Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre, but what if, in the end, it's us? That's the question posed by Hell is Us, the first game from Rogue Factor, a Canadian studio composed of industry veterans. After thoroughly exploring the desolate regions of the fictitious country of Hadea, we can finally share our final verdict on this brand new IP.
With two graphics modes available on consoles and a temperamental engine like Unreal Engine 5, there was cause for slight concern, but the fact is that the Canadian studio has done a very good job. If you tried the trial version, you probably noticed that the Quality mode running at 30 frames per second wasn't really satisfactory, but I’m happy to report that the latest update at the end of August fixed the problem, and it's now perfectly stable, with no jerkiness in camera movement. The good news is that if you opt for the mode that prioritizes performance, the experience will also be very satisfactory in terms of framerate. There are sometimes a few minor slowdowns depending on what is displayed on the screen, but these slight drops are always very short and not that frequent in the end. What's more, image quality isn't even affected, with a sharp and pleasant image barely marred by slight instability on certain elements of the scenery. However, there are some noticeable compromises that had to be made compared to Quality mode. These are more or less visible depending on the areas of the map explored, with, for example, much more noticeable differences in the Acasa marshes (the second area) than in the Vyssa hills (the third one, check the end of the comparison video). Such concessions are hardly surprising in order to double the framerate, so you have to accept playing with a lower level of detail (less foliage, distant textures - on rock formations or on the ground - that are sometimes strangely basic), less sophisticated lighting and shadows, and of course a slightly more aggressive pop-in. Overall, apart from the texture issue (which is strangely most noticeable in the marshes), these small differences don't seem significant enough to sacrifice the benefits of 60 fps during combat. Combat is still perfectly playable at 30 fps though, but we know how today's gamers react when it comes to high refresh rates. In my opinion, however, there is no wrong choice for enjoying a satisfying experience, and when you consider the disaster that is Metal Gear Solid Delta, which runs on the same engine while featuring much smaller areas, there is plenty of reason to congratulate Rogue Factor for their optimization work! I almost forgot to mention that there is also a PSSR toggle in the menu, but I didn't find it more convincing than the default one (which is probably TSR). PSSR implementation seems to have been improved over the demo, but I stuck with the default upscaler as I didn't see why not in terms of image rendering or framerate.
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