PAX East: Hell Yeah! is hella fun

PAX East: Hell Yeah! is hella fun

Hell Yeah! has gone from being completely off my radar to being a contender for my game of the show. It is the most exciting downloadable game that I saw. Enough gushing. Why is this game worth your time and attention?

Hell Yeah! is a 2D platformer. I adore 2D platformers and this is a particularly good-looking one. The game is incredibly demented and gory in an over the top cartoony sort of way. Ash the demon bunny prince of Hell has had an incriminating photo taken of him. Rather than destroying all copies of the photo, he decides to kill the 100 minions that have seen it. Ash starts very weak but quickly acquires a circular saw blade/jet pack combo weapon that he rides around in. This allows him to rip apart his former vassals, shoot high in the air, and dig through rocks.

The demo I played was set in the opening of the game. I quickly got my blade and destroyed about 6 of the vassals. Each minion succumbs to a screen filling, over the top, and violent death. Many of the minions will engage in humorous banter with Ash before he runs them down. The representative told me that each one of the 100 minions has a unique death.

The representative from Sega compared this game to one done in the “Metroidvania” style. In the first level I was able to purchase missiles to add to my arsenal. These allowed me to destroy enemies I could not reach or touch previously. I was assured that the game would feature back tracking as exploring as Ash got new powers. Besides buying new weapons, cosmetic upgrades are available to both Ash himself and his super sawing jet pack.

Ash controlled very smoothly. I had no issues with moving the demon bunny across the levels. Hell Yeah! also has a very nice zoom out feature that will allow you to glimpse a bigger section of the level than whats on-screen. This will assist with exploring and not running into traps. There was also a radar feature to help locate the next enemy to kill.  The first level was slightly on the easy side, but the difficulty is supposed to pick up. The first boss which was not shown will supposedly take about ten minutes and some thinking to beat. Dying in the game merely returns you to the previous checkpoint and is very low penalty.

Hell Yeah! will be available this summer on XBLA, PSN, and PC. This is going to be one of the breakout titles of the show and the game that everyone will be talking about. Make sure to keep it on your radar.