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Down to Hell is in a category all its own of non-vaporware indies worth skipping, and its only value may be in teaching developers whatnotto do.
Imagine a side - scroll actionRPGthat challenges instrumentalist with a precise mixture of phantasy combat and platforming , hasten them along through its breathless hellscapes to face off against bloodcurdling boss after nightmarish genus Bos to the breakneck outfox ofDoom - like metal stylings . To truly read the sort of experience thatDown to Helloffers , though , imagine a game in which all of the above is present but has been carry through as ill as possible . Taking a smattering of well - trodden ideas and half - baking them into an amateurish slog of a 2D hack and slash , Down to Hellis an unentertaining kettle of fish from begin to terminate .
First , however , credit should always be given where its due , and there is some credit to be meted out even in the backwash of a game as inferior asDown to Hell . It has but a exclusive save quality , that being the obvious employment put it in by its visual designers , whose talent - along with that of the programmer who managed to keep the product from shipping as a crash - prostrate bugfest - is in all probability the most usable and creative asset at Polish developer Red Dev Studio ’s garbage disposal . The hell - inspire backgrounds ofDown to Hellaren’t on the nose pretty ( they ’re far too blurry for that ) , but they utilize a racy palette of chromaticity and gradients that commingle to sufficiently invoke the aeonian evenfall and desperation of the game ’s purgatory set that every other part of the experience seems hellbent on sabotaging .
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Beyond that solitary radio beacon of redemption , though , Down to Hellis unmitigated backside to in reality play . At first glance , it seems to have so much in common with the barren Christian imaging and undertones regain in theDark Soulsseries that it ’s easy to assume that it ’s yet another low - tear Soulslike to throw away on the piling , but it ’s really just a run - of - the - mill2Daction game with non - essential dodging . That would n’t be a problem in and of itself were it not for the fact thatDown to Hellis just so unfit at it . It promulgates itself as a tough - as - nail illusion dangerous undertaking withRPGelements , but its progression system is a non - starter and the factual gameplay , whether performing light and heavy attacks and casting spells , simply amounts to a repetitive click - fest . meet more like a broadly speaking cobbled boss - haste than an natural process platformer ( with only pointlessly brusk action at law platforming section between honcho ) , the entire game can be completed in just a few hours because players can just spam the same attempt or two over and over again until everything conk out .
Despite its little length , Down to Hellstill instills a disproportionately rich common sense of wasted time through its repetitive nature and laundry list of irritations . Every metre the thespian character swings his sword , the photographic camera awkwardly whizz along in and back out as though it were controlled by a substance - shout Lakitu . Almost every boss shares near - superposable , unconditional planes with different background for arena , with each monster employing suspiciously similar attacks as the sleep and seem more badly - designed than the last . Every living ooze out a level of second-rater and disjointedness that hark back to the early days of Adobe Flash , excepting the fact that many creative person of that period were producing quality interactive media league beyond whatDown to Hellis apparently capable of despite its employment of the far more useable and use - build wholeness locomotive .
It ’s dubious that Red Dev Studio prioritized account to be as built-in toDown to Hellas its unsatisfying gameplay , but it ’s nevertheless present in a secret plan that otherwise lacks anything else of interest . Aside from some seemly but irrelevant lore in a bill of fare , Down to Hell ’s plot is nonsensical , and its friend is unlikeable in way even the writing team could not have possibly signify . In a nutshell , an angsty knight with a chip on his plated shoulder begins his bloodline into hell because he ’s proven too brawny for his fellow mortals . Oxymoronically - and for the only time in the game - he ’s almost immediately overwhelmed by low - level minion , at which point he ’s save by a girlfriend ( who ’s also visiting the pits ? ) before she , herself , is kidnapped by the very force from which she just handily rescue the horse . At that point , the horse decides to not have any more near - death experiences and vows to free her as a childlike means of dumbfound back at her . Combined with a bottom - of - the - barrel localization from Polish to English rivalingZero Wing , Down to Hell ’s account is strikingly terrible .
In all comeliness , game ontogenesis is far from easy , especially in line to , say , picture game critique . Nothing exists in a vacuum , however ; Red Dev Studios ' sine can not be so easily separated from the towering catalog of indies of exchangeable scale , so many of which attain far more in disparate organization and type thanDown to Hellcan draft in an entire playthrough . Every secret plan is a scholarship example for a studio to put under its belt ammunition , though , and it can be sure thatDown to Hellhasa lotof lessons to offer up Red Dev Studios if it ’s only unforced to learn .
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Down to Hellis now available for microcomputer and will free on Nintendo Switch in 2019 . Screen Rant was provided a PC code for this review article .
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