Hellpoint is a challenging adventure game set on a space station revolving around a black hole which influences the nature of things on the space station with an in game clock changing events and difficulties as you explore the three districts and their intertwining area’s and secret path’s attempting to put together what is going on and why the author has created you.
The gameplay is very dark souls like and even has a few nods to the series not only with the playstyle and the elements like duels and summoning other players to help with bosses, but also as it’s own direct easter eggs with a sitting emote you can unlock from an npc sat at a bonfire, as well as a hidden actual darksouls bonfire with a sword in it you can light, though in this game you will level up and rest at breaches in the timespace continuum.
You will be thrown immediately into the action with a very early strong boss, this will force you to do a few things, firstly explore side paths for the numerous hidden secrets which exist everywhere within the game, secondly to level up a bit ready for the stronger challenges ahead, but also to teach you how to lock onto enemies to fight effectively so you’re prepared for the game ahead and capable to take on the challenges before you.
As you progress through the game you will notice how there are essentially three timezones to the game, firstly normal time where things will exist in their standard condition, then there’s black hole time where secrets and extra area’s may be revealed under the light of the blackhole shining upon the area you’re in, though you may have to do specific things to unlock and find these area’s which will be revealed to you as you progress through the game, and thirdly there’s accretion disk time which occurs twice every cycle and during this time the influence of the black hole causes enemies to become faster and stronger, as well as spawn different enemies and even open up hoard challenges with rewards for completion.
Exploring the station you will find so many intertwining pathways and area’s to explore as well as a large number of varied bosses along with several npc’s all with their own storylines to explore as you discover who you are and choose who you would ultimately like to help or not fighting your way through numerous bosses and a large variety of enemy types, all of which leads easily to 40+ hours of gameplay in a single playthrough, that’s without duelling online or the new game + option where you may choose to take things differently or explore other options to see what might be different.
When you defeat bosses they are then enabled as regular enemies throughout the station in certain area’s which is pretty clever as you can then also choose which bosses you may want to fight in what order if you’re choosing to explore certain area’s as it might be far easier with certain enemy spawns over other types, further adding to the decisions you may face throughout your gameplay.
As you would expect any soulsesque game to be this is a challenging game, what is clever about the design of this game is that they keep in mind how you might become overlevelled for certain area’s as you have the choice where to explore and may return to earlier area’s steamrollering through them, so at breaches you can choose to make the world more challenging to repeatable degree’s or easier to tailor make the challenge to how you wish to play, keeping things at a risk and reward level you can choose, though bosses on increased difficulty can step up the challenge rather high I do appreciate this being an option as it makes re-exploring easier area’s more worthwhile.
You may find yourself getting lost amongst the intertwining hallways especially if you’re avoiding defeating certain bosses because you may wish to commune with the elder gods before defeating them in order to get extra rewards, but there will always be more to explore and find as you’re levelling up and completing quests before ultimately taking them down, the best thing to do ultimately if you’re stuck is defeat a boss as often these will provide you the means to explore previously locked off area’s and progress the game further.
Ultimately I really enjoyed the game, attempting to find all of the hidden secrets and break into the locked off area’s of the game there is a huge satisfaction in finding these secrets and there are so many crammed in literally every nook and cranny you could imagine often involving some very clever or challenging platforming, though the online assistance of yellow hands can ruin many secrets and I would ideally like to turn these off there are still so many everywhere that if you think there could be a secret there, there probably is.
The combat feels good, and the bosses have an adequate challenge that they don’t feel too easy but ultimately can be taken down once you know what you’re doing, and if somethings becoming too easy you can turn up the difficulty so you feel challenged and it’s pretty clever how they do that as you will find so many axions that levelling up will be coming thick and fast, not to mention that using your weapons levels them up as you become more acquainted to them so you gain additional skills.
I personally like what they’ve done, it’s got an interesting storyline and so many different weapons and armour sets to adapt your build to, so many secrets to find as well as a whole heap of bosses to defeat you’re going to be playing this for a long time and getting much enjoyment out of it, the only dark souls thing missing is world invasions but this may come at a later date as some npc fake humans invade in certain circumstances and area’s and you have to fight your own ghost roaming around your death area at times that it feels like it should be a factor at some point in the development.
Check out hellpoint for yourself, it’s a really fun and interesting game that draws you into the world of a helltwisted space station faught over by the intertwining factions inhabiting it.
Get Hellpoint for yourself now at https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/hellpoint-pc/?tap_a=1964-996bbb&tap_s=4707-cadadd
23% discount codes valid until 4pm 27th gmt also valid for death stranding and destroy all humans via above link ^^
L55404-1DHAIP-4XR5CE
L55404-UL5QAZ-WFCTHM
L55404-TAD5CH-YZJEFS
L55404-9Z5BWK-CEDXER
L55404-1YVJQH-K69TUW
first come first served single use vouchers via above link.
Also available on steam at https://store.steampowered.com/app/628670/Hellpoint/