Partway through Shortbreak Studio's new first person survival horror game, Hellraid: The Escape, you will encounter a room wherein you must brew a potion to help you avoid a chained up, fearsome-looking minotaur. You have to get around the mythical beast and open the door to the next room. One hit from the minotaur will kill you, and then you have to do everything all over again.
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This is where my Hellraid experience ended. What had been a mostly enjoyable time up until then quickly became an exercise in frustration. Hard games can be fun. A hard game will test your skills, not your patience. Certainly, one might get frustrated with Dark Souls, one of the most notoriously difficult games released in the last few years, but the game never stops playing by its own rules. A frustrating game, however, will make you toss up your hands and declare defeat. No amount of skill will improve your chances; the minotaur will hit you, eventually, and you will still not be any closer to knowing how to get by it.
Forcing players to rebrew the potion, which involves putting the correct combination of three colored metals into a bowl then heating it, was the thread that broke the camel's back. It was time consuming and frustrating. Every time the minotaur succeeded, it was back to the drawing board. That the instructions to measure the correct combination were vague and I ended up just tossing in rocks until the game said 'good job' was again, frustrating.
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Suddenly, you aren't playing the game, you're just literally throwing rocks at it until it works. This could be more a testament to one's problem solving skills than any difficulty on the game's behalf, but the need to keep doing it over and over again after so much failure becomes rage-worthy.
It's a shame, as there really is a lot to enjoy in Hellraid: The Escape. The game runs off the Unreal 4 Engine and looks it. The claustrophobic, demonic prison is dripping with atmosphere. Traps abound. You'll find yourself dying from something you didn't even know was there and you will die. A lot. The sound is exquisite, too. Chains jingle, the far away distant screams can be heard echoing through the halls and if the Minotaur mechanic is frustrating, the Minotaur itself is all sorts of terrifying to listen to grunting and groaning through a closed door. To see it charging after you will bring a chill to your spine.
Hellraid: The Escape is a good game that did not entirely work for this reviewer. Those with little patience or time may not be enraptured by the title, but there is much to love. It is a great world filled with clever traps and fun puzzles. The game definitely serves as an appetizer for the upcoming console Hellraid, a much more traditional hack 'n' slash. The game is an excellent example of the power smartphones have, very few things look better. The experience could be made less frustrating, but one man's frustrating is simply another man's difficult.
So, if you will allow, for those about to die, we here at GameNGuide salute you!
