The game follows Raze, the monstrous anti-hero, as he attempts to restore his beloved planet to its natural order. Under the leadership of their twisted Princess, the Kewletts, a race of cutesy little creatures, are trying to wipe out all the ugly in the world. In their minds, they are doing the ugly creatures a favor by putting them out of their misery, thus allowing for a beautiful world. It is up to Raze to take out the Kewletts before his race becomes extinct.

Visually, Raze is a dark and beautiful title that is only really marred by some hiccups in frame rate. The character designs are interesting, and while the Kewletts don’t vary too much in shape and size, their appearance of either being a soldier, guard, etc. gives them special personalities. Raze himself is a demon-like figure who has a very cool design and you will be proud to venture this romp with him. The landscapes are lush and full of detail and imagination. You will encounter wastelands, forests, and beautifully architectural designs throughout your adventure. The textures are nicely bump-mapped giving the game nice depth and visual flare. Even the character deaths are nice and gory, and you wonder sometimes how you can make something so cute into a pile of bloody goo. What hurts Raze’s Hell the most is the good amount of slow down you will encounter, especially in areas with many enemies and effects like rainfall. While the framerate issue doesn’t quite affect game play, it is a nuisance, especially since the game looks so good otherwise.

Audio is exceptional with both a great musical score and voice acting. The sound effects are massive and explosive. You will hear every shot, grunt, cry, and squish when laying to rest the little Kewletts in glorious surround sound. Even better is hearing the conversations they have while they are hunting you down, or protecting a certain area. You are also guided by a little demon that has a British accent. The music is fitting to the dark and moody atmosphere, and is happy and childlike when you are seeing the cut scenes of the Kewletts.

Gameplay is typical third person action shooter fodder. Think Brute Force without the cooperative game play and you get the idea. You move about with the analog, fire with the triggers, zoom in by clicking the analog and switch weapons with the directional pad. There is an addition of a roll technique that allows you to get from place to place quicker by holding down the B button and moving Raze about. The A.I. is a bit on the dumb side, but thankfully, the enemies are plentiful enough to provide a decent challenge. Thrown in for good measure is a bevy of puzzles the will challenge your senses, but none are very frustrating. You can have a buddy tag along for Co-Op play, but there aren’t any maneuvers that take advantage of this feature. You both basically just run and gun all the little Kewletts to pieces.

With over 20 massive levels in which you destroy, search, escort, hostage rescue, defend, create diversions, ambush, and much more, you will have fun finding new ways to infiltrate the Kewletts each time around. You also have a great arsenal to destroy those little Kewletts with, over 10 weapons in all. What keeps you coming back to this title repeatedly is the Xbox Live play and extremely fun mini-games including golf.

There you have it, Raze’s Hell, has good deep story mode, Xbox Live play, mini-games, and Co-Op game play for under 20 bucks! This title may not get the press it surely deserves but hopefully word of mouth with get out and give companies like Artech the incentive to keep the innovative titles coming in the future.