Rising Hell Review (PS4)

Written by Anthony L. Cuaycong

Title: Rising Hell
Developer: Tahoe Games
Publisher: Chorus Worldwide Games
Genre: Action
Price: $39.99

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From out of the fires of hell comes a neat little roguelite with a lot of personality. Covered in the drapes of its heavy metal motif, Rising Hell is all about escaping the ravenous demons of the underworld by engaging in fast-paced, platforming action. With a heavy emphasis on verticality and speed, this little indie title is a heavyweight in its own right. Basking in its easy-to-learn mechanics, it tests you on how high you climb before you fall, and on how long you can last doing one thing over and over again until you finally escape. It doesn't really get more complicated than that. Rising Hell doesn't really feature a deep story, and that's a-okay when it manages to compensate for its thin narrative by bringing to the forefront its deep gameplay.

In Rising Hell, your aim is to be free of the depths of hell before it drags you back. To do so, you must defeat whatever enemies lie before you, and ascend as high as you can before you die. A lot of it will be built on what is already familiar ground of the genre; you'll acquire resources, amass upgrades, and slowly but surely climb your way to freedom. When you die, you restart. On the game's easier Redemption mode, you lose a life instead, and with enough lives lost, you have to start all over again.

Where Rising Hell shines, however, isn't in how it redefines the genre. It's all about pacing and presentation. Rising Hell, unlike other titles like, say, Rogue Legacy, encourages you to be fast and mobile. Plenty of dangerous enemies hinder your ascent, but the visceral combat is both fast-paced and punishing. Your attacks, combined with your double jump, enable you to really amp up the speed when dealing with your foes, and you'll find yourself slicing through them like a veritable whirlwind of blood and viscera. Be careful when you do it, though; while enemies tend to be dispatched easily, their attacks are still devastating, often having you rely on quick movement like dashes and jump attacks to skirt out of their range.

This is where your upgrades come in, not only changing up how you play but also enabling you to take bigger risks in Rising Hell without really dumbing down on the difficulty. Active abilities you find from artifacts and relics are limited in use, but they give you some devastating short power, like summoning projectiles to take down your foes. Your more passive normal upgrades usually give you stat buffs – attack increases based on the number of enemies around you, killed enemies exploding, and so on – but can sometimes also provide drawbacks depending on how powerful the ability can be. Being immune to spikes, for instance, also increases the damage you take from other sources, and so it's a nice way to really offset disadvantages with the benefits you're able to hold. You never really overpower your foes, but you never feel helpless or hamstrung by your characters, either. You will still mostly rely on your skill and quick thinking, which strikes the best balance in a roguelite so focused on speed and efficiency.

The stages you'll go through in Rising Hell are pretty quick, but they end in bosses that can actually be quite tough. The good news is that if you do lose and have to restart, your progress is not wholly in vain, with your losses continually unlocking new rewards for you to discover and use in combat. It's really a simplistic loop, and games can start and finish in as fast as five to 10 minutes per run. It can be mechanically complicated, especially if you want to push yourself to the limits, but it never feels frustrating or unfair, and while some stages can feel brutal in what they ask of you, the thrill it can give is hard to match.

In sum, Rising Hell is deftly able to combine combat with the upward momentum you need to summon. The times where you unleash combo uppercuts with normal attacks to reach higher ground, all while avoiding stage hazards, are both satisfying and rewarding to go through. With unlockable characters to control, a slew of new power-ups waiting to be used, and even a challenge mode to run through, Rising Hell has a decent amount of content to offer, especially for its price.

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THE GOOD

• Fun, visceral art style and combat
• Fast-paced, with a heavy focus on movement and speed
• Decent amount of extra content on hand, plus a slew of unlockables

THE BAD

• Might not have as much on offer as a roguelite
• Can get frustrating at times if you're not willing to adapt to its melee combat

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RATING: 8/10

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