Hell Yeah! Wrath Of The Dead Rabbit Review

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Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit is a 2D side scrolling platform adventure game from small French developer Arkedo studios and published by Sega.

You play through the game as a rabbit called Ash who also happens to be the crown prince of hell; Ash gets snapped in the bath with a rubber duck by a paparazzi who posts the pictures all over the hellternet (no I am not making this up!). By the time Ash finds out 100 hellizens have viewed the pictures so Ash sets out to kill them all and restore his reputation.

So crazy story out of the way Hell Yeah is basically a 2D side scrolling platform adventure in which you must hunt down and kill the 100 monsters in question. The game proudly wears its influences on its sleeve, Ash’s repertoire of moves come straight from the 16 bit classics, he has Metroid’s shooting and double jump, Sonic’s spin dash and Mario’s wall jump, and the whole hunt and collect (or kill in this case) is reminiscent of pokemon. Being a child of the Megadrive / Snes era I found this to be a hugely fun return to the type of games that I grew up on.



The game is split into a series of gated levels you must hunt and kill all of the monsters in a particular area in order to open the gate and move on to the next, I sometimes wondered if it would have been more satisfying to remove the gates and have the game as a huge open hunt for the 100 monsters but the gating system does keep the game flowing and helps to avoid frustrating situations of having to trek right back across the map to try and find a monster that you may have missed early on.

Finding the monsters in each area is fairly easy but killing them isn’t always straightforward, early on they tend to be exposed and easy to dispatch with either Ash’s machine gun or rockets or with the saw wheel that surrounds him and acts as a handy mini jet pack boost. But later on they get more difficult; a lot of the time they are much bigger than you and require some skilful jumping and shooting to avoid and take successfully or sometimes they require a bit of lateral thinking to defeat such as negotiating a simple maze to drop a crate on them or using a variety of teleporters to work out how to drop a vase on them. Each one is unique and it is a fun challenge working out how to kill each one. Once you reduce the monsters health bar near zero you will be presented with a mini game to finish it off, these vary immensely and although they aren’t unique to each monster there are definitely enough of them that they don’t start to get boring. They range from simple button mashing exercises to things like driving a truck down a road whilst avoiding obstacles, if successfully completed they end in a grisly and usually excessively gory death for the monster in question!



Whilst negotiating the various levels of Hell Yeah’s bizarre cartoony version of hell you collect coins, jewels and various other loot which can be spent in various shops to customise how Ash looks, he is a pretty cool looking character anyway but it’s quite good fun to have him roaming around in an Indiana Jones hat killing people with a giant donut, it’s a throwaway addition but adds a bit of variety to a fairly linear game.
Graphically the game is superb with a great art style and a huge amount of variety between levels so that things don’t get boring and all of the monsters that you are hunting are unique and really well designed, speaking of the monsters you may be wondering how we kill them if they are already dead? Well once we have taken them out they get sent to a place called the island where Ash is able to put them to work for his benefit. For instance you can send them all into a mine to find you some in game currency or have them hunt around the harbour for special prizes, again a throwaway addition but another fun one and its quite satisfying to see your collection of monsters growing as you play through the game.



Hell Yeah isn’t the longest game in the world but you will probably get a good 8-10 hours out of it and most of the achievements are fairly easy to get, it can occasionally be a little frustrating particularly during the stand up boss fights, although Ash is well armed he isn’t able to stand up to much punishment so if your autosave checkpoint leaves you with 25% health before a big boss fight you could be up for a tough time getting past the boss or a long trek back to one of the health recharge points but overall this is a good game, if you like the art style and have a soft spot for 16 bit platformer’s then you won’t go far wrong with Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit


Overall
8 / 10

Good review fella, looks fun visually. Might have to add this to my list

Good stuff mate. Pretty much agree with everything you said there. There's DLC coming out for it at the end of the month which adds some new missions. Looking forward to that.

Thanks for this. The art style does indeed look great. I may try the demo

I am definitely getting this game. Love the metroidvania genre and this looks like a good addition

You got a beautiful chin, you got beautiful skin, you've got a beautiful face, you've got taste.

You've got beautiful eyes, you've got beautiful thighs,
You've got alot without a doubt, but I'm thinking 'bout blowing you out, cos

You won't stop talking, why don't you give it a rest
You got more rabbit than Sainsbury's, it's time you got it off ya chest
Now you was just the type of girl to break my heart in two
I knew right off when I first clapped my eyes on you
But how was I to know you'd bend my earholes too with you're incessant talking
You're becoming a pest

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

Now you're a wonderful girl, you got a wonderful smell, you got wonderful arms, you got charms
You got wonderful hair, we make a wonderful pair,
Now I don't mind having a chat, but you have to keep giving it that

Nice job mate

Feeling ok Kent?

Great review there mate. Looks like a fun game, but i'll probably wait until its in a sale.

Nice review, I have too many games and no gaming mojo at the moment so won't be picking this up just yet, need to clear some backlog!

Great review fella, enjoyed every minute of it. Downloaded the demo going to give that a whirl first.

Thanks for the comments folks, really enjoyed reviewing this one, fun game

This is half price, 600 points today only

Bargain!

Well worth picking up at that price.

Picked this up in DOTW last week and really enjoying it. My face hurt from smiling at all the lol moments. Bargain