![]() The difference is he’s off the slightly-beaten path. Now, I know there’s a Black Knight hidden quite early on in Dark Souls, and it does catch people out. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if the bastards didn’t fire high damaging spikes from the ground, whether you’ve clocked them or not. That’s pretty standard, this is the testing stage, as it were.īut it only takes a few corridors and a couple of elevator rides and you’re pitted against the lumbering clerics. You start off easy enough, acquainting yourself with the controls against a few waves of space-zombies. Instead I refer to the completely jarring switch up of enemy types within the first hour. Even bosses have that eldritch quality yet put through the futuristic filter to them. ![]() Skeletons are fleshed out space-zombie corpses, Black Knights are the earlier mentioned space clerics that are just as much a pain in the ass as they FromSoftware counterparts. They are your basic Souls enemy put through the Sci-Fi Filter 3000™. Not the designs of the enemies themselves, no. The reason for your continual expiration is the enemy variety you face not long into the game. The downside is that it quickly becomes a case of “seen one type of corridor, seen them all”, especially as you will be dying a lot in the beginning hours. It doesn’t look like a station that screams “friendly tourist destination”, that’s for sure. Irid Novo looks more like the Event Horizon (before the bloodshed is found): there’s an uneasy feeling as you traverse the many labyrinthine corridors. ![]() Considering the Cenobites were originally dark priests in Barker’s novella, it seems fitting with the looming and insanely powerful knightly/clerical looking guards you tangle with. Not in a grandiose way, but certain structures have that almost faux-religious, clinically artistic look to them. I don’t mean hanging chains and ritual masochistic torture going on, but a pseudo-symmetrical Lament Configuration layout to things. It has the cold, clinical look of a Dead Space game, somewhat interspersed with a sort of a Clive Barker-esque dressing to it all. I think the controller would have been out of the window if literally had to reset every time.Īesthetically, I absolutely love what Hellpoint is going for. Thankfully, you do retain the same stats. However, is does make sense from a narrative perspective, at least: you are quite literally being respawned every time you die into a new shell. But for the first few hours, get used to looking at the same generic template over and over… In the long run, it’s not the end of the world, for the aforementioned armour reason. It just means that you will always look like an anorexic version of one of the Engineers from Prometheus. Which makes no discernible difference to any other character you make in a Soulsborne, as you end up kitting them out in fancy armour anyway. Instead, you are a creation of an entity known only as The Author. The “you” in question this time around is neither fleshed out character nor customisable avatar. ![]() An event known as The Merge has caused things to go a bit wrong, as they do, and you are sent to investigate. So the backstory I’ve managed to glean is this: you awake on the space station Irid Novo. Which leads to the obvious question: Is Hellpoint a worthy entry to the title of “decent Soulsborne game” or should it be cast to the furthest point of Hell? Let’s find out, spawn…Īs with most games of this ilk, narrative isn’t high on the list of priorities. But this time… in space!Ĭhanneling an aesthetic somewhere between Event Horizon and Clive Barker’s mind, Hellpoint aims to take on that minimal exposition yet absolutely nails gameplay that FromSoftware has made themselves known for. Hellpoint is yet another Dark Souls knockoff. We’ve had straight up imitators with Lords of the Fallen, two dimensional efforts with Salt and Sanctuary, whilst the The Surge games have covered the sci-fi angle. When a new action adventure game, based on tougher than usual combat and punishing boss fights, the cynical mind immediately goes, “Oh great, another Dark Souls clone”.
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