14 DAY TRIAL // Our incoming 2015 series focuses on the most important game launches of the next 12 months, and next up we talk about a pretty unique game, Hellraid, a first-person action role-playing game from Techland.
What we know
Techland is working on both Hellraid and Dying Light, with the latter being a first-person zombie apocalypse survival game with a lot of hand-to-hand combat and crazy, parkour-infused movement.
Hellraid is set for release sometime this year, headed to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC platforms, and it also supports cooperative multiplayer, enabling up to four players to tackle its challenges together.
The videos released so far show an exciting game, complete with dodging and parrying and several different weapons that introduce slight but meaningful changes in the gameplay flow.
In addition to this, you'll also be able to hurl powerful magical spells at your enemies, as well as employ protective ones to ensure the well-being of yourself and your friends.
The game will feature a classic linear progression, with multiple maps to explore, dungeons to purify, and bosses to defeat.
Why it matters
Techland cut its teeth on Dead Island, an action video game praised for its melee combat system, and now the team gets to expand on those core concepts and provide a more in-depth experience.
Furthermore, as the company has also worked on Dying Light, the chances to get our hands on a top-notch first-person Diablo type of experience are even greater.
The first-person perspective has not had enough love in fantasy games lately, as most role-playing games favor the easier route of the third-person perspective when engrossing us in their worlds.
One of the biggest challenges is nailing the feeling of first-person movement and making the action combat feel authentic, having the feeling that your blows connect and that you're not just flailing wildly.
The game rewards finesse, and you can mix and match elements of both melee combat and magical spell casting to your liking, not being restricted to picking a single class and sticking to it for the duration of the game.
The expansive skill system has a ton of active and passive choices, from shield bashes to deadly area of effect blasts of fire or frostbolts that freeze your enemies in place.
All in all, Techland aims to offer a gruesome first-person combat experience with Hellraid, and to enable fans of old-school classics such as Hexen to enjoy a modern take on the genre.
Given the wealth of choice and the diversity of the procedurally generated content, the game has the potential to offer a ton of replayability, which makes it all the more exciting.
