Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit. Simply based on the title alone, it sounds like we are going to have a good time. We’ve got an enthusiastic name, some anger, and a dead leporid. Throw them all together and it seems like you’ve got party central. Unfortunately, the sum of the parts doesn’t quite add up. While there are some fantastic elements to Hell Yeah! (HY!), a few persistent issues subtract from what could have been a brilliant package.
Story
Ok, get ready. You are a rabbit named Ash, you are the prince of Hell, you were photographed in the tub with your bath toy and now you have to kill 100 monsters to put an end to all those who have seen your indecent exposure. Murder is vengeance, or something. That sounds like it could be a Steven Segal movie. That’s it, you are caught up.
Games with a simple plot device like this are fine, and typically we don’t want to be bogged down by complex stories in our arcadey action games. I will never dock points for a simple story when the game is about killing monsters who have seen your personal rabbit parts. It would seem silly to do so.
Gameplay
HY! is an action platformer. After some unlocking, you’ve got your basic jump; double jump; wall jump dash moves; and for most of the game a jetpack/driller vehicle that allows you to boost upwards and to drill through barriers to progress through the levels, as well as to find loot.
You find money around the levels and must use your findings (and winnings) to purchase much needed armament increases. You will need these upgrades to take on the mountain of monsters ahead of you. Many of the 100 monsters occupy the role of mini-bosses and require new weapons to defeat. Each of these mini-bosses takes you into a mini-game much like you would see in Warioware. Mashing buttons, timing your button press just right, or pressing a sequence of buttons all result in hugely gratifying and gratuitously violent finishing animations. Among the weapon upgrades are machine guns, missile launchers, grenades, shotgun, pistol…the weapons keep piling up.
The freshness in new weaponry helped to fight against the otherwise stale combat. Is that weird that I got bored with the combat? I thought so. HY! is about fighting and killing, but somehow it all started to become mundane, working from one boss fight to the next with a bunch of pests in between. You need to kill a certain number of mini-bosses to access the next area. It became a grind with very little change in pace to break up the monotony of seeking and destroying.
There are some optional customization bits at the store as well, offering a nice variety in making Ash your own dead rabbit.
I must make mention of the controls. On the PC side, you move with the WASD, aim with the mouse, jump with the spacebar, and fire with the left mouse button. With a gamepad, you move with the left thumbstick, aim with the right thumbstick, jump with the (A) button and shoot with the right trigger. The only problem with all of this is that you must take your thumb off of the aim control to jump. This equals aiming or jumping. Some of the boss fights require that you aim AND jump, which resulted in me contorting my hands to be able to beat monsters that were very predictable, but nearly impossible to beat due to the control scheme.
That brings me to another gripe (I am starting to sound whiny). The camera stays completely centered on Ash as you move. If you are moving horizontally and hit a 45 degree incline, the camera tracks with you like it’s mounted to your hip. There are no smooth transitions, no moments where the camera waits to see what you are going to do. It’s centered all of the time. So if you are hitting a section of bumps the camera hits those bumps as well, which is a little jarring in a platformer. I would have liked to see a dead band implemented where Ash needed to travel 150 pixels or so in the other direction before the camera followed. I know it’s a bit technical and might seem nitpicky, but it affected my enjoyment of the game having the environment hop around like a Mexican jumping bean on crack every time I hit a small bump.
I feel like I should say something positive now. Well it’s not time for that yet. Games are supposed to be fun, right? Then why do I have to watch the same silly dialog scene because I died fighting the 23rd boss? I thought the dialog was cute the first time, but now I am mashing the a button to skip it for the 8th time, and it just won’t skip fast enough. I am already sad that I died more than half a dozen times, yet you punish me with this dialog scene every time? Why!?!?!?
If you should desire a break from the primary game of hunt and obliterate, you can go to the Island. Here you can put the monsters you have slain to work for you, giving you an increase in health or money or items. Though it felt tacked on, this mode brought a bit of peace when the stream of killing and death began to carry my patience away.
Graphics
Excellent work here. Props to the artists at Arkedo. May we see more of your fine work in the near future. Fantastic animation, killer color usage, brilliant variety of levels, tons of unique enemy types. Great work all around here.
As a warning to those with sensitivities to the subject matter, there is a lot of blood, dismemberment and such, as well as symbolism that may offend religious folks. It’s all presented with a cartoonish coat of paint, but it’s there. It’s hard to take the game seriously though, so it’s not likely to offend anyone who actually heard the title and still wanted to play.
At times, the game can get a little claustrophobic, so it’s nice to be able to zoom out and see a little more of your surroundings, as well as the level layout. I wasn’t entirely fond of the labyrinthine levels, and the game even jokes about it in one particular puzzle ,but there is always something interesting to look at.
Character close-ups resemble a dark, twisted Spongebob-esque appearance. Every character looks like they belong, though very few of the monsters even resemble each other.
Sound
The games humor even comes across in the sounds and music. (The loading screens have elevator music.) I enjoyed much of the music, but some of it seemed to hit my ears with a hammer, and I don’t mean in loudness. Different levels and areas have different music that was selected to suit the vibe of the area, but often I was just glad to make it to the next area so that I could hear a new tune.
The sound effects are plenty good. There is a fine selection of booms, grinds, splats, boos, cheers, and silly homages to other games.
Last Words
Ash has energy, and the game starts off with a blast. But despite the loads of unlockables, Hell Yeah! can’t maintain it’s pace. I enjoyed the ideas, but the execution lacked an element of fun that was clearly the developers intent. Still, if you must have blood and crude humor in your platforming games, there is plenty to do and see in Hell Yeah!, as long as you do it in small chunks.
Three out of Five