Hell is Us (2025): The Review

Overview

Hell is Us really is a one-of-one, blending modern tech with the supernatural to create something that doesn’t feel like any other game out there. It strikes a strong balance between exploration and combat, pulling you into its strange world while deepening the mystery at the heart of its story. But that slow-burn narrative can drag its feet a little too long, and a handful of small gameplay frustrations have a habit of stacking up. Before you know it, those little annoyances can snowball into a stalling, unsatisfying experience that stops the momentum right when things should be getting good.

Score: 7 out of 10

The Positives ✅

Hell is Us swings for the arthouse fences, and strangely? It kinda words. The setting of Hadea is genuinely compelling, a bleak country tearing itself apart in a civil war while supernatural horrors seep through the cracks. The worldbuilding balances realism with folklore, and when you're wandering alone through war-ravaged towns or wind-blasted deserts, the game absolutely nails a feeling of eerie, oppressive solitude. It’s the kind of space that could have collapsed into generic post-apocalyptic sludge, but Rogue Factor commits to an identity, and the result radiates unsettling personality.

Exploration is built on curiosity instead of waypoints, which is refreshing in a genre that increasingly assumes players are allergic to thinking. No map, no quest markers, no glowing "GO HERE" breadcrumbs, just environmental clues, rumors, and the creeping fear that you misread everything and are now walking straight into spectral death. For some players, that lack of hand-holding will feel liberating in the same way the early Souls games did, the world becomes a puzzle, not a checklist.

Visually, the game thrives on tone over spectacle. The color palette leans into ashen grays, bloodied rust, and lifeless twilight skies, practically begging you to mistake it for a horror title. The supernatural designs of the Hollow Walkers are grotesque and fascinating, like the uncanny offspring of war trauma and folklore. Sure, the character models aren't winning beauty pageants anytime soon, but the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a ceremonial dagger.

And credit where it’s due: the sound design is excellent. Ambient soundscapes rattle with distant thuds, ghostly whispers, and industrial droning. Enemy “voices” are dissonant and unnerving, enhancing the game’s dread without resorting to cheap jump scares. It won’t win awards for its voice acting, we’ll get to that disaster, but in terms of sound and mood, Hell is Us digs its claws in deep and does not let go.

The Negatives ⚠️

For a game that prides itself on mystery, the plot moves at the speed of a tranquilized sloth. You can spend four, five, even six hours with barely any answers about the civil war, The Calamity, or why you're doing any of this beyond “vibes.” If you enjoy storytelling that refuses to explain itself until it's good and ready, congrats, you’re home. If not? Prepare for confusion, frustration, and long stretches of muttering “...what?” at your TV.

The dialogue does the narrative no favors. Characters speak as if they’ve all undergone the world’s most disastrous group therapy session. Monotone, flat, curiously lifeless, it’s like everyone in Hadea decided emotional delivery was illegal. And yes, Remi has lore reasons for being emotionally numb, but what about everyone else? Did they all attend the NPC School of Ennui and Vocal Ambivalence? It’s a shame, because several scenes clearly aim for gut-punch drama and instead land somewhere closer to tax paperwork.

Gameplay-wise, Hell is Us is a tale of two halves: one intriguing, one irritating. Exploration often devolves into a parade of fetch quests with minimal hints, sending you jogging between NPCs like an unpaid courier. You’ll be running back and forth so much you might qualify for membership in the Hadean Postal Service. And the travel system, load into APC, sit through cutscene, confirm destination, sit through another cutscene, arrive, sit through yet another cutscene, starts to feel like a parody of itself.

Combat is engaging until it isn’t. The Hollow Walkers are generally fair foes with readable patterns, but the Haze enemies are chaos wrapped in fog and flailing hitboxes, especially when tied to another enemy you can’t damage until the Haze dies. Visual clarity matters in action combat, and here, it’s sacrificed for pure aesthetics. Not ideal when your life bar is directly tied to your stamina and positioning.

The Experience 🎮

Hell is Us is a strange, fascinating contradiction: a game that leaves you simultaneously impressed and mildly infuriated. When it works, it feels like wandering through a poetic nightmare, uncovering a story that refuses to be spoon-fed. When it doesn’t, it feels like doing paperwork inside a haunted embassy. The tension between those extremes will determine whether players walk away calling it “underrated brilliance” or “beautifully exhausting.”

Rogue Factor clearly wanted players to rediscover the thrill of not knowing, and for a certain audience, that’s enough. The lack of UI guidance turns exploration into an act of attention and intuition, a rarity in modern AAA design. You aren’t told where secrets are; you sniff them out in abandoned playgrounds, collapsed factories, and shrines whispering folklore no one will explain. It’s fragmented, yes, but sometimes in the best way.

However, pacing issues and unclear quest solutions mean the experience is occasionally hostile not in a fun Soulsborne way, but in a “why is the game fighting me?” way. Still, the ambition is undeniable. This is a studio swinging for something evocative, not digestible. Something that lingers. Something that makes you mutter at the end:

“I have no idea what I just played… but it’s going to haunt me.”

For $59.99, the content is dense, atmospheric, and memorable, even if replayability suffers due to linear quest outcomes and uneven quest design. If you want innovation mixed with confusion and beautiful misery, this might be your next favorite flawed gem.