When everything in the game causes your eyes to glaze over, and progression is strongly tied to what you see, the result is a rather mediocre and forgettable experience. The story is also subdued, just like in the Souls games, so progression is tied entirely to where you are, what bosses you’ve overcome, and what equipment you currently have. In sum, Hellpoint essentially offers the same core experience as any Souls game, but in a diluted and uglier form, and it fails to utilize its unique theme to bring something new to the table. Enemies, meanwhile, are dull and easy to handle, offering no combat challenges we didn’t already see in the Souls games. Locations mostly consist of drab, geometric corridors and bridges, and while they are distinct in design, there is nothing visually stunning about any of them. It possesses a unique theme and aesthetic, but there aren’t really any picturesque or memorable areas in the game. I’m not sure if the map is as disjointed and nonsensical as Dark Souls II’s at an abstract level, but the environments certainly feel just as loosely and sloppily cobbled together during minute-to-minute activity. Everything is second-rate in comparison to what Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls has to offer. Much like other derivatives (such as the aforementioned The Surge, or Lords of the Fallen, or the second-rate Dark Souls II), Hellpoint does level, environmental, and enemy design worse than its predecessors. Yes, even with the setting, Hellpoint ends up being another pale derivative of the Souls games that one could easily skip without missing out on anything. What we could ask for is a game that isn’t so tedious and mediocre. And it even has co-op, both online and splitscreen. Nonetheless, it’s this juxtaposition of themes that makes Hellpoint (2020) work as a non-medieval variant of the Souls games better than The Surge does, both in combat and exploration. Granted, it’s not a “hard” science fiction setting - the scientific elements are overlaid with a quasi-mystical occult theme, resembling stuff like Tsutomu Nihei’s Blame! or E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy perhaps. After all these years, a Souls equivalent with a science fiction setting that isn’t unimaginative like The Surge has arrived.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |