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Hell is Us review - nightmarish adventure treads a fine line between cryptic and tedious

Hell is Us is an absorbing, nightmarish meditation on the horror of war, but divisive design choices prove tedious.

Hell is Us - Story Trailer | PS5 Games Watch on YouTube After a story-in-a-story introduction, you're dropped into the country of Hadea, a world heavily influenced by the 90s through character costumes, the low-fi computer vibes of its menus, and a ravaged landscape seemingly inspired by wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as more recent conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Rogue Factor has chosen not to include signposting and not to provide a map, meaning players must use visual and audio clues to explore each individual zone, listen carefully to conversations, and sniff out potential leads to reveal new areas and progress the story. For each time I failed a quest or struggled to remember a vital clue, I was exploring a townscape freshly covered by the hazy, luminous glow of exploded bombs and littered with bodies frozen in death; or unearthing a medieval tomb filled with godly, mystical secrets; or investigating a strange facility as emergency signals whir and the screams of trapped humans haunt the metallic hallways.

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