Hell Let Loose escapes from early access to the Eastern Front
Version 1.0 is pushing over the top
I delved into WW2 shooter Hell Let Loose a couple of months ago when I needed a break from Overwatch. I was in the mood to be an everyman soldier, just doing my job wherever the fighting was, seeking out anonymity amidst the carnage. So I fell into the trenches of Foy, and spent a few weeks shooting at pixels darting across huge, gorgeously rendered fields.
As it happens, I was playing it on the cusp of its own victory. The multiplayer shooter has just been released from early access, with version 1.0 pushing onwards to the Eastern Front.
The maps are huge in Hell Let Loose, accommodating 50 vs. 50 fights, so dropping in two new ones, Stalingrad and Kursk, is no mean feat. I’ve been waiting for a large city map, and look forward to suffering in Stalingrad’s bomb-wrecked ruins. Filling them are the Russian army, local boys who leave the classic T-34 medium tank idling in the maps. A few more vehicles and a large armory of weapons (around 17, if you count variations) round off the Eastern addons. They also updated Sainte Marie du Mont to version v2.
There’s a heap of balance tweaks and optimisations included in the update (very needed, as the game requires a big PC to look good and run well). It’s the first big milestone of the game, but developers Black Matter don’t plan on stopping. The roadmap into 2022 includes a campaign mode, British forces and their vehicles, a party system, additional commander abilities, night variations of maps, and additional modes for all the maps.
I’ll be hopping back into the game sooner rather than later. I wasn’t really playing it correctly, as it's a lot better when you communicate, but the fact that it let me pop in and out while war waged was good enough at the time. If you have it, the update is live on Steam now.