Raze's Hell

Since the onslaught of platform titles that worked their way onto the N64 and PlayStation right after the debut of Super Mario 64, there have been two decidedly different groups of gamers: Group A, who welcomes in these cute creatures from the beyond, taking delight in their prime colored kingdoms, and Group B, who avoids contact with all platform games with such creatures, squirming at the thought of hugs, unicorns, rainbows, and other forms of innocent glut.

If you find yourself in Group A, please take a detour to the left and check out a review of Spyro or some other similar cutesy platformer, for what lays beyond in this review may abhor you. Group B, please step forward and take a look at Raze's Hell, the one title that lets you bask in your primal, base urges of obliterating the banal, cutesy creatures of the videogame world.

Raze's Hell is based around this concept: how rad would it be to kill all things that are cute and furry in this world? Sure, it's sadistic, it's warped, and it's definitely something, you wouldn't want to take pleasure in while in the company of small children, but it's hard to deny that there's something about it that's undeniably satisfying. Throughout Raze's Hell, you're given the opportunity to kill Kewletts (the cute creations of Raze's Hell) by maliciously performing stealth kills, thereby flaying the Kewlett into a million bloody pieces, or you can resort to using your other forms of execution that involve very big and very blood explosions. It's made all the better by the humorous approach the game takes, ranging from the base humor of turning cute teddy bear characters to bloody giblets to even becoming a social commentary on current events in the world.

From there, Raze's Hell is an average shooter with a focus on mowing down hordes of fluffy and cute creatures, which, is to say that it's a decent amount of fun. The mechanics of Raze's Hell are all pretty basic, with varying types of guns at your disposable, but there are a few noticeable flaws. The controls sometimes feel a bit awkward, especially the movement that tries to blend strafing with free movement, but doesn't really nail either. There's a few annoying things too, like the fact that firing and being hit elicits a colored corona around the edges of the screen; neither are bad by themselves, but when stacked upon each other, it can make the action on the screen seem overly chaotic, making the toughest of fire fights automatic deaths. This, of course, bolsters the difficulty level up quite a bit, often making for a frustrating time.

From visuals to audio, Raze's Hell is bit above average in just about every way, but what sinks it into the Fans Only is the fact that it's a budget title marked at $20, which is a definite bargain considering the hefty amount of content it packs. Don't come in expecting anything groundbreaking or technically refined, but if you've been harboring a grudge against the cute platform creatures of the world, you may want to check out Raze's Hell to satiate those urges.