Hellpoint Review

[Michael {United Critics}]

Hellpoint represents a basic entry in the soulslike genre that tries to mix things up with a few changes. It's a shame they turn the game into one big frustration. 

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📕Story:

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A spawn, an artificial lifeform, awakens on a silent space station. Mysterious entity explains that you are its creation and tasks you with exploring the station and collecting data. That's pretty much it. More about the story you unravel with bits and pieces picked up along the way. Rare NPCs are present but talk in such ambiguous way that you won't understand much. Basically, it's another classic story of people meddling with forces they don't understand and trying to become gods. You won't get much from it and most of it is left to your interpretation.

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🎮Gameplay:

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The game falls into the soulslike genre, a fairly young type of games that are known for old-school difficulty and slow combat where attack spamming will surely get you killed. Combat is tied to a stamina bar you can empty with a couple of attacks, which doesn't sound that bad as it replenishes in a matter of seconds. Fighting is done with a fast weak attack and a heavy but strong attack that uses more stamina. Attacks can be blocked with a shield or dodged, which is a lot more useful since it's fast and covers a nice distance.

In general, combat uses the same pattern and can get repetitive after a while. You'll constantly be waiting for the enemy's attack, dodge out of the way, go in for a quick strike or two, and repeat. The only time things get hard is when you have to deal with more enemies at once, but even that gets manageable later on when you discover that enemies aren't immune to friendly fire. Hitting enemies doesn't feel satisfying at all. It's like you're just slashing pieces of meat without any feedback.

Glitchy:

I'm not sure if it's glitches or just how the game works, but lots of times my weapon passed straight through an enemy without causing any damage or I got hurt after an enemy finished its attack animation. They also have that annoying homing effect where they still manage to hit you after a dodge. It can be very frustrating when you see a big chunk of your health go down when an enemy completely misses you. Enemy design looks very uninspired and not very diverse. They're the usual mix of hellish creatures and some sci-fi experiment gone wrong.

The game's also guilty of recycling bosses as normal enemies in later stages, which makes boss fights much less memorable. Speaking of bosses, they can stunlock you with a single hit. Stunlock is when you try to guard with low stamina. It can happen right at the start of the fight, which usually means you'll be stuck in a stun loop and won't be able to hit the boss even once. The result is a cheap death that completely ruins what soulslike games are all about; learning attack patterns and beating an enemy fair and square. And yeah, dying during a boss fight drops all your axioms right inside the boss arena.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2377334664

Axiom is the main currency you collect from fallen enemies or find in the environment. Enemies also drop gear or occasional material you can use to craft items. Your main tools are melee weapons that include everything from pipes to swords and your secondary weapons with firearms and catalysts that require energy. While they can be used without energy, you won't be able to deal much damage.

The mechanics:

One of the most interesting things about weapons is that they unlock perks the more enemies you defeat with them. Perks range from passive, like increased leech, to new weapon skills. This makes every weapon interesting and encourages you to use it instead of leaving it forever in your inventory. If you're really sure you don't need a piece of gear, you can dismantle it in the observatory, your homebase. Here you will find a medical station, a weapon editor to upgrade your weapons, and a tech station that can process items into usable material or print gear from blueprints you find in the world.

Breaches are your save points in this game. Here you heal, level up your stats, travel or change the difficulty of the game with special items. The big difference with the other games in this genre is that "resting" at these breaches does not respawn enemies or refill your health injectors. It might sound great on paper but falls apart as soon as you start playing. Enemies respawn after some time, which means you can't grind around a breach and run back to it once you run out of healing items.

This is directly tied to health injectors (you start with only two) that are slowly refilled when you hit an enemy. Additional charges are hidden in the most secret spots and you'll probably miss most of them. While the respawning system makes exploring already visited areas much easier, you're always forced to play aggressively whenever you meet a new enemy in some hidden spot. Also, you never know when an enemy might respawn. They can appear in an empty room as soon as you turn around. The whole system makes zero sense when you actually die.

Death is not enough:

Death follows the formula established in similar games, but more importantly, death respawns all enemies and refills your healing items. So yeah, I guess you can grind, you just need to throw yourself off a cliff. Upon death, you drop all axions that have to be collected from the spot you died. But the game throws a little twist here; close to the dropped loot you'll also find your clone equipped with the gear you had at the time of death.

If you want all of your currency back, you have to defeat the clone and a tough enemy that killed you. This makes the game even harder since the clone has all your moves without any stamina limitation. One little trick I discovered is to lure the clone to the nearest breach and just heal whenever you're in danger of dying; healing at breaches does not restore enemy health.

And since we're talking about new things this game throws at you in an effort to stand out from the pack, let's mention one other thing about save points. If you think finding breaches is hard enough, there's also the fact that fast travel can be unlocked only by using a very rare item. This creates a problem when you want to return to the main hub to improve or make a new gear and you're forced to backtrack to the last activated breach or even all the way back to the start.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2379950732

The game has different environments, even though it takes place on a space station. It's a shame most of it is hidden in darkness and metal corridors. With similar looking halls and respawning enemies, you're never quite sure if you're been there before. There's no map or landmarks to help you out and a lot of secret doors. One mechanic that has no place in this game is platforming. Stages love to include gaps and platform you need to jump on with imprecise jumping. Running jump is the main culprit here due to one extra step you take after landing. There's nothing worse than losing your axions in the middle of a platforming section.

Nice try:

What makes exploring a bit more interesting is the black hole that causes the appearance of stronger enemies or special areas where you have to defend yourself from a horde that keeps teleporting in. Since the station is always moving and the black hole works on the game's slow internal clock, you'll have to wait for that specific moment if you want for something to happen. There are also monoliths that transport you to some kind of mirror world with new enemies and loot, but the thing that's most interesting about them is a chance to talk to the main bosses and receive quests from them. Killing them in the real world makes the quest unsolvable, although you can look for a way to resurrect them.

Not everything in this game works against you. Early in the game you get access to the omnicube that can store up to three useful programs. Although these programs need to be discovered first, they can really help make your life a bit less difficult. For example, there's a flashlight to illuminate dark areas, a transporter that takes you back to the last visited breach, and even a jukebox. Some of the later weapons turn battles into a walk in the park; one sword hits twice and drops humanoid enemies on the floor, which leads into comical situation where you wait for the enemy to stand up and then repeat the move.

Extra info:

The game offers multiplayer where you invite a friend to help you out – difficulty stays the same – or invade his world as an enemy. It's a little tricky to set up as players need to share their match codes with whoever they want to play. You can also help random people by triggering blue handprints, but it never worked and I always got "connection failed". As an additional plus, the game has split-screen mode.

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🙋‍♂‍Final Thoughts:

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Hellpoint tries to change the formula that's getting a bit old by now. Those changes don't ruin the game and they don't bring anything new either. Soulslike games with sci-fi setting have been released before and they all look the same to me. The station is fun to explore, its layout with complex rooms and corridors makes no sense, and there's always this "oh" moment when you open up a secret shortcut. Initially I didn't want to recommend this game due to really boring and slow start. However, it improves after you get your hands on better gear and start to get comfortable with the mechanics. There's nothing new here you haven't seen in other games already, but it's still a playable game if you ignore the cons.

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👍/👎Pros and Cons:

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Pros:

• Rewarding exploration
  
• Gets better after boring start

Cons:

• Stunlock
  
• Respawn system
  
• Platforming sections

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🏆Make or Miss:

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Rating: 6/10

Reviewed by: Sosich