I don’t normally wish death on folks, but this dev makes a pretty good case for magic lamps.

Helltaker: A Game for Those Who Find Meaning in Rick and Morty

2020 was going so well. My favorite Mexican place started doing delivery, rave masks became trendy again, and the IRS kindly bought me a new sex pillow. Then Helltaker got released.

Much like Doki Doki Literature Club, we have a guaranteed smash hit on our hands because it’s free, and all the poors had no choice but to flock to it like the warmth-seeking pubelice they are. It’s almost enough to make a man renounce communism.

“Gameplay”

Ah, block puzzles. What was once a mechanic used to sell guidebooks and pad completion length in mediocre RPGs has somehow become a genre of its own. Here’s some expert Let’s Playing in action:

And that’s all there is to it, except obviously I never failed a puzzle.

Objectively, the core gameplay loop is shit because beating a level punishes you by forcing you into another, all the while some bland coffin dance derivative loops inoffensively in the background.

And after seven-or-so miserable levels, when you finally think you’re done for good, the game throws one last wrench into your virtual colonoscopy by turning into a reaction-based dodge-’em.

You either avoid all the stupid shit or sober up until you can. And quite frankly, that’s a yard too far. So I quit.

Am I overly asspained here just because I’m too prideful to accept being cockblocked by children’s block puzzles, and too consistently daydrunk to react to any stimulus less obvious than my delivery driver furiously trying to get my attention to sign for the 20% tip on my chorizo chimichangas?

The Fandom

This is a game invented for people who think there’s meaning in being anime fans before the normies started calling “dressing up” cosplay, but who will never realize that ship long since sailed long before they could ever pronounce boku no pico.

I know posting retards is cheating, but indulge me in the “fan ‘art'” side of the community:

~Drawn by the people who unironically write essays on shit like “is pocky genderqueer?”

Yeah, apparently the Helltaker fanart is the reason everyone got into the game, but I sure as fuck can’t tell why, or why twitter gutterfilth keep whining over and over about hasbro hotel or someshit.

I always wonder if real artists ever get tired of this “le pancakes lmao big chungus 100” shit rising to the top of the collective pile, but then I remember that even if they did care they’d never have the ovaries to raise the topic. Big simpin’s the motto of nu_gen after all.

As far as I’m concerned, if you liked a single portion of the game, or anything the fanbase has come up with, you should be intubated with a sewer pipe.

Bitches better thank god there ain’t cons this year, cuz I have to deal with filth in $100 Men’s Wearhouse suits on a regular basis, and if I saw a cos-thot in one I might just have to pull out my lighter and burn a few hundred calories. There’s a reason Brooks Brothers uses mannequins you plastic fucks; invest harder.

Okay, maybe I’m not being fair to the “community”. Let’s see what these folks have managed to come up with in quarantine:

All right, I don’t think my arms can punch down that far. Let’s move on.

Characters

With most waifubait games, I’d give a tierlist, to let you know just how superior my taste is. But as far as I could tell, this game doesn’t have characters so much as low-effort concept art with a piece or two of dialogue.

Instead, here’s a Boruto waifu tierlist:

S-Tier

Uchiha Sarada

A-Tier

MILF Hinata

Karui, I think?

B-Tier

Whoever this swaglord is.

C-Tier

The Other MILFs, excluding Sakura who has all the value of a redditor’s sperm.

D-Tier

These kids. I don’t know their names, and it’s probably better that way.

F-Tier

Snek-chan (fat version)

That’s probably every chick in Boruto. Let’s move on before anyone wastes time on factchecking a franchise that went out worse than Bleach did.

Final Score

Like post-cake-induced-menopause Anko, Helltaker gets a 1/10. And it only made that singular point for inspiring enough hate to make me remember my password to a site I haven’t been on in a year. Thanks, Łukasz Piskorz. Your shit game may have inadvertently saved the anime scene by being the worst thing that could ever happen to it in 2020.

I mean, High Guardian Spice is still canceled, right?

As an aside:

The site’s kinda… out of date. What’s the wish list here? Formatting optimized for both mobile/desktop? HTTPS? Those dancing waifus from the Geocities era? Can’t do daily content but I can manage better than yearly. LMK; been a while since we’ve talked. <3