Hell Yeah! Review

One pissy, gun-toting bunny from Hell needs to get his revenge… on the Webbernet trolls.

So first, I didn't know that a bunny would be in charge of ruling Hell. Maybe I should've been surprised; bunnies have always been a little… suspicious. How do I know under all that fur they're not plotting my eventual death?  They're like kittens that way—never trust a cute kitten. The smaller they are, the sharper the teeth. And the prince in charge is a dead bunny complete with a one-wheeled chainsaw for a ride and an assortment of guns to blow the minions of Hell sky-high (and then back down again, of course).

With his trusty butler Nestor, a rotting octopus with a top hat, he marches off to defend his honor. Or somebody's honor. He really just wants to kill the bastards—all 101 of them—who saw a photograph of him online having dirty-dirty relations with the love of his life: his rubber ducky. Ernie might be proud. Bert probably feels a little betrayed. Darn my newly tainted childhood!

As a Metroidvania, play is pretty straightforward: start running around and search for the 101 bastards that viewed your photo online. Each baddy is a unique and delicate flower (that you can rip apart or blow up in vengeance) with their own backstory and name. They're scattered across seven different regions of Hell, and exploration is limited to the number of dirty rotten peepers you've killed; each door has a quota of death that needs reaching in order to blow up, unlocking new regions and jerks that need a-murderin'.

The side-scrolling gameplay is fun and responsive, though it takes a little getting used to. That damn bunny can jump pretty high and is entirely maneuverable throughout the jump, but still feels a little floaty because of how long he's in the air. He can buy and upgrade his weaponry to fill out whatever he might need, from a golden revolver and classic shotgun to a laser-pellet burst and big tank of holy water that shoots like a low-pressure Super Soaker. The left bumper rotates through his arnsenal, but when at a certain point in the game it's necessary to find a safe spot just to cycle through all the weapons for a certain enemy—it's a bit of a pain.  Luckily but not terribly so, each weapon does pretty much the same on every little monster that crosses the platform-laden pathways.

Little bits called "Random Not So Useful Advice" appear during the loading screens, like "this game was originally meant to be a TPS (third-person shooter)" and "this particular message had only a 0.001% chance of being displayed. Congratulations." The devs even realized the loading times were a bit too extended, even stopping to say "Think our loadings are too long? It's a feature." With a game that moves as fast as this game does, the extended loading does get a little tiresome, but it's not really a dealbreaker, unlike the humor.

Each of the 101 that need killin' have their own death animation, but a ways in it's easy to spot that they're not all entirely special. There are a bunch of ways they die—yanked apart, shot to death with Cupid's arrows, eaten by a tT-rex, explosion via guitar chords—all of them ending with a big burst of blood shot directly at the screen.  This game loves its blood, and while it's the kid-friendly burst of gore, it does grow thin after the first thirty or so deaths. I enjoyed it of course, but the repetition with so many enemies got a bit old.

But what's really surprising to me was the length of the game. Namely, it feels really short. I thought with so many baddies to kill I'd be playing for hours and hours, but not so; I'd killed probably the first twenty or thirty jagoffs in my first sit-down of maybe an hour, hour and a half. By the time I reached the Final Boss (emphasized appropriately in-game as "Final Boss!") I'd only probably played about five hours, if that. When I went back for the optional missions in each sector I ran through about 10 of the 21 in under a half hour, and many of them are simply repeats in different environments. That's pretty lame, as interesting as the different areas look and as challenging as some of the platforming may get. C'mon, there's enough diversity to think up some new missions… at least, some different mission names so I don't realize I'm playing the same thing again!

The Island feature that's unlocked partway, where you can punish and make work for you the baddies you've annihilated through the regular game, is a basic bore. I would've liked something unique with it, but tossing around a few scales and reading the short bios for most of the backstabbers is all that's really available. It's almost a Tamagotchi, minus the interaction, character development, and poop cleaning. And I'd imagine demons and perverts in Hell are filled to the brim with some stinky poop.

With the Island being a disappointment and a humor style that gets stale partway through a playthrough, there's no real reason to go back and play through again. I might pick this back up again later as a mindless slaughterfest when I get that need. It's definitely good—it'll be right there with Everyday Shooter on PS3 and King of Fighters XIII on 360 in my collection: a way to play something without truly dedicating myself. It's a great in-between game.

Or if somebody takes pictures of me in the bath, I can use it to know I'm not entirely alone. YOU HEAR THAT, PAPARAZZI? COME TRY IT, FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS!