Frustratingly Worthwhile

Name: Frustratingly Worthwhile
Item: Hell Let Loose
Rating: 8
Author: Skillet

Skillet·2 min read

Edited Today

Hell Let Loose (2019)

Other reviews of Hell Let Loose

Token8/10

I Need a Medic

Another bullet flies over my head, I hear the crack, but can't quite place the enemy's location. Over comms, my teammate gives me a number, and I know instantly that they are firing from the pillbox to the North East. I turn and jostle into a better position, while the automatic machine gunner in our Squad starts to lay down suppression fire. The return fire stops. But unless we go and check for ourselves, whether they are genuinely down is a mystery to us. Under cover of suppressive fire, our Squad makes a crouched run for it through a nearby stream. We see a shot from the pillbox in our direction, and a fellow squad member goes down—those of us remaining return fire. Luckily, accompanying our party is a medic. He crouches over the prone soldier and pumps them full of adrenaline before bandaging their wounds. The injured Rifleman is back on his feet and rejoins our Squad on the offensive. With the pillbox just in front of us, we begin our assault - two grenades go in, we pepper the sides with bullets, and an enemy soldier makes a sprint for it. I raise my rifle, draw breath and fire. My aim is true, and the enemy drops, dead. A single shot to the head making it impossible for resuscitation. The Squad makes a sweep around the pillbox before we slowly make our way in. We open our comms channel and report back to our Commanding Officer. The enemy squad are all dead. This all happened in the space of three minutes. Hell Let Loose is a game unlike many others, it is unforgiving, relentless and frantic. There is no place for glory hunters or those solely seeking to top the table with their K/D ratio. Your team will win or lose by their teamwork, by the communication hierarchy of Commander to Officer, Officer to Squad, and how well your Squad will listen and obey the orders that they are given. Successfully Kickstart in 2017 by Black Matter, Hell Let Loose is a platoon-based, realistic shooter based on World War II's actual locations. With huge, varied, and detailed 4km maps that have been pieced together using real satellite imagery and archival aerial photography, strategic battles are waged with up to 100 people taking part. The conflict's ebb and flow depend hugely on how commanders and officers manage the resources they control. Place a garrison too near enemy lines and your team will spawn directly into battle, often dying before getting a bead on an enemy soldier. Place it too far back, and it will give the enemy time to advance. Every single decision made affects the course of the battle. The butterfly effect made from a Commander's decisions can be both devastating to the outcome or war-winning. Those trying the game out after decimating the opposition in Call of Duty or Battlefield will think they are running through treacle, with movement purposefully slow. Soldiers can drown in seconds if they wade into water deeper than head height, or by laying in a flooded trench. There is no mantling, or sliding into action. You can walk, run, crouch, peek, or go prone. These design choices may frustrate some, but once again, they add to the strategy. Soldiers can't spring up from a river to surprise you or spring over a wall behind you. Each movement needs to be calculated and thought about - if you don't, you die. Being an Officer can be genuinely stressful, receiving orders from the Commander and then relaying these to your Squad, all while under fire, can make even the coolest, calm and collected individual sweat. When it clicks, though, and your team works like a well-oiled machine, the feeling is invigorating. Building Garrisons for your team or Out Posts for your Squad will drive your side's war effort and ultimately win you the game. Another significant aspect of an Officers duties is utilising your map and the many different pings available to you. This will benefit your Squad and your side as a whole. Pings to your team are not just limited to the Officers. All members can alert others to danger with merely a click of the middle mouse button. Teamwork is by far the most essential part of the game, and many servers online will insist you are either in their Discord or at the very least have a headset with microphone. Squads are made by up to six people, with roles limited to one of each type, except Rifleman - the games' 'basic' class. This limitation ensures that you don't get an entire squad of Heavy Machine Gunners and balances the whole match between both sides. Each team of 50 is also only allowed one Recon unit, consisting of Sniper and Spotter - their role is literally to camp and protect - something that in any other game sees them cursed and flamed from beginning to end of the game. There are two modes within Hell Let Loose, with both of them revolving around nodes on the map. Warfare sees both teams start with the same amount of territory and nodes, with the game ending when one team holds all of the nodes or a timer is reached - in which case the team with the most nodes is declared the winner. In Offensive, one team will control all the nodes, and the other team will be defending. The game will end when either the offensive team has taken all the sectors, or the defensive team holds out till the timer ends. There are currently 9 maps within Hell Let Loose and, as mentioned earlier, are based on archival aerial photography of the areas depicted. According to Black Matter, the Sainte-Marie-du-Mont map is an actual 1:1 replica of the town - an incredible feat that only heightens the sense of awe within the game. When working with a squad over comms, this game is a masterpiece of tactical teamwork. The feeling of a victorious enemy flank, or taking an enemies node through determination and well-laid plans is second to none. This game makes you work for these little victories, nothing comes easy, and because of that, these moments are ones you hold onto. While the visual design may not be ray-traced perfection, they serve their purpose well. With forests, towns and flooded fields first giving a sense of serenity before all hell breaks loose (can see where they got their name now). My only real gripe being the character models could be done with more variety, as rolling out in a troop transport filled with doppelgängers is quite amusing, but takes out some of the immersion. One of my favourite aspects of the game is how your vision warps and blurs the more suppression you are under. Never before have I seen the suppression mechanic used so well in this way. You really have no sense of direction while under direct fire from a mounted machine gun! In terms of sound design, the difference between leaving your initial garrison and taking up arms in the middle of a battle is night and day. The crack of a bullet past your head, the sound of artillery bombarding your location and the sheer relentless noise as you hold your ground is enough to get your heart racing. A feeling I haven't got from a game in a long time. To say that Hell Let Loose surprised me would be an understatement. The game got our group together, pre-sorted into individual squads and then sent out onto the battlefield on different sides. Win or lose, every single one of us enjoyed the experiences that it provided. Each person would silently take up their preferred role, and we would head out - each time getting better and better at what we were supposed to be doing. Each time fulfilling more of the Commanders orders, and each time finding new and inventive ways to take out an enemy node. Would I recommend this game? Wholeheartedly, to anyone that wanted to play a war' sim', thinking mans FPS. You don't need the fastest reactions, you don't need to smash your K/D, you simply need to be able to receive orders and carry them out without question. See you on the battlefield. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jjz64W08HrA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> ——— Original ratings: • Visual Design: 8/10 • Sound Design: 9/10 • Gameplay: 8/10 • Longevity: 8/10 • Fun: 8/10

5 years ago

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Firstly, if you’re looking for and arcade shooter and somewhere to maintain a positive kill/death ratio, then HLL is not for you. The game is very hard! It’s like hard-core Battlefield in that the maps are huge and you have a squad but it’s hard-core because there is no HUD whatsoever. There is also no indication that you hit someone when you fire off some rounds, other than if you see them fall.

However, it is an extremely well thought out game. Each side has a Commander and each squad has an officer who can receive orders from the Commander and direct his own squad. He can, with support place new deployment points as the team pushes forward. The Officer can also request for aid from the Commander, in the form of artillery bombardment or a strafing run.

The squads are limited to various roles to prevent the ‘Medic Rush’ tactics seen in some games or prevent a defending team having an over-abundance of Machine Guns raining down fire. It creates squads that are self-sufficient and dare I say it, useful.

There is a lot of running across fields or beaches to get to the objective only to get popped by an unseen enemy and if you are easily upset by that don’t play this. What it does do is give a sense of the atmosphere of World War II, more so than any other game I have played before. I appreciate that in the real world you could not respawn but this is a game so that mechanic allows you to understand the scale of life lost in conflict. This is not glamorising war like so many other games of the period.

When you do manage to get to an objective and take it with your squad, or even just get behind enemy lines and be a royal PITA to the enemy, it really does give a sense of achievement. Even if you cannot form a squad to join the server with, make sure to join an existing squad of misfits and work together; this game is not for the lone wolf. Even if you want to snipe, you’ll need a Spotter to assist and protect you.

Originally published on 25 January 2021.