Let’s start by saying Hellpoint should not have been ported to the Switch. Don’t get me wrong, I love Deadspace to death (ha.), and I love to play a souls-like game, even though I suck at them. The version of Hellpoint I played was riddled with bugs and glitches, so I dubbed it Bugpoint at one point (ha *2). Nevertheless, I’m here to review the game in its full glory; but I recommend you pick this up on another console.
Conclusion
Since I already wrote a sort of conclusion at the top of my intro, I’m assuming you’re still here to read my thoughts about Hellpoint. Well, thanks, I appreciate you too. Let’s give some context first; Hellpoint is an action role-playing game developed by Cradle Games and published by tinyBuild, released for Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, PlayStation 4 Xbox One on July 30, 2020. The Stadia and Nintendo Switch versions were released on February 25, 2021 (along with this review copy), with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions are set to be released later this year.
In Hellpoint, you take on a nameless humanoid stranded (Spawn by default, I called him Shez) on derelict space station Irid Novo and must battle vicious creatures to solve the mystery behind the events that happened there. Irid Novo orbits around a massive black hole; the station’s position in relation to the black hole affects enemies’ strength. I loved this concept since it reminded me of Deadspace (which I played way too much, except for part 3, which does not exist).
HellSouls… DarkPoint… Hellpoint?
Comparable to how Dark Souls functions, In Hellpoint, gameplay revolves mainly around combat. The player has both light and strong attacks in their arsenal, as well as an evade mechanic – basically rolling around like you don’t care, throw your robotic hands up in the air. The game progress can be saved at breaches that do not resurrect foes as they respawn after a certain amount of time. At said breaches, you can also upgrade some of your features with your hard-earned experience. To stay in the souls-feels, you can store up to two healing injections, but the healing gauge is refilled by dealing with damage to monsters. Hellpoint heavily relies on exploration, offering several secrets to discover. They may be hidden behind secret doors or seemingly inaccessible places that can be reached by utilizing the jump mechanic.
Sadly this comes with my main problem with Hellpoint – Dark Souls offered a little bit of a tutorial on which way to go and how to act with certain problems. Sure, they offed you at the next chance they got, but at least you regained some of your stuff (or were able to get it back easily enough, at least in the tutorial). The part between the first breach and the next breach is filled with enemies, a lot of exploration, and optional stuff, before reaching the first boss. When you die, you have to restart and do everything over again – and by everything, I mean everything.
Glitch-City
The chase to the jail cell, the exploration, the jumps to secret rooms. All of them. And to top it off, you’re haunted by your ghost, which is basically the nemesis system found in the Lord of the Rings-Assassins games. By defeating your ghost, which carries all your equipment and stuff, you can get it back. However, you lost most of it and will probably perish by said ghost hands. The ghost was bugged a few times, and either kicked me into the wall (in which I was stuck and had me reboot the whole game, losing all the progress I made and lost again). Another random glitch I encountered happened when I killed my ghost and dropping my hard-earned loot into the floor, unable to pick it up – well, thanks.
Intro-Clusion
I think you should compare Hellpoint the same way I compared UnderMine to Isaac. There’s the magic, at least on other platforms, it has the feel and some good concepts, but it’s just not… DarkSouls or Bloodborne. Entering the first boss fight, and traversing the light, felt like jumping off the cliff for the first time, onto the beast below and beating the living shit out of it. It might be the Switch Port’s performance that held me back from liking this game since Nick (other Nick) enjoyed its time on the PlayStation a lot more than me. When I get myself a pc next year, I’ll probably try out Hellpoint again, armed with my Switch Pro Controller, but in its full-fledged glory, not the spastic monster on the floor game we got. And trust me, I tried to like it on the Nintendo Switch, I really did, but it just wouldn’t click. Sorry.
