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Hell Let Loose
23/02/2022
This game was reviewed on Xbox Series X.
Reviewed by: Jack Phillips
The truck sits idle, packed with a variety of soldiers, but two players are far more valuable than the rest; the support-class and his officer. Those two are the ones that will place the first garrison, where players can spawn, this will allow for the rest of the team to assault the first objective without much issue.
Nearby, two engineers sit in their supply truck, both of them intending to use the supplies in order to construct resource nodes. These nodes will generate supplies, supplying the war effort, and enable the commander to use a wide variety of abilities. These nodes will also produce ammo for the artillery guns, only one of which is manned presently. The single artillery crew waits as he intends to bombard the enemy only once they begin to push on the objective; perhaps a lucky shell will take out the enemy's own troop truck. Finally a tank rolls up behind the truck, ready to push onto the objective and provide support to the infantry as they assault.
What I have just described is the ideal start to a match of Hell Let Loose, yet these starts are rare. Without playing on explicitly well organized servers, such as 82nd and Big Red One (For EU and US respectively), these starts are as rare as sightings of the elusive bigfoot; it is almost mythical and most likely, if you do encounter it, it is staged. As one of my friends always says; "The biggest weakness of a multiplayer game is the fact it is multiplayer." You've got very little control over the other players and all you can do is your part to try and contribute to the team. I will admit that I hold a, particular, contempt for people who play assault-classes and complain in the team-chat about a lack of support players or proceed to backseat game one of the tank-crews.
There are specters that haunt this game, strange creatures, those that linger upon the edges of sanity and toe'd the line of the depths of human knowledge; only for the void to stare back at them and leave them as nothing more than empty husks that seek to inflict pain upon all of those around them... I am, of course, talking about the solo-tanker, the mute Commander, and the no-garrison SLs. MoscaTNT's "Tales From The Front" perfectly represents this; I highly suggest a Google of it.
The gameplay itself settles neatly between arcade and realistic, offering a mixture of games like Squad and Heroes and Generals, I would argue that this is the highlight of the game. Something that is, extremely, easy to get into but rather hard to master. Where you are able to decide just how much you, individually, can impact the game. If you just want to shoot something; you can grab a rifleman role, assault, or automatic rifleman. If you want to have a small, but meaningful, impact then roles such as support, anti-tank, and engineer will be ideal. The deep end will, however, always be anything associated with tanks and then a command role. All of these require large amounts of active communication; often juggling multiple conversations at the same time to ensure that everyone knows what is going on.
The maps themselves are, usually, extremely fun and diverse; but the Russian theatre maps fall short and are, seemingly, some of the most disliked by the community. Whilst some maps have a variety of points that people contest over, allowing the map flow to feel different, the Russian maps are, usually, described as 'samey'. With some parts of the map being a constant fixture in each match, such as the railroads in Stalingrad; where there is simply very little one can do to avoid traversing across that massively open section of the map. Often dragging matches, and pushes, down to a grinding war of attrition where you will most likely be unable to move from that point onto the next objective for some time.
With quick, fast, TTKs, gunfights are always refreshing thanks to the variety of weaponry. Everything has the chance to kill you with a single headshot, whereas some guns are unable to drop you in a single shot to the torso. These gunfights are enjoyable, but can become frustrating when you hear nothing but the sound of your own corpse slamming into the ground. Conversely there is also nothing more satisfying than the quiet 'plink' that sounds when you score a headshot on a distant enemy.
I would prefer if the melee was more fleshed out; but that is personal preference and certainly not something that the devs should focus on.
Hell Let Loose 2 is apparently in development, time will tell what improvements they make onto the next title.
Reviewed by: Jack Phillips