Developer: Infinity Ape Studios
Publisher: Iceberg Interactive
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Hellbreach: Vegas – Review
It seems that more developers are trying to make their own title that’s inspired by the Zombies mode in Call of Duty, and there are actually quite a few gems out there. We recently played Sker Ritual, another title in the same genre that gave its spin on the genre and proved to be highly entertaining. The newest addition to the Zombies-like FPS experience is Hellbreach: Vegas, a project by a single developer. While this ambitious project had quite a few interesting aspects, we feel it should have stayed in the oven for a bit longer.
Story
There is no story to be found in Hellbreach: Vegas, which is actually a bit of a shame. The overall theme would lend itself well to having an original story, or at least something to tie the different locations and survivors together. While you probably won’t be playing games such as this for their deep narrative value, we have to point out that titles such as Sker Ritual do a formidable job embedding storylines into their gameplay. We would have at least loved some character bios to somewhat get attached to the survivor(s) we’d ultimately pick during our gaming sessions.
Graphics
Graphically Hellbreach: Vegas isn’t an ugly game, it just feels extremely rough around the edges. There are a lot of texture pop-ins, the enemy models are very limited, all the assets are static, there is hardly any visual feedback on weapons, reload animations look dodgy, and so on. The list seems a bit endless when you’re looking at many of the individual components, but for a single-dev project, things look a lot better than expected. We would love to see some updates here and there, especially when it comes to weapon feedback and enemies getting staggered when fired upon.
Sound
The sound design isn’t too bad in general, but it once again feels a bit too basic. You’ll get the same voice lines that loop over and over again, and the music is somewhat forgettable. We eventually turned off the music to put on our own explosive soundtrack that matched the onscreen onslaught. The sound effects are decent, and all guns have their own distinct sound.
Gameplay
Hellbreach: Vegas is a wave-based first-person shooter much akin to the Zombies mode in Call of Duty or the recently released Sker Ritual. While the game does offer a few different modes, the main goal often revolves around surviving as long as possible or completing a specified goal. An example of the latter is the Gun Pro mode, in which you’ll have to kill 20 monsters with a random weapon before you swap to another randomly assigned weapon. You can play the game on your own but also with up to three other players online. The offset is very straightforward, and the general gunplay is entertaining, but sadly things feel more like an Early Access project rather than a finished product.
The overall fast-paced nature of the combat was what immediately drew us in, but before long, the cracks in the foundation started showing. As stated above, there is barely any visual feedback on the weapons, but this also translates to the actual gameplay. When shooting enemies, you don’t stagger them, and you cannot shoot specific limbs to incapacitate them, which results in enemies becoming bullet sponges on higher difficulties. The experience also proved to be grind-heavy, as it took quite a long time to start unlocking passive upgrades and new weapons. There are a lot of unlockable cosmetics, however, which could be a goal to work towards for some.
To buy upgrades, weapons, and cosmetics, you’ll need to collect skulls during the different matches. These skulls randomly drop when playing, and it does take a while for you to gather a significant amount of them. These skulls are also tied to your actual level progression, and we would have preferred it if you would also gain experience from general monster kills, as the game currently feels too grindy.
While the overall concept and gameplay loop are generally still enjoyable, this project is not without bugs. The menus look a bit unfinished at times and are more than often quite unresponsive. The same can be said about online matchmaking, as looking for a game made our cursor vanish completely, making it impossible to navigate the menus or cancel the matchmaking properly. When we couldn’t find a match within a few minutes, we basically had to force a shutdown of the game. This feels like a huge oversight. The game could also use lobbies, as we often joined ongoing matches, making it hard to catch up and dish out enough damage with our starting loadout.
Conclusion
Hellbreach: Vegas is for the most part a mediocre wave-based shooter. We would have loved to give this one a higher score, as we enjoyed the fast-paced action, but we quickly found ourselves turning the game off after a match or two. While this makes this an ideal title to pick up and play in between bigger titles, it also shows how basic the overall execution is. The weapons may look diverse, but they provide barely any feedback, the enemies turn into bullet sponges as you crank up the difficulty, and unlocking new stuff does take a bit too long if you’re a casual player. Even so, if you can rope in a few friends to join your demon-slaying posse, you’ll probably still have a blast with this one.
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