Screenshot: Hellbound
I’ve played a lot of first person shooters in my life. When I was younger, it was my preferred genre—and I still prefer most games to be in first-person if it’s practical for them to be. First person is immersive, and often connected to fast, twitch-based gameplay—especially if that game is a shooter.
Hellbound is yet another in a long list of shooters I’ve played, and it manages to hold up.
Hellbound is a first-person shooter that tries to emulate classic id Software games like
Quake and
Doom—and it does a pretty good job at it. Even without the dozen or so messages on its product page and in the game mentioning that
Hellbound is going for a retro-shooter feel, it’s apparent. It has fast movement, floating power-ups, armor, ammo, and hordes of enemies firing at you over a backdrop of hellish landscapes.
Screenshot: Hellbound
There is a story in
Hellbound, but it doesn’t matter. You play as a lumpy slab of meat that’s as tough as the Doom Slayer and spouts one-liners like Duke or Sam. You have to kill monsters (or avoid them) while collecting keys and traversing through each of the seven levels culminating with a confrontation with the big bad at the need. And that’s it, but really, there doesn’t have to be much more.
There aren’t many guns to shoot at enemies with in
Hellbound, and the arsenal that’s provided doesn’t really shake things up too much. There’s your fists, a bat, a rifle, shotgun, minigun-type weapon, and a rocket launcher. And that’s it. If “old-school id-inspired shooter” was a recipe, the developers made only a few changes. Don’t expect innovation, but the weapons do the job, and while some of them feel weak, the sound effects do a good job of providing some extra
oomph.
Screenshot: Hellbound
What would a retro-inspired first person shooter be without lots of enemies to shoot at?
Hellbound throws you into situations with dozens of enemies at a time, but there aren’t that many different enemy types. There are melee and gun grunts, and a few demons that throw projectiles like
Doom’s Imps, as well as others that lunge at you with a devastating melee attack. And that’s pretty much it. I think they throw in a rocket launcher grunt at some point, but they died so quickly I only noticed their rocket launchers afterwards.
Now let me be clear:
Hellbound is a fun game. It even has a pretty good art style that works for what it's trying to accomplish. It’s just too damn short.
With only seven levels,
Hellbound doesn’t take long to play through. And while the levels are okay, hunting for keys and killing the hordes of enemies that spawn after you find said keys isn’t groundbreaking.
Screenshot: Hellbound
Despite its short length, you can possibly squeeze a little more time out of
Hellbound by playing it on a harder difficulty, or trying out its Survival mode. Survival mode only has four levels to play in, but you fight against waves of enemies until you eventually fail. You can compete on the leaderboards—but let’s face it, when has that ever made you stay in a game for several more hours? Again, nothing groundbreaking here.
“Nothing groundbreaking” should have been
Hellbound’s tagline. It’s a fun, fast, tight shooter that I would have enjoyed playing when I was a kid. But it feels like (at most) the first episode to a larger game that doesn’t exist. I totally recommend
Hellbound, but just be prepared for an incredibly short game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3f3W9e_59M
Hellbound is available today on Steam.
If you like the video game, tabletop, or other technology content that Third Coast Review has to offer, consider donating to our Patreon. We are the only publication in Chicago that regularly reviews video games, and we cover lots of local Chicago-based events and more. If you want to contribute to our coverage of Chicago’s video game scene (and more) please consider becoming a patron. Your support enables us to continue to provide this type of content and more. Patreon.com/3CR
You can also catch us streaming games we’re reviewing and staff favorites at twitch.tv/bokor 