Hell Yeah! Quirky and fun!
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit by Arkedo Studio is quite a trip. You're in the roll of Ash, the new King of Hell, on his journey to find pictures that were taken of him when he was in his bath with his lovely ducky. You'll go around and kill 100 of these people who have viewed the pictures trying to find them. You go through a variety of background changes that are all starkingly different. Going from a Volcano to a Casino, to a Club and many more zones.
Arkedo tried to make the game as non reptitive as they could by splitting up how you traverse and defeat the monsters in the world. Going from on foot, on jetpack wheel or even in vehicles at random intervals. Controls while on foot and in your jetpack are a little iffy. Double jumping is a little odd on foot and your jetpack only lets you use it once per jump limiting movement. Also jumping and shooting at the same time can be nerve-wracking as you're having to Left Stick to move around as you jump and the right stick with R2 to aim and fire your weapons. You do get a variety of weapons ranging from a Machine Gun to a Gatling Gun to a shotgun to even Holy Water!
After about an hour into the game you unlock something called, 'The Island', which adds a little micromanaging side to the game. Monsters that you defeat become captured by you and you can put them back to work for you on certain parts of said island. These include a Mine (money), Manor (Life), Lab (Unlock items in store), Harbour (Surprises - random items). Monsters can either become sad or angry while working and you'll lose them for a while as they get sent to the tower or beach to either calm down or become happy. This keeps working in a way even when you have your game off as it'll see the last time you had a save and will update the Island if it's been long enough to get the rewards.
The writing in the game is strongly tongue in cheek when Ash is either talking to himself, to his butler octopus or to the monsters he must "capture". It adds to the quirky little charm of the game along with the mini games that you must do when you kill these monsters. These are in the same vein as WarioWare games. There are a variety of them and they do repeat but certain ones change depending on the monster you vanquish which was a nice treat. Although they do kind of getting tedious after awhile especially when you've done the same one 5 times. The biggest plus of Hell Yeah! is the soundtrack. This was not something I expected from this game but it has a extremely lovely soundtrack that had me bobbing my head constantly and even sitting in a zone to listen to for a little, especially the joke song that you get about halfway through.
If you see this on sale or have 15 bucks to burn then I would highly recommend grabbing Hell Yeah! It'll be a surprise hit for you. And remember, always try demos before buying!
*Small note about the PS3 version of Hell Yeah! Mine repeatedly froze during the first 30 minutes but didn't freeze for a majority of the game until right near the end. Wasn't sure if it was a bad install as I didn't redownload or reinstall it so be warned with that. The saving is quite liberal, every monster defeated is a save. So you'll never lose much progress.
