I go back to Counter-Strike, the early days of 1.6, and, for me personally, I think it set the ground rules for what a good online FPS ought to be. In Counter-Strike – and this is still true with CS2 – it’s all about risk and consequence. You get one life per round, and you’re incredibly vulnerable. It’s not like Call of Duty or even Battlefield, where the default game modes give you armor and perks. It’s raw. I’ve always preferred shooters in that tradition. So too, it would seem, have a lot of other PC players. One of the toughest, most brutal, and knife-edge FPS games available, after almost four years, the peerless Hell Let Loose just set a new Steam record.
Taking place among the real battlefields of WW2, Hell Let Loose manages to strike a balance between playable, pick-up-and-play FPS game, and something closer to a full-blown simulation. Respawns are allowed, but the stakes are high – a single bullet is enough to kill you, and every death means fighting and navigating your way to the frontline. There’s no spray and pray in Hell Let Loose; no blaze of glory. You need to move slow, work with your team, and use cover. If you manage to kill one of the enemy, it feels like an enormous achievement.
Back in November, the Hell Let Loose Wacht am Rhein DLC arrived with various new uniforms and units. At the same time, developer Team17 released update number 16, which included a new map, numerous quality-of-life and bug fixes, and added the much-wanted ability to freelook, as well as a dynamic weather system.
More recently, Hell Let Loose was available for free on the Epic Games Store. In combination with the shooter’s continually strong reputation (after more than 86,000 user reviews, it still boasts a ‘very positive’ rating on Steam) Hell Let Loose has just hit a record player count high.
On Sunday January 5, 20,338 people played Hell Let Loose simultaneously, the highest number of concurrent users in the game’s entire history. In the last 24 hours alone, the shooter has hit a peak of more than 17,000 simultaneous players, more than rivals such as Destiny 2, Battlefield 1, and Battlefield 2042. If you want to give Hell Let Loose a try yourself, you can get it here.
Otherwise, try some of the other best WW2 games, or maybe the best war games on PC.
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