Video Games

Video Game Roulette: Hell Yeah!

Welcome to Video Game Roulette where I run a random number generator to pick a random game from my list of 1,000ish games that you can see here. Play that game for 3-5 hours accumulated, talk about the game’s core systems and see if it is a game I recommend!

For this weeks VGR I rolled the game Hell Yeah! What in hell is Hell Yeah!?

One of the many exaggerated mini-boss deaths.

According to Urban Dictionary It’s a; “Phrase used when showing excitement and agreement. You can change your voice to make it sound cooler if you think you are tight”

Let me tell you, this game definitely thinks it’s tight. But is it?

One of the many WarioWare-like mini-games you have to do to finish off a mini-boss.

Hell Yeah! The Basics

‘Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit’ is an action platformer where you play as an undead rabbit named, Ash, who is the Prince of Hell. You are greeted with the classic SEGA voice everyone knows and loves and an intro that gives you some baby sim speak to let you know that Ash has a terrible secret, a fetish for duckies, quack. Ash enjoys his duckies in the private of his own quarters until someone snaps a few pictures of him and spreads them around the “Hellternet”. It’s high time to go out there and murder everyone that viewed the blog post to keep your dark fetish a secret.

The world is bright and vibrant but the actual mechanics leave a lot to be desired

Hell Yeah! Game Mechanics

Your octopus butler, Nester, hitting you over the head with the tutorial

‘Hell Yeah!’ is a twin stick shooter where once you get some unlocks, you aim with the right stick and move with the left. The game highly recommends that you use a controller which is what I played on but I also tested keyboard and it feels like just what you would expect with basic keyboard and mouse mechanics. You are introduced with the game self-aware that people hate tutorials but since the game is easy enough to understand it doesn’t take too long. You quickly unlock a razer blade that spins around your body so you are able to easily dispense of trash monsters and drill through fluorescent pink walls that contain money and the path forward. You also unlock a Jet Pack so you can easily fly up to higher platforms.

Drill through fluorescent pink walls to progress the game and get money.

Eventually you get your first ranged weapon, the rocket launcher, which also introduces the mini-boss fight. Each mini-boss is a unique type of monster and is also a viewer of your duckie fetish. Once you quickly dispense of a boss you are then introduced to a warioware type of minigame where you have to hit the button at the right time or select the correct thing they ask for. The mini-games start easy and progessivly get slightly more interesting. Once you finish said mini-game you get to view the boss being destroyed in a very exaggerated way only a game named ‘Hell Yeah!’ would be able to produce.

Map showing you where you should be going.

After you kill X amount of mini-bosses labeled above the door, you are able to move onto the next area where you do more of the same thing. The game has some metroidvania feels when you check the map to see what you are missing, but exploration in the game feels pretty linear and shallow.

Money is spent in shops that you can find in the levels for weapon upgrades or a hat so you can pretend that you’re playing Red Dead Redemption 2 instead.

The monsters you have slain are moved over to an island where you can put them to work where you can set them to get money or food. I didn’t explore ‘The Island’ too much but I set all my monsters to cash so I could buy more hats and upgrades over time. You can also see the witty profiles of the monsters you have slain. ‘The Island’ is a good extension to the base game if the base game is something you enjoy.

Get healed by the well endowed… ghost?

Hell Yeah! Art & Story

Come to ‘The Island’ to put the mini-bosses you have killed to work. Force them into labor so you can buy more hats. This is Hell after all.

Art is something this game really has going for it. The music is pretty okay, the characters are all unique, the levels you visit are very vibrant and the exaggerated mini-boss deaths are pretty humorous although get boring and kinda annoying after a while.

Dying pays homage to a certain blue guy.

Each level has an arrangement of mini-bosses and a main boss. The main boss will say something meta or silly and Ash will say something meta and silly back. The 3 hours of story I played through plays out like this. You have an octopus butler name Nester that ports around and helps you out with story elements as well.

Boss of the first level dripping with meta and 4th wall breaking dialog.

Hell Yeah! Conclusion!

Hell Yeah! is not a bad game, but it takes old gameplay ideas that have been around for a while and really doesn’t do anything new. The selling point of this game was obviously its edgy nature and sadly the gameplay really feels like it didn’t get much attention as all the systems that get introduced really start to feel repetitive. At full price of 15 USD your money would be better off buying a game that does what this game does, but better. If you got this game for free from a humble bundle or you find it for pretty cheap, why not give it a try? You will get a few laughs out of it.

Year: 2012
Game developed by: Arkedo Studio (now defunct)
Game published by: SEGA
Platforms: Windows, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Played on: Windows

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