In an October 24 blog post, Halo Studios and Xbox explained that with Library, "it felt right to make tweaks to several areas" to create a "new experience that balances nostalgia with the expectations of today's gamers."
There's no denying the glaring flaws of Sonic the Hedgehog 4--the wonky physics, the blatant remixing (or one might even say "rehashing") of classic levels and bosses from the first two Sonic games, and the soundtrack's questionable and often derided soundfont being chief among them. But despite its problems, even 15 years later, I still find myself occasionally coming back to replay both episodes.
For many triple-A video games, appealing to a wide audience often means ensuring players can see a game to its conclusion. That sometimes translates to sanding down combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving to make it approachable as possible. But this can sometimes veer into making games too guided for their own good. Hell is Us tosses all of these conventions out of the window. Goodbye quest logs, maps, and objective arrows telling you where to go. By trusting players to figure things out, Hell is Us' smart level and puzzle design shine to create compelling and rewarding discoveries, despite middling combat and uneven storytelling.