What kind of shooter this is
Hell Let Loose is a hardcore World War Two first person shooter built around 50v50 battles. Fights happen on huge, to-scale maps recreated from aerial and satellite imagery of real battle locations, covering fields, bridges, forests, towns and other war-torn ground across the Eastern and Western Fronts and North Africa, with battles like Carentan, Omaha Beach, Stalingrad and Kursk. Each map is split into large capture sectors, and with 99 capture point variations per map there is a huge number of possible battles, so rounds rarely play out the same way. Ballistics and recoil are modelled to be true to life, so gunplay rewards practice rather than spray-and-pray, and heavy weapons genuinely dismember friend and foe. Two gamemodes are available: Offensive and Warfare.
Playing as a group
Your group drops into the match as part of a squad structure. There are 14 roles spread across Command, Infantry, Recon and Armour unit types — Officer, Spotter, Medic, Machinegunner, Tank Commander, Crewman, Sniper and more — each with its own historical weapons, vehicles and equipment. Pick roles that cover each other and your group has medics keeping people up, armour crewing Tigers, Shermans, Stuarts or Pumas, and officers feeding decisions upward. Communication is the core mechanic: proximity voip, command voip and unit voip let you coordinate at three levels, and squads work beneath the leadership of Officers and a Commander who steers the team from the tactical map. Kill counts are not the point — winning comes from teamwork and from deciding continually where to attack or defend.
The layer above the fighting
Resources and supplies drive a strategy-style metagame on top of the shooting. Manage them to call in support, bombing runs, strafing runs and new vehicles, or to reinforce strong-points and flank the enemy. You can also build defenses on the field to fortify a position, and crew heavy weapons like anti-tank guns and artillery to break the enemy line.
Before you start
Expect brutal, tactical combat where a lone wolf dies quickly. Communication matters from your first match, so a headset is worth having. Roles level up separately from your player level, unlocking uniforms, loadouts and other customisation as you go, so your first hours will be spent learning one role rather than everything at once. Controller support is partial, so expect keyboard and mouse to be the more complete way to play. New maps, weapons, features and fixes keep arriving over time, alongside upcoming roadmap content.