Hellpoint is an acceptable Soulsbourne game, but one that is really hard to recommend to everyone. If you love the genre, chances are there is enough here to keep you busy until the next major FromSoftware release, but if you’re like me and suck at this style of game, chances are you won’t make it much further than you did on any of the previous outings. I found the initial challenge to be a more accessible one, but after you’ve ran the same few areas 30+ times, it begins to wear on you and will likely result in never seeing the conclusion outside of the realm of YouTube or Twitch.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Nails the Soulsbourne Difficulty
• Some Great Horror Themes
• An Interesting Take on Death
• Some Breathtaking Visuals

Cons

• Nails the Soulsbourne Difficulty
• Uneven Thematically
• Lack of Player Direction
• Too Many Repeated Item Drops

Hellpoint was developed by Cradle Games and published by tinyBuild. It launched on NS, PC, PS4, and X1 on July 30th, 2020. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Hellpoint, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

 

 

 

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