Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit

After Ash, the Prince of Hell was snapped by paparazzi in the bath with a rubber duck, Ash goes on a quest for revenge, vowing to kill all 100 monsters that viewed the pictures. This intro sets the tone for the game, it's very silly and features parody references along the way. It never takes itself seriously.

The game initially seems like a Metroidvania style game. You will be traversing labyrinths, navigating platforms and shooting enemies. The game is pretty linear though, and often areas are blocked off by doors that only open once you have located and defeated the main monsters in that area. Later on in the game, you can teleport to previously explored areas. It is mandatory to use them late on in the game, but the game tells you where to go and it just leads to more linear sections.

The main 100 monsters have a health bar but usually don't take very long to take down, although there are a few bigger boss characters too. Most of the time you defeat them by gunning them down, but other times you need to drop a block on their head, use the environment to kill them (poison, flames etc) or some other action like simply zooming out the camera. Once their health bar is depleted, you are presented with a Warioware-style mini-game. These are just as silly as Warioware and trigger a silly execution move. If you fail the game, then Ash's health is drained and you either have to try the mini-game again, or attack the monster again who will have part of their health restored.

Defeated monsters get sent to an island where you set them to work for bonus money. It's a simple idea and you don't need to pay attention to it since the rewards seem low.

For most of the game, Ash has a circle-saw which can be used to tear through enemies or drill certain terrain. Ash also has an arsenal of weapons which can be purchased from the shops. The weapons aren't drastically different from each other but there are fast shooting guns and slower missile weapons. You can purchase weapon and health upgrades, masks, and skins for your saw. You can also find these cosmetic items in secret areas throughout the game.

You can press and hold jump to use your jet-pack for a limited time. This allows you to reach higher ground or traverse horizontal danger. Later on, you get a dash move which can be used as an attack or to move quickly (e.g. dashing through some timed spikes).

The game tries to add variety by stripping away your weapons then giving you wall jump, or placing you in a vehicle such as a rocket or submarine. These sections are always short but are a welcome break from the usual style.

When you get hit, your blood meter is drained. You can take plenty of hits before dying but you will often collide into enemies or projectiles. However, I found that most deaths were usually caused by the one-hit-kill spikes that are frequently placed. There are health regeneration stations but these aren't as frequent as the check-points. Therefore sometimes you will spawn with really low health and will have to backtrack just to restore your health. This was particularly annoying especially since the smaller monsters respawn so will have to be defeated again.

The controls can be quite awkward. Right Stick aims guns and Right Trigger fires. However, Right Trigger on its own uses the circle saw to drill. Sometimes it seems necessary to shoot an enemy on the next platform that you want to jump up to. Jumping and firing is very awkward to do since you will need to move from the jump button to the right stick to quickly aim. You can't rebind the controls and cannot use the D-Pad to move either.

Despite the game being relatively short at around 7 hours, the game does become boring for the final few hours despite the game's attempts to mix things up. Once you get used to the humour and have seen all the execution moves, it does feel repetitive since the executions tend to repeat and there aren't any new elements to the game-play.

I think Hell Yeah was a decent game, certainly not as bad as others make out, but it doesn't do anything special. The main problem is that the elements within the game have been done better by other games out there.