High Hell

I could tell you that this game is incredibly unique, but as a whole it isn't. The little odds and ends of the game are unique but this is by no means the first high speed, high impact shooter. What really makes this game excellent is all of those components put together.

When I booted up the game for the first time, I was shocked at the insane aim sensitivity. It's almost as if you could gently breathe on your mouse and the character would do a full turn. After turning the sensitivity down and continuing to play the game, it became apparent that there was a reason for this. It's because High Hell is so fast, it's borderline psychotic. The movement speed, combined with the fact that most enemies die in one shot, add up to an incredible experience. I spent hours trying to figure out how to play this game. Once I did, I spent even more time trying to perfect it. That is what this game does well that most other games have not done for me. Usually, when I complete the story in a single player game, I'm done. High Hell on the other hand, has a timer for each mission and a dedicated button to open steam leaderboards. I'm not one to care about leaderboards, but it was clear that every time I did a run I was improving.

The perpetual progress you get in the game when trying to streamline your runs is shown to you so clearly at the end of each mission. It tells you how fast you did it and what your score was which gives two options: speedruns or highscores. Inevitably you do see some diminishing return on run speed and score for a mission, but for me that just meant it was time to move on to the next one. Soon I started to find myself on the first pages of steam leaderboards and it felt great. Frankly, I don't think I could have pursued that had the mechanics not been so well tuned.

Like I said, the individual mechanics are not anything to write home about. What really comes out to shine is the tuning and the combination of those mechanics. If you get shot in this game, you better hope you don't get shot twice more because you basically have no health. In order to get more health all you have to do is kill enemies. Doing so will cause a few little light orbs to fly towards you and once you collect them you will regain a rather minuscule amount of health. They must have known precisely what they were doing because that seemingly infinitesimal amount of health you get from a kill is just enough to keep you going. So many times I have found myself receiving health from a kill just in time to get shot, thereby saving my run. The health, damage, and an enemy's ability to aim are all tuned so well as to create a frustrating, but addictive and fun, experience.

On some level it's a shame how fast this game moves because it has such an oddly appealing look to it. The cel shaded world along with the little details you can gather about the people you are fighting make this game just so cool to see. Unfortunately, it all goes by too quickly to really take it in. I played all the way through the campaign before I realized that the demons were all working for a company called PitchCorp. Maybe I am just not that observant, but there isn't any dialog to tell you that. In fact, in the campaign, there are probably less words than there are in the first paragraph of this review. But it's just as it should be. I honestly think adding any dialog or bringing the story to the foreground would have been detrimental to the experience.

While the story doesn't really present itself in a major way, there is one there. It is so subtle that if you weren't interested in it, you probably wouldn't even notice it. However, if you are interested in whats going on in the story, there are occasionally tiny, little bites of the backstory scattered throughout the 20 main missions. I won't spoil anything for the few people who are intent on learning it for themselves, but there are small bits of information about it that you can't gather just from completing the missions.

As fun as this game is, there is one major gripe I have with it. There is a noticeable lack of content in the game. Earlier in the review I talked about playing hours of the game. That is where it ends. I have played through the campaign multiple times, got on some leaderboards, and got all of the steam acheivments and I have a mere six hours of gameplay recorded. A counter argument might be the price point of the game, which is very low. While it's true that for only $10 on steam you get a fun, well made game, I still think I'm justified in saying that I don't think there is a sufficient amount of content. Sure there may be 20 missions and a prologue, but my fastest run of that was about twelve minutes. Granted, I have played it a few times before and since then, but I am by no means the fastest. A normal first playthough should be about forty minutes to an hour depending on how quickly you adapt to the gameplay. Of course, it's obvious that High Hell wasn't just made with speedrunning in mind, but rather was made entirely for speedrunning. It's just that I don't know if that is a good approach to designing a game.

For the most part, High Hell is excellent. Besides the few hangups I have, I would recommend this game. Whether you are looking for another game to speed run, or a fast paced shooter at a good price point, High Hell should deliver. Every now and then the action might even die down enough for you to appreciate the details of the world. Who knows maybe some people who don't like speed running, like me, will make attempts at it. If you have thought about buying this game, you should just do it. Just be ready to rage quit once or twice.