When you think of Hell, and the underworld, you normally think of fiery pits of horror, sadistic demons ready to torture helpless souls, and endless repeats of Deal or No Deal. Well you’d be mostly right: The residents of Hell also love a bit of celebrity gossip, as shown when you play Hell Yeah!
You play as Prince Ash, a skeletal rabbit, and son of the head honcho of Hell. He loves nothing more than causing pain, dicing up defenceless demons, and rubber duckies. When divulging in his love of rubber ducks, someone took a picture of him in the bath, and now the photo is leaked onto the net. Now Ash is on a quest to eliminate the 100 demons who saw the incriminating picture. As if residents of the underworld need an excuse to dice up anything that spurts out blood.
The game itself plays out like a 2D platformer, with a little bit of Metroid style exploration. You traverse very unique and varying levels on your “drill” (Which is really a buzzsaw”, searching for the 100 monsters that saw the picture of you. You need to whittle their health down by any means necessary (Saw them, shoot, drop a box, etc.), followed by a quick Wario Ware-esque mini game. Beat that, and you are treated to a Ash performing cartoon style fatalieies.
My favourite is the parody of Space invaders, where everything shoots your hapless victim. It’s easy to pick up and play, though there are a few challenging sections, which have caused me to explode in an orgy of pixels and embarrassment. Doesn’t help that the only way to regain health is to find the sparsely located blood fountains, though that adds to the challenge, like the old school platformers.
Underneath the cartoon-y graphics, satirical humour, it’s a very well built platformer. It almost harkens back to classic platformers, like Sonic, Mega Man, and (as stated before), Metroid. On a few occasions, while writing this review, I ended up playing the game longer than I thought, forgetting I had to actually write something about it. That’s how hooked I was, and I’m sure you’ll be hooked too… Or end up with a bony rabbit making a visit in the night.
Published by sega
For more info visit www.sega.co.uk/hellyeah