A war within a war
Hell is Us is a 3rd person action adventure game by developer Rogue Factor and published by Nacon
The game starts with a cutscene of an unknown man interrogating your character, Remi Letam, about how and why he entered the war torn country of Hadea. Under the effects of a truth serum Remi begins to talk, and your adventure begins….
Hadea is in the middle of a civil war between two religious groups, the Palomists and the Sabinians. Remi belongs to a neutral group known as the ON peacekeepers (Organised Nations), but he has gone A.W.O.L in order to find his parents. Upon entering Hadea, Remi finds an old man nearby in the basement of the man’s broken house. Some character interactions, like this one, help to point you in the direction you need to go to continue your investigations. These interactions will also sometimes start Good Deeds quests, which usually consist of finding an item or person related to the character. In this case, after learning that Remi needs to travel to Jova, his father’s village, the old man tells Remi about a squad of soldiers with an APC that are based at a nearby ruin in the woods.
There are no maps, but you will always be given directions or have markers to follow. To get to the ruin, the old man tells you to follow the wind chimes he had placed in the woods so his children didn’t get lost. Once you find the ruin, you find a wounded soldier next to a locked stone door, he tells you the key for the APC is held by his Sergeant who was lost down in the ruins. After you help him with a med kit he gives you the key that activates a small puzzle you need to solve to open the door. Once the door is open you can descend into the dark passages of the ruin and explore.
After finding several of the soldiers bodies, a cutscene begins and you are attacked by a supernatural creature. A soldier with a strange looking sword saves you but is killed by the creature as she destroys it, so you take her gear and the sword. The creatures are Lymbic entities called Hollow Walkers, and the sword and later other Lymbic weapons are the only things that can hurt them. These weapons can be upgraded a little way into the story. Using shards that you pick up from slain hollow walkers, you can align your weapon to one of the four sphere’s of emotion that they are made of. Choosing from terror, rage, ecstasy or grief allows you to fit glyphs of the same type to your weapons, though you can fit neutral glyphs to any weapon. These glyphs act as abilities that can be activated using Lymbic energy which you can regenerate by hitting enemies or using items found in the world.
You can have two weapons equipped at the same time to swap between, so it’s worth it to ally them to different emotions. Aside from your sword, you can find a polearm, twin axes and a greatsword. My personal favourite is the polearm which I allied to terror. You will find multiples of the same weapons which are always neutral, so you can ally each weapon type to each of the four spheres if you like.
The other piece of gear you gain from the dead soldier is a drone. Aside from providing you with a flashlight, the drone can be equipped with tech upgrades that give it abilities you can use in combat in a similar manner to the glyphs. It already has one when you get the drone that allows you to send it to distract enemies, this is especially useful when you fight hollows that have a Haze tethered to them. A haze is a floating mass of emotional energy that makes a hollow immune to your attacks until the haze is destroyed.
So now that you are equipped, you have to learn to defend yourself. Combat is fairly standard for the most part, you can chain your normal attacks or charge an attack to deal more damage and you can parry and dodge, a perfectly timed parry stuns your enemy and leaves them open to a killing blow. The difference is in how your health and stamina work. Your health does not regenerate although your stamina does, but it will only regenerate to the level of your remaining health. There are three ways to regain your health, you can use items such as med kits or food, you can use a neutral glyph if you have enough Lymbic energy. The third way is simple and yet surprisingly difficult sometimes, when you hit your enemies without taking any damage yourself, a white ring begins to form around you. When the ring becomes solid you can tap the RB button and you will regain a portion of your health, but you need to be quick as it dissipates after a second or two, taking damage will also reset it. I found that I often missed this opportunity as I was busy concentrating on finishing off my enemy or trying not to get hit, and you really need to time your button press well for it to work.
Once you have found the Sergeant’s corpse and taken the APC keys you are ready to head for Jova, though it is worth exploring a little first to see what you can find. Having no map can be a little daunting at first, but the area’s are not so huge that you will get lost often, though they are big enough. You will often find locked doors in your way, sometimes the key is nearby and sometimes you may have to leave it and return later once you find it in another area. You can return to previously visited areas any time with the APC.
The story is quite engaging and well paced, it gives you enough information to keep you wanting to know more. You find references early on about a calamity that was prophesied and the hollow walkers being linked to current events. There is a secret group called The Vigil who are dedicated to stopping the calamity, and you get pulled into their mission while trying to complete your own. There is plenty of history to uncover about the Vigil and the hollow walkers, as well as yourself. Remi does not know his parents, having been taken from them at a young age. The game has quite a dark tone to it, not because of the supernatural incursion, but because of people and the atrocities they have committed against each other. The old man you first speak to was away from home when the Sabinian army took his house as their base for a short while, murdering his three sons that were there. When you travel to Jova you immediately come across a mass grave just beyond the marsh that lies on the border of the town. On a hill within the marsh there is a large tree where you can see many villagers hanging from its branches. In the village there are bodies in the streets, you can see what was clearly an execution by firing squad, and the people show no remorse for what they have done. There are even hints of a worse fate for some of the residents. Hell truly is Us.
