🎮 Game Review | Slain: Back From Hell (PC, PS4, XO, Switch)

Slain: Back From Hell can be best described as a brutal Castlevania-like game with a nostalgic throwback to the games of the 80’s and 90’s with a serious touch of heavy metal. The game doesn’t just look gothic, but the soundtrack of the game fully consists of heavy metal tracks. And honestly – for a game like this, it’s a perfect choice and adds an interesting extra touch. Read RebelHeart’s full review of this 2D hack and slasher below.

Preface

Just a few seconds after pressing the start button and playing through the game, an achievement pops up. It’s titled ‘Get used to it’, and the achievement or trophy is awarded to you whenever you die in the game for the very first time. And trust me – you will, a lot. The game is extremely challenging and anything but easy to complete. Levels are split into smaller pieces, each ending in a checkpoint. When you die, you simply return to the latest checkpoint you’ve come across with your health and mana intact. In short, this isn’t a game for ‘wussies’, as the developers themselves like to call it.

The origins of Slain: Back From Hell can be traced back to a successful Kickstarter project. The game has been released on PC for a while but didn’t manage to gather a lot of positive criticism. Slain was poorly finished and was filled with bugs, leading to a burst of negative reviews online. The developers decided to learn from their mistakes and release an updated version of the game, now with the ‘Back From Hell’ suffix. They want to prove that they’ve reworked the game completely and take care of the bugs and negatives. The PC-version was updated, and the game recently released on consoles as well.

Gameplay

In Slain: Back From Hell, you’ll play as the metal hero with the particularly difficult to pronounce name Bathoryn, who received a mission from none other than the Metal God himself. There’s a ton of devilish enemies that stand in your way and they’d fit in pretty well in a Doom-game: flying monsters, hellish fire dogs, skeletons – you name it. The gameplay mechanics of Slain: Back From Hell are fairly simple and similar to that of older Castlevania games.

You can deal damage with your broadsword, but you can also choose to charge your attacks to inflict more punishment upon your enemies. You can also use ranged moves with your mana. Blocking is another essential element and is particularly useful for a well-timed counterattack.

Attacking enemies is quite fluent and the balance between these attacks is great. Make no mistake, Slain is a difficult game and chances are pretty high you’ll die multiple times. Luckily, the checkpoints are relatively frequent which can save you some frustrations. Once you pass a checkpoint successfully, a feeling of relief and accomplishment can definitely be felt.

Aside from the different enemies in Slain: Back From Hell, each with their own set of moves and attack patterns, the levels are also filled with traps and hidden elements. Levels are quite linear and don’t feel repetitive at all. Average players will spend around six hours to complete the campaign, although it probably won’t be an exception if you happen to spend some more hours to complete it. The hidden booby-traps and hard-to-reach areas can definitely increase your playtime.

I’ve wanted to ‘ragequit’ the game multiple times because of a particularly difficult encounter, but the gameplay is so addicting you just keep on trying. Each level also features a boss fight. They look terrifying, although some of these bosses can be defeated quite easily, especially compared to the difficulty level of regular combat. The game doesn’t offer much replayability, there’s no New Game Plus more nor are there any additional game modes to discover.

Graphics and audio

Slain: Back From Hell tries to deliver a gothic SNES-atmosphere and it definitely succeeds: the game looks excellent with detailed sprites, astonishing environments, and fluent animations. Slain also offers two CRT-filters which emulate the image on an older TV to enhance the retro experience. The sound effects are alright, but it’s the soundtrack that absolutely steals the show. This game just screams heavy metal, the soundtrack with its plethora of heavy guitar riffs couldn’t have been a better choice.

Conclusion

Slain: Back From Hell is a great 2D action game. The original release of the game was certainly flawed, but the developers learned from their mistakes and launched a challenging, fun-to-play and visually attractive game with a wonderful heavy metal theme. Rock on!

Slain: Back From Hell is available on PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Image sources: official Steam page.

---

Enjoyed this post? Feel free to upvote and follow @RebelHeart