1/11/2024 0 Comments Hellpoint black hole doors![]() Other times your character will do this weird saunter for a few steps before limply hopping straight into the jaws of death below. Sometimes you can do a full sprint jump with barely any leadup. There is an inconsistency in the way jumps will launch and land. Unfortunately, a lot of this exploration is marred by finicky controls. I’m confident in my sleuthing skills, and I’d estimate I missed at least a third of what there is hidden in the corners of Hellpoint.įinding these secrets and seeing how it all connects had me giddy as a teen figuring out where his parents hide the good booze. On the flip side, you can easily go through several playthroughs without realizing that the special purple flashlight makes invisible bridges materialize. Secret doors will always be in a certain configuration. Some of these are significantly easier to suss out. It’s got jumping puzzles, secret walls, secret walls within secret walls, secret bridges, codes you have to write down to unlock even more secrets, etc. And the sheer variety of secrets in Hellpoint is impressive. My favorite part of Soulslikes is pouring over every last nook and cranny looking for secrets. I’d estimate a good 50% of the game’s content is secrets. Uncovering these secrets is the real meat of Hellpoint. Each zone also comes with a trove of secrets to uncover. There are a dozen or so zones that all intersect, allowing for varied runs. The game is way bigger than you’d expect from a budget Soulslike. This is where the game comes closest to matching the greatness of Dark Souls. There’s a shit load of stuff in Hellpoint to discover. Along the way you’ll meet new NPCs and uncover information that cast doubt on your creator, but that core motivation of discovery never changes. The goal is to reach 100% information and return to the Author. Every time you discover a new clue, open a portal, defeat a new enemy for the first time, and several other milestones, the information counter ticks up. Throughout the game a little information meter appears on the upper right of your screen right below your current Axion (experience points). That quest to explore the station and uncover the truth is more than just the narrative framework. ![]() Hopefully, you can unravel the mystery and help humanity from making the same mistake again. You play as a newly spawned drone tasked by a mysterious entity called “The Author” to explore the station and find out what happened. The laws of space and time have been torn asunder, leaving the once-thriving colony filled with nightmarish demons and tortured madmen. ![]() In the depths of space and under the shadow of a swirling black hole, the derelict space station Irid Novo has become a prison of horrors. The premise of Hellpoint should be enough to entice any hardcore horror fan. While Hellpoint delivers on some of these stronger than others, a number of baffling design decisions hold the game back. Soulslike games need to have four things: levels that reward exploration, tight tough combat, big scary bosses, and the sense of being a small adventurer in a much larger lonely world. Luckily, that also makes it pretty easy to break down what Hellpoint does right and what it does wrong. Aside from that, it’s all Dark Souls stuff. The biggest difference comes from a dedicated jump button that can be used to solve puzzles, hunt for clues, and execute powerful jump attacks. You spend stamina to attack/block/dodge, and Axions to level up. You’ve got your sword, your board, and plenty of other weapons and gadgets that range from wildly overpowered to completely useless. But with Hellpoint, the comparison is impossible to avoid. It’s a standard of judgement that I’ve grown increasingly disenfranchised with as games inch away from the genre’s source material. Reviewing Soulslikes is always a bit of a drag, since it essentially boils down to using Dark Souls as a baseline and just pointing out the things the game does better and worse. Unfortunately, they still have a long road to travel. Experience that perhaps someday Hellpoint‘s developer Cradle Games will also have. FromSoftware has had a lot of experience perfecting the formula. On top of that, 5 titles of improvement have elevated expectations even beyond the lofty heights of nostalgia. The millstone of time has since worn down your most worrisome niggles about the horrible camera in Dark Souls or the absurd backstab windows in Demon’s Souls. On the other hand, newer Soulslike titles have inherited the expectations of a franchise that’s been around for 10 years. The ARPG genre as a whole has been so undeniably altered by the shockwave of Dark Souls that every game now has some form of stamina management combat and enemies that respawn at checkpoints. On the one hand, Soulslikes are one of the most popular styles of games on the market. I do not envy the modern Soulslike developer. Hellpoint Review – Sci-Fi Soulslike With Some DemonsĪvailable on PC (Reviewed), PS4, and Xbox One
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