Hells Reach's problems begin the minute you start the game. Whether your strategy is to learn the ropes by playing the abbreviated single player mode or to jump right into the multiplayer action, you'll notice the game makes no attempt to explain the situation to you. Single player presents you with four playable characters (which aside from different voice-overs, seem to be identical) and once you've chosen one of these guys and a map, you're dropped into a demon-filled environment and expected to start shooting. Not a word about what's going on, where you are or what you're doing there. Multiplayer sheds no light on things either; none of the four game modes offer any more information than the single player does.
You may be able to ignore such an utter lack of context but I can't, so I checked out the game's official website, hoping to gain some insight. There I found four short character descriptions and a single sentence vaguely referencing "cursed" locations being overrun by the minions of Hell. The game's official trailer also stymied me with characters saying things like, "If we're gonna die, let's take as many bastards as possible with us." and "The rules have changed since the old times..." Why are we gonna die? Since what times?
Discouraged, I went back to the game's single player mode, resolving to focus on learning the various and sundry melee moves. Hells Reach feels a little different in concept than some other team based games in its emphasis on melee combat. There are a number of decent looking, powerful melee moves (perhaps too powerful – more on that later) which would be more fun to use if executing them wasn't so awkward. Some combos require pressing four keys in sequence which, for many of us, requires looking down at the keyboard. This of course, is a bad idea when you're being mobbed by demons. The tendency then becomes to rely on one or two of the easier two-key attacks or one of the various firearms.
Hells Reach has a good number of different upgradeable weapons which are found scattered all over the maps. In addition to the usual shotguns, pistols and machine guns, there are also different kinds of explosives which you'll find are a must-have when the demons get thick. As you rack up points and kill combos, you unlock health stones and things I'll loosely call "objectives" (like chronostones that spawn so you can destroy them) but overall, it appears the main goal is well, not to die. This is not as easy as it sounds.
The game's difficulty is ridiculously hard on Normal and only slightly better on Easy. Even in single player, you'll have a devil of a time learning the controls due to being pounded incessantly by an endless stream of enemies. Until upgraded, guns in general just aren't all that effective (it's actually more effective to kick a demon in the head than to shoot it) and surviving long enough to upgrade them is definitely a challenge. This, as you might expect, is very frustrating, and in multiplayer means you'll be dying a lot. It also means you could spend most of the multiplayer match watching rather than playing.
The thing is, when you die (at least as a human), your soul goes into a soul stone which prevents you from respawning until a teammate destroys it. This stone doesn't spawn where you died and instead spawns somewhere else, somewhere inconvenient, thus forcing your teammates to risk their lives getting to it. If they take too long getting to the stone, your soul can be stolen by a demon which then goes trotting all over the map, forcing them to chase after it. The unfortunate result of all this is that often when you die, your teammates just blow you off completely and you spend the whole round watching as some gimpy, lurching demon gives your soul a piggy back ride.
Sometimes you're thrown onto the demon side and that gives you the power to spawn and control a slew of demon minions. Aside from the key binding list, there's nothing to explain how to do this—single player doesn't address it—and so it's likely most gamers will spend a few matches confused about what they're supposed to do. Once you start to get the hang of it though, it does provide a welcome gameplay change. Regardless, the game's crying out for a tutorial mode for the demon faction and a true Easy mode for both human and demon. Considering how meager the numbers of online players are, this lack may seriously impact the game's longevity.
Despite its flaws, Hells Reach does have redeeming qualities. It looks pretty good (aside from the character models which all look like the same model slightly tweaked) and offers eight detailed and moodily-lit maps in locations that evoke significantly different atmospheres. The variety of enemies is also impressive, from the easily defeated zombie demons to the truly dangerous exploding-head, fire-breathing and scythe-arm varieties. The visual and sound effects are also pretty good, and the voice acting's respectable. For some reason though, the game in its current state feels unfinished, like a student project—or a contest entry.
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By'Agus makmur manurung
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