Real Goblin

The strategic WWII title is a simulator first and a shooter second

When I first played Hell Let Loose, what I experienced was one of the most frustrating video game experiences of my life. I would spawn into this expansive map armed with a simple rifle and run for the front lines. I wanted to find the action and throw myself headfirst into it. I suppose I got what I was looking for. A wild, angry storm of bullets flew past my head. The edges of my field of vision blurred as the sounds of battle raged around me. I tried to get my bearings and return fire, but just as I crawled to safety, a sudden explosion ripped through my body and the screen faded to black as the words “Killed In Action” appeared on screen.

What killed me? What just happened? I didn’t know. I never found out. But I decided to try again. I spawned and ran from an ally placed spawn point to the front lines. This time I spotted an enemy. I lined up a shot and fired. He fell. 

That’s it? I thought. There was no hit marker. No words appeared in a scrolling chat that read “_____ killed by _______”. Maybe he wasn’t dead. I looked again, but there his body remained. I heard muffled sounds of pain from his direction, but eventually they stopped. Hell Let Loose has a “medic” class, but nobody would dare crawl into the line of fire to revive that poor soul. I watched for more enemy units. Eventually, I saw another. I lined up my shot.  I was about to pull the trigger when another explosion, seemingly sourceless, took me out again.

And so I continued this way for the first 5-10 hours of gameplay. A single match of Hell Let Loose can last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half. It depends on a number of factors, the primary one being the competency of a team’s leaders. It is the role of the commander to order the officers, the individual unit leaders, where to go and how to best execute attack and defense strategies. One of the most important objectives is placing decent “garrisons”, or spawn points, which falls to the officers. The commander is also responsible for air strikes, vehicle placements, recon planes, and more. It’s often thankless work.

As I said earlier, my initial experience with the game was frustrating to say the least. Hell Let Loose, at the time of writing this, lacks a tutorial. Instead, there is a many pages long “field guide”. If players feel so inclined, they can flip through a textbook of densely worded instructions for how to play. The game contains 14 total roles, each with vastly different play styles. The field guide does detail all of the various things a player might need to know, but one’s eyes begin to glaze over when they begin to skim through. A field guide isn’t a bad idea, but it shouldn’t be in place of a playable tutorial. 

Even if I had read the whole field guide front to back, I feel that a lot of it would have gone over my head. I imagine my initial approach to playing is close to what most players experience. The first instinct is to pick a class with a decent rifle and run towards the action. And running is a guarantee in Hell Let Loose. If your team has poorly located spawn points, you are certain to end up in what players call the “walking simulator”. This describes the long sprint across empty fields to get to the next objective. It can be especially frustrating when this is forced upon you due to negligence from teammates. If your squad’s job is to attack the point, and another squad’s job is to defend the previous objective, then it’s reasonable to get annoyed when you lose the last point because nobody was present to hold it down.

The reason I set the game down initially was due in large part to the death loop. There is never any indication of what killed you. This used to drive me crazy. You might crawl through the tall grass for 10 minutes, just to hear the metallic ring of a bullet hitting your helmet as you are forced to respawn. And don’t get me started on the artillery strikes. Artillery is operated by players at either end of the map. Dying to artillery is often not the fault of the individual. Sometimes you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had died to an artillery strike one too many times when I finally set the game down the first time.

But the experience lingered at the back of my mind. The game began as an Australian Kickstarter project and has grown substantially since launch. That said, it’s still something of a unique title. It can be a punishing experience for new players. After some time had passed, I gave it another shot. It wasn’t until around 15-20 hours in before it really clicked for me. In my opinion, Hell Let Loose is a simulator first and a shooter second. The game lacks some of the signature qualities of a standard, modern FPS. There are no hit markers, kill streaks, or death notices in the chat. But that’s not a bad thing. The interface is clean, and the overlay only appears temporarily before fading and letting a player experience deeper immersion. Part of the appeal is the lingering doubt that comes with taking a shot at a target and not really knowing if you hit your target or not. Did they drop dead or did they drop prone to avoid more shots? Depending on the user’s weapon, a hit might not be fatal. It could merely wound or incapacitate the enemy player, who has the option of giving up and respawning or waiting for a nearby medic to revive them. Players are left to question whether or not that uncertain shot actually finished off their enemy. You may feel confident about your kill, only to leave cover to find that your enemy was ready for you. Failure to kill can allow the target to sneak around and flank your position.

Playing to the strength of your chosen role is vital to a team’s success. Most players will want to shoot at targets, and that’s fine. For that, there are a variety of options. For contributing to the storm of whizzing bullets, maybe you prefer the Machine Gunner or the Automatic Rifleman. If you’d rather creep around the bombed out town centers and engage in close to medium range combat, opt for the Assault or standard Rifleman class. I’ve found the role of Officer to be pretty enjoyable as well. As a squad leader, you take some of the weight off the shoulders of your commander. You can place outposts and garrisons and are responsible for the 5 other members of your team. And when you find yourself in a team of committed allies, the game can truly shine. The team’s leader passes orders down the chain of command to their team. You may wind up as the sole defending unit of a town center, picking off the attackers as they quietly approach. Or maybe your unit is tasked with tracking down a possible hostile spawn point behind enemy lines. My favorite moments in Hell Let Loose were spent contributing to the team’s success in a tangible way. There are more ways to help your allies than by simply slinging lead. But if you find yourself doing that, you’ll probably enjoy that too.

Hell Let Loose doesn’t glorify the war experience. It has the rare ability to create real tension in a way a lot of modern shooters can’t. For some players, this might not be immediately appealing. If you approach this WWII shooter with the intent to turn your brain off and chat with friends, you’ll likely come away disappointed. Because matches can take more than an hour to complete, a single round of Hell Let Loose can be exhausting. But because of that, victories are usually well earned.

But the game still isn’t flawless. When I first started, I found the sound quality to be underwhelming. Hunt: Showdown is my most played game on Steam. I have a lot of issues with Hunt, but sound design is not one of them. Crytek’s extraction shooter has immersive, accurate, three-dimensional sound that elevates that title above a lot of similar ones. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Hell Let Loose to Hunt, but I felt that a game so focused on immersion should have better sound design. Thankfully, since I started playing, I’ve noticed a great deal of improvement to the overall quality of sound. There are still areas that could use some work, but I’m much more satisfied with the sound design now than I was when I first played.

Another problem arises in relation to the various roles players can pick from. Like many games with different classes, someone is pressured to act as the support for a unit. The actual support classes in Hell Let Loose don’t suffer from the same issues that plague a lot of other games. Roles like Support, Engineer, or Anti-Tank don’t actually come at a lesser value in terms of primary weapons. These roles have secondary responsibilities, but they are more situational than anything else. They often carry the same standard weapons as the base Rifleman class. That said, roles like the Support still often go unfilled. They simply aren’t as fun. The game offers different loadouts within a class, but progression is painfully slow. Which brings me to my next point.

I have 63 hours in Hell Let Loose at the time of writing this. There is no reason that I shouldn’t have most, if not all, of the unlocks for loadouts at this point. Maybe you think that’s greedy of me. If so, we can compromise. How about half of the total unlocks? And I don’t mean skins. I could care less about that. This lack of reasonable progression is likely a turnoff to new players.

Another common issue comes from many players’ hesitancy to fill a team’s Commander role. Commander is a vitally important role for a team. They call air strikes, supplies, tanks, trucks, and more. They can place garrisons like an officer, but mostly are expected to play the game in an entirely different way than the rest of the classes. Like an actual commander, they generally remain safely behind friendly lines and look at a general overview of the battle, rather than engage in direct combat or firefights. The majority of players want to get into the action, and will pick one of the mid range, combat focused classes. For this reason, the commander role will go unfilled for large portions of games. But because the role is so important, a team without a commander is heavily disadvantaged. A team’s success is dependent on the boredom of one player.

This isn’t to say that everyone hates the commander role. I find that the role stays filled more than half the time. But the commander takes the game on his or her shoulders. As the losing team is forced to fall back to their last objective, the voice chat of squad leaders usually erupts into a cacophony of blame as the team’s communication and collaboration breaks down in a game’s final moments. Often a commander will simply quit the game as the team starts to lose. 

The saving grace of Hell Let Loose is that the developing team is committed to improvement. This year alone has seen a variety of new additions with more on the way, something I can’t say for the aforementioned Hunt: Showdown. Many of my initial complaints about the game were issues of personal preference more than true critiques. I needed to approach the game differently in order to really appreciate it for what it was. In my last 10 or so hours of gameplay, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Hell Let Loose. I’m glad to see developer support for this title, because I intend to play it for years to come.

The Unprecedented Times

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