Hellbound is a brand new shooter that refuses to let go of the 90s by Argentinian developer Saibot Studios and publisher Nimble Giant. Hellbound is a shooter that is heavily inspired by classic 90s shooters such as Doom and Quake and the first 10 minutes of the game are enough to remind you of those classic titles. Featuring the very same minimalistic HUD design and fast-paced gameplay, Hellbound is one serious nostalgic ride for a lot of gamers. This is our review of Hellbound in which we traverse hell and splatter demons all over the place with our Triple Shotgun.
You play Hellbound as Hellgore who is the last of his race and the demons destroyed his planet. Hellgore has been resurrected by the humans as the very same demons are now trying to destroy the planet Earth and Hellgore is not going to let that happen. You step in the shoes of Hellgore and battle through hordes of demons and slay them all in order to avenge your own planet’s destruction and prevent the destruction of the planet earth. While doing so, you end up in Hell and all hell breaks loose. It is now your job to defeat the demons and save Earth and avenge the destruction of your very own planet.
The best aspect of Hellbound is perhaps its fast-paced gameplay. It even comes with a sprint which makes movement even faster if you are not satisfied with the default movement speed. This fast-paced movement ensures that you are quickly right in the face of demons so that you can blast them in their face with your Triple Shotgun. The gameplay reminds me heavily of Doom because it is fast-paced and the weapons do not have any sort of recoil or reload. As long as you’ve got ammo in your inventory, you can continue to unload it on your enemies, demon after demon without worrying about reloads or any sort of recoil ruining your shots. All you need to do is aim at the demons and press shoot.
Each weapon in Hellbound offers a different fighting experience. You even get a melee bat that can crack open the skull of any demon pretty easily. While you deal out most of the damage to your enemies, each fallen demon will leave behind, health, armor, or ammo refills. If those are not enough, you will find plenty of them in the game’s world as well. Dying is not really easy in Hellbound as you hardly run out of health in the game. You can only unlock the hardest difficulty after completing the story of the game once but even on the hardest difficulty, the game is more fun rather than challenging.
The real challenge in Hellbound comes in its Survival mode or the arena battles in different levels. During these sections, you have to survive a huge onslaught of demons using your weapons. For me, these were the best sections of the gameplay as well. It really lets you punish the demons as you jump, sprint, and run around splattering the demons all over the walls around you. You do not have to worry about running out of health or ammo as well as the more demons you splatter, more drops you get which ensure that all of your survival numbers are far away from reaching zero.
The level design is pretty neat and makes you feel like you are roaming around hell. You will sometimes need to do a little bit of platforming as well but it is not as hardcore as that of Doom where you literally had to jump on small platforms or ride platforms to your next destination. In Hellbound, the maximum you will need to do is jump from one platform to another to avoid falling down to your death or avoiding lava pools scattered here and there on the map. You will also need to find keys of different colors to open different doors such as Red Key or Yellow Key. These keys will be hidden in different nooks and crannies of the levels. Apart from these locked doors, you will often need to flip some switches every now and then to open locked doors.
The levels are not always wide, open spaces as you will fight the demons inside tight corridors and halls as well. Upon reaching certain areas, the area would become locked down and you will have to defeat a certain number of enemies in a tight arena battle before you can move forward in the game. This reminds me heavily of the classic Serious Sam titles where you will often have to clear waves after waves of enemies before moving on from these arena battles. Of course, the action is not as intense as Serious Sam but it still serves the purpose. Hellbound feels like an easy ride through hell sometimes. All of this carnage is made even better with the rock and metal music playing in the background, pumping your blood for even more demon splattering. Sometimes Hellgore also passes witty comments about the situation happening around him.
As much as I really enjoyed playing Hellbound, there were certainly some hiccups in the game as well. The most common of it is the number of enemies in the level at any given time. While I loved the big, open spaces the game offered, sadly the number of opponents spawning to fight us did not really do justice to the game or its inspirations. Most of the time, even on higher difficulties, the number of enemies is too low and when you are expecting a huge fight approaching, you are simply left wanting for more as you simply clear the area and move on to the next one.
The big areas also feel really empty as there are just a few enemies spawning to fight you. Considering the fact that how generous the game is with its ammo, health and armor drops, the number of enemies simply do no justice to the game. The survival sections are pretty hardcore but the enemies are pretty less in the exploration areas. Another thing is that some of the enemies feel a little too passive in the game as they appear to be just waiting for you to kill them. While most of the enemies will charge at you and try to kill you, certain ranged enemies feel extremely passive and attack you pretty occasionally. I might be judging the game too hard when it comes to enemies since I recently played Doom Eternal but I am sure that most of the players will find the very same hiccups with the game.
Final Verdict:
Hellbound takes its inspirations heavily from the shooters of the 90s and I do not say it like it is a bad thing. While Hellbound surely has its downs, it is still an extremely fun shooter for anyone who is looking for a nostalgic 90s shooters. For me, Hellbound is a classic throwback to Doom, Serious Sam, Painkiller, and Quake. The game did not just remind me of one of these titles but different mechanics and different elements of the game reminded me of a different title every time. It is like a mashup of all of the 90s classic shooter titles. If you are a new gamer and did not get a chance to experience the golden era of shooters back then, Hellbound is a decent title that brings back the nostalgia in a modern way. If you like shooters, especially like Doom, Quake, or Serious Sam, I am sure that Hellbound will be right up your alley with its fast-paced and gory shooting mechanics. You can download and play a free Survival mode of the game from Steam as well that will give you an idea about the brilliant mechanics of the game.
Final Score: 8.0/10
