Hell Let Loose: Vietnam playtest signups are now open

Late last week, Team17 announced that Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is now open for signups for players to join their playtesting. In the near future, they’ll be selecting a large group of volunteers to hop in before release for free to both give them valuable feedback and for you to get a chance to experience Hell Let Loose: Vietnam for free!

Signups can be done through their public form here. You’ll need to attach both your Steam and Discord accounts, so make sure you’re prepared to get those connected. You’ll also be able to join their public Discord server to get involved in the hype and community discussion.

If you’re not familiar with Hell Let Loose, you’re missing out on a lot. Well, a lot of death and suffering, but also a great game. Hell Let Loose kind of fills that middle-ground between absolutely drowning in realism (walking for 30 minutes to get to your fight) offered by a game like Arma, and the arcadey-realism offered by a game like Battlefield. Guns have weight, and you will die… a lot, suddenly, rapidly, and out of nowhere. The original release, simply titled “Hell Let Loose” was a WW2 shooter with large open maps and warfare where, in my experiences playing, players loved using proximity voice chat to… let’s say LARP with spice. While the game itself is rather hardcore, the player base does a lot to keep things light. Many of the funniest moments I’ve had in any shooter have been sitting near teammates as they deliver cheesy one-liners as they open fire, or deliver unnecessary heartfelt monologues as if they’re really going into battle. It’s beautiful, and the perfect balance in most of my rounds in the game between keeping things serious and keeping things light.

If you’re expecting to confidently drop in as a seasoned Battlefield “veteran”, you will promptly be punished for your arrogance, as you’ll find that things do not run quite that speed around here. You might often hear protesting cries between fans of Battlefield calling it the “more grounded, slower shooter” between the competition of Call of Duty and Battlefield in the big leagues, but… that’s just because they’ve never played a round of Hell Let Loose. Run out at all and you’ll find your head detached by the rogue sniper letting loose a single shot your way from across the field, where you never even saw him. War really is hell, huh?

But, what’s actually new with Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, anyway? Well, it’s largely going to be that bottled chaos you might already be familiar with from the first game, but, you guessed it… in Vietnam. HLL: Vietnam is a standalone release, and not a DLC, so it is sure to come with a lot of special care taken to ensure the release caters very specifically to the time period, and, if previous experience is to be believed, developer Expression Games will do everything to ensure absolute accuracy to as much as is possible that you’ll run across. As expected, you’ll find period-relevant weapons and vehicles in numerous varieties. Moving forward in time past the original release, of course you’ll find Helicopters present as well to really show them the business from on high. I will say I am interested to see how they can possibly balance this for the fact that only one team will be getting helicopters, but there is mention in their initial information release here that there’s some functionality for the players on the Vietnamese side to construct tunnel networks, which isn’t really expanded upon here. I’m sure it’ll be very smooth and well done, but given a lack of visuals, I can’t help but picture basically giving the Vietnamese team Minecraft abilities.

But we will come to see what all that is about once the playtest day arrives, at least, for those of us who get lucky enough to get chosen. Cross your fingers that they deem you worthy. Sign up, and keep an eye on your inbox for your chance to meet on the fields of Hell Let Loose: Vietnam!