Hell Let Loose is brought to us by Team 17 and Black Matter PTY LTD. It is a good introduction game to MilSims (Military Simulators) that originally came out in June of 2019 for PC and has recently made the jump to console, and we were lucky enough to try out the Playstation 5 version of the game.

Hell Let Loose is set during World War 2, where players can partake in iconic fights from the Western and Eastern fronts. It can feature up to 100 players in a match and the levels are made to reflect how many players it can hold. This, unfortunately, meant that the maps generally felt too big, as even with crossplay, there weren’t many active players. The most I played with was roughly 30 players, so it became a big game of hide and seek mixed with a lot of walking to get to objectives.

I kind of didn’t mind having to do this, but when you get team-killed and a message or voice coms saying, “Sorry, I was bored and wanted to fire my gun,” it’s really annoying having to start the hike all over again. Fortunately, the map shows the locations of your bored teammates, so I spent more time using it to avoid my allies as I pushed toward enemy lines, just so I could avoid being shot in the back again.

Even with the low player counts, I still had some good firefights, hunkering down in tree lines to avoid the line of sight from the tank sitting at the objective we were pushing. As it is essentially one shot, one kill, you will need to use cover and be aware of the positions of both enemies and allies alike. As mentioned, friendly fire is a thing, and you need to keep a good spacing between the units. I did like the squad system that is used, with one player taking on the commander role and other squads can be formed from basic infantry, engineers, and recon, and this will reflect what weapons and gear you will bring onto the battlefield, much like the game of the same name.

Thankfully, you can’t just select the sniper when playing as recon. Someone will first need to run a designated spotter before the sniper is available. Unlike other FPS games, this means you won’t have as many players camping areas and picking you off. Another thing that will reduce the number of snipers on a map is the lack of a kill feed. There is every chance that your perfect shot just wounded someone, or maybe they managed to duck just in time, so in these cases, you’re better off trying to flank around, just in case they are prone and looking at where the shot came from.

The level designs are great in Hell Let Loose. Some of my favourite moments include rushing up a hill, surrounded by burnt-down trees, and kneeling next to smouldering stumps as cover. The graphics are also done really well to go hand in hand with the details and design of the levels. I was very impressed with just exploring and taking in the sights while making my way to combat.

On the topic of combat, how does it control? Well, just like any FPS game the triggers will be doing a lot of the talking when you get into a fight. The button layout is universal, matching the likes of COD and Battlefield, and the integration of adaptive triggers for the PS5 is a nice touch. It actually made me feel like I was letting off a round when firing my rifle at the poor enemy that was running in an open field.

The audio for Hell Let Loose is done very well and almost perfectly reflects the scenario. The majority of the time it is silent, most noticeably when you are not in a firefight, but when you are, hearing rounds being fired off gives a good sense of which direction they were fired from. Ideally, the game is meant to be played using voice coms so you can keep in full contact with the commander and your squadmates, but did this happen on console? Nope. As we’ve come to expect from console players, it’s just insults and racial slurs being thrown around between teammates that spent the game shooting each other.

In conclusion, Hell Let Loose is a good game for PC but maybe not so much on console. Maybe being new-gen only was a slight oversight as people are still trying to get their hands on PS5’s and Xbox Series S|X. Would I recommend the game to people? Yes, I would. I enjoy a good MilSim, and Hell Let Loose has a great experience waiting for eager players to play as a squad, but it isn’t really suited to the Rambo players out there.

Written by: Shane Walsh