Ask any civilian what Hell is and they will most likely respond with “a place regarded in various religions as a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death”. Ask any Veteran and you’ll be met with a whole different ideal, “War is Hell”. Hell Let Loose is no stranger to its quoted namesake.

Designed by Australian studio Black Matter and Published by Team 17, this MMO Tactical FPS WW2 Simulator is one of the most intense, immersive, and downright chaotic WW2 shooters I’ve played.

Now, in a pool of oversaturated WW2 shooters and FPS shooters in general, Hell Let Loose stands on the more realistic side of the spectrum. It plays a lot like Squad and Post Scriptum, where platoon teamwork and communication are key to victory. Also having a good Commander definitely helps. As I took my first baby steps into what seemed like a game, I soon found myself in what was the most intense experience I’ve found myself in. FPS games are my forte. I love anything with guns, taking advantage of the needed bottlenecks and chokepoints, and introducing the enemy noobs to the meat grinder.

I’ve played a lot of shooters in my time, from the Battlefield series to the Call of Duty series, and from the Sniper franchise to Band of Brothers. None of those could prepare me for the face-slapping I was introduced to in my first 3 hours of gameplay. It was as if I was actually in a warzone. I had no idea where I was, where I was headed, or where any of the enemies were positioned. Queue the thunderous strafing runs and bombardments that the commanders were calling in, with the headset turned up to max I was quickly jumping out of my skin.

Scared, lonely, confused, and itching for some kills, I slowed my gameplay right down and engaged my inner rat, as if I had scavved into reserve on Escape from Tarkov and crept around in the dense bushes and dark alleys to drop those ravenous PMCs for all their loot. I did it! I “camped” an alleyway and got some kills! As a run and gun FPS player, I should have been disgusted in myself but I wasn’t, the all-satisfying crack from my Mosin Nagant followed by the enemy swiftly collapsing headfirst into a pool of his own death had me gagging for more.

Graphically the game was stunning and the gritty wastes of what was a once inhabited town were now a manifestation of hell breaking loose. Now, this would be great, but poor optimization with the massively busy maps and 50v50 player warfare made my rig (i7, 6GB 2060, 16GB RAM) struggle to get over 40 frames, and on some maps as low as 20 on medium settings. Low settings gave me maybe a maximum of 10FPS increase. Although graphics were great, performance on some maps really killed the immersion. When things got really busy, the experience got really choppy and made it feel like I was playing on a microwave even though my specs aren’t the worst.

The audio was a saving grace. The immersion factor gained by hearing multiple MGs spraying death into a capture zone had me avoiding those areas at all costs. What was even better than the in-game audio was the amazing WW2 patriotic soundtrack that plays in the menus and post-game. Having those triumphant and patriotic songs really made the game complete. The game has a massive server list with support for community servers and all the popular servers are always almost full.

I had issues with the server filtering as you could only filter by a single category at once, so either filter by ping or player amounts. You can turn off full and empty servers, but this didn’t seem to help as some weren’t full but only had VIP slots left which still had me manually filtering through the list.

Now the game has just come out of its alpha/beta stages and is officially released as 1.0. but with the current state, I would have thought it was still in beta. Although it does have its performance issues, looking at forums and Reddit, it does seem to be a common occurrence when they release new maps, so it’s only a matter of time before they optimise the new maps properly. Hell Let Loose was extremely fun and immersive, and I’d recommend it to any hardcore shooter addict!

Written by: Bigfoot