Today we are going to take a look at High Hell – an arcady first person shooter with neon graphics promising quick action, fun times and a good sense of humor. Whether it can deliver on these promises is the question we will try to answer today. High Hell is available on Steam for 8 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.

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Video Review

Text Review

With the new Wolfenstein just being released, any first person shooter trying to compete with it in this time of year will certainly not have an easy time getting traction. High Hell is trying to get this traction being visually very distinctive from Wolfenstein and of course, also by being a whole lot cheaper.

Gameplay

So let’s take a look at the gameplay High Hell has in store for you. As the genre might suggest the main thing that is in store is just frantic shooting while running around. And to do that, you really don’t have many tools, essentially you’re stuck with only the very basics that you would find in any other first person shooter, movement that not only includes your standard ability to move in four directions, but also (shocker) includes the abilities to crouch and jump, then you character has the ability to kick and the ability to shoot his one weapon. As I said, there really aren’t a lot tools given to you to achieve your goals.

The movement itself is quite self-explanatory and there isn’t much special about it – no double jump, no wall-climb no nothing, the closest thing to something special is the fact that there are a lot of ladders around the levels which you can use to get a new beneficial position for yourself. Also the kicking is very simple, you pretty much only use it to open doors. You can potentially use to kill enemies that are very close to you, but because you have infinite ammo, it’s not really the best way to kill your opponents.

And last of all, there’s the shooting. You have only one weapon and infinite ammo to shoot. And the speed at which you shoot is pretty much only limited by how fast can you click your mouse and also the weapon always has a perfect aim, there is no recoil at all. These three factors all contribute towards one thing. The game feels incredibly fast paced, especially if you choose to go into rooms guns blazing and just wreck everything as fast as you can. It’s also a pretty decent game to practice your twitch shooting abilities. Though I will admit, it would be nice to have at least some variety in the weapons.

Then we have the enemies which can be put into three categories – ranged, melee and bosses. The ranged enemies are either just demons with weapons who shoot you or monkeys with weapons who shoot at you. The only real difference between them is the fact that the monkey are smaller and thus harder to shoot at. And then there larger demons who have automatic weapons that even require several hits to kill them, but each time you hit them they get stunned and this robot ball that has the ability to continuously fire a beam weapon.
Then the melees, this time two types, are either dogs that run up to you and start biting you or this one “boss” demon who lights up his cigar, runs to you and explodes.
Lastly there are the bosses, three of them this time which do have pretty interesting mechanics and for the most part pretty self-explanatory ones. But I will complain about the first boss as I had to go online and find what the tactic to kill him was as this one just isn’t obvious at all.
In general High Hell’s gameplay is fast paced, full of action and pretty fun. But there’s one big big issue. It only lasts about an hour… hour and a half at most and that’s only if you take your time and play the game very very cautiously and thus slowly. Most people will go in guns blazing and will come close in game time to the already mentioned hour.

Graphics

Now that we have sufficiently talked about the gameplay, it’s time to take a look at the graphics in High Hell. As you can see from the video, they are highly stylized and that helps the game to feel much better graphically then it actually is. Because if you actually take a look at it from a technical point of view, then the textures are flat, the effects are sort of unimpressive and generally it’s nothing to talk about. But the style chosen make the graphics feel very nice and because of that you most likely wont be bothered by them at all.

Music

Them we have the music in High Hell and it’s one it’s better features. Sometimes subtle sometimes very cheerful tones is what you can expect from the game. The sounds themselves are very much above average, but aren’t anything that will make you buy the game on that merit.

Performance

When it comes to the performance of High Hell, I personally haven’t experience any issue, the game ran pretty well for me and I didn’t experience any crashes or bugs. On the hand, I have heard of a lot of people experiencing frame drops on similar rigs to mine and that’s not really a good sign. But the majority of people didn’t experience them.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion: High Hell is a pretty fun game with one big big issue. It’s way too short for it’s price. 10 dollars is way too much for an hour of fun. If we got at least double that or there was a level editor or an endless mode the game would be an easy recommendation. As it stands, it’s not really a game I would recommend for the vast majority of people. If you like games you play over and over again High Hell might be worth consideration. Otherwise either wait for sale or just skip this one alltogether.

So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider upvoting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.

Disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly of the Steam game page