Perhaps the coolest addition to the formula is one that could potentially make speed runs quite interesting. Anything else would have required me not to spend points in health or stamina and I’d have been super-dead. Hopefully this will be addressed because despite not wasting any skill points from levelling up (a system what works almost exactly like it does in Dark Souls) I was only able to use the melee weapons. But in timeless Souls fashion, I felt automatically better once I’d found some armour and a few weapons to experiment with.įlavour text found on items (because Soulslike) hints at a magic build although I found nothing that allowed me to use anything other than physical weaponry – although I did collect a rifle that I couldn’t use because one of my stats was way too low. I found only one set of armour, which didn’t look very impressive when I wore it, a fact not helped by the protagonist having the kind of physique that necessitates him running around in the shower to get wet. Weapons and armour are in short supply, too – or they were in the demo section I played. You instead have to find stabilisers that lock open the pathways for fast-travel. Likewise, you can’t simply fast travel to and from a Breach, even after you unlock the huge central one in the Observatory. Simply returning to the Breach doesn’t work. A stamina bar limits your dodging and attacking, and your limited healing items can only be replenished either through death or by dealing damage to your enemies. Combat feels almost mechanically identical, with similar controls and a familiar weight and heft to weapons and movement. The fact that the Black Hole is literally Dark Souls‘ darksign in space (seriously, look at Hellpoint’s artwork) isn’t the only thing that evoked From’s series. Quite unsurprisingly, the Axions I’d been carrying before my fatal slip ‘n’ fall were waiting for me at the scene of my demise. That said, my first death came not in the heat of conflict but in misjudging a small jump over a big hole – upon which I was returned to the nearest “Breach”, or bonfire by any other name, where I would return regularly from that point on to spend the Axions I had gathered to level up. Giving you a crudely fashioned weapon and shield, it gives you the vague instruction to find the Observatory and then sets about trying to separate your head from your shoulders with a variety of low-level nasties. Hellpoint simply wants you to do as you’re told. Usually these games have a clear enough reason for wanting you to push through their countless challenges and keep improving. Why you’re there is unclear, which is actually something of a letdown. Well now the Soulslike genre is going metal ay-eff with Hellpoint, a hard-as-nails action game that takes place in a setting that appears to be one third leftover bits of Doom, one third leftover bits of Immortal Unchained and one third discarded heavy metal album cover concept art.īeginning life as a “Spawn” hatched from a cryo-tube, you’re thrust into the Hellish world of Irid Novo, a huge space station-slash-prison poised just beyond the event horizon of a black hole where a bunch of scientists have been attempting to awaken “Cosmic Gods” (because that always ends well). The genre itself has been on something of a whirlwind tour of industry-standard video game themes, too, having featured killer robots in The Surge, vampires in Code Vein, 2D platforming in Salt & Sanctuary, an apocalyptic hell-scape in Remnant: From the Ashes, and whatever the hell Immortal Unchained was. It seems these days you can’t throw a stone without maiming at least three Soulslikes – that is, games that ape two or more of the core mechanics seen originally in From Software’s Demons Souls, those mechanics being extreme difficulty, enemies that respawn when you die, and giant bosses with health bars longer than a roll of toilet paper and cool names like “The Gaping Dragon” or “Ceaseless Discharge”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |