Game Review: Headbangers in Holiday Hell (Xbox Series X)

Developed by Vikerlane and Ratalaika Games, with the former also doing publishing duties alongside Hammer & Ravens, Headbangers in Holiday Hell is a twin stick roguelite game with a heavy metal and festive coating.

Santa Claus hates heavy metal apparently, blowing up a concert and using his elf minions to kidnap the head-bangers in attendance. It’s devastation, but one head-banger survived and it’s up to him to stop Santa and save his metal brothers and sisters. Heavy metal must survive, so Santa Claus must die!

This is where you come in. Armed up and pissed off.

Played from the top down with retro pixel art visuals, Headbangers in Holiday Hell is initially fun as you explore a frozen location, murder elves, cause unwarranted destruction, and even perform glory kills. Even though the controls are little janky and precision is a problem, most will be able to get to grips with the extremely simply gameplay. Shoot everything, save the head-bangers, and exit the level. Rinse and repeat, until you get to a boss, then take them down too.

To add a little more depth to gameplay, coins can be picked up from slain enemies and the destructible parts of the environment. These are used to buy ammo and weapons, as well as upgrading your existing weapons and main character once your run is over. The latter is necessary as each run can be quite challenging, and players will need to be at their best to make it to the final level.

However, few will have the patience or desire to do this. You see Headbangers in Holiday Hell is really repetitive and the fun factor quickly wears away. To get all the upgrades will take some time and require many different runs, yet the game doesn’t have enough to keep players coming back. The roguelite elements don’t result in much variety in stage setups, the killing and destruction becomes monotonous, and the heavy metal festive humour loses its lustre. All this within the first hour of gameplay.

The latter, the humour, seems to be limited to the idea of Santa, and the characters around the jolly one, hating heavy metal. Well, that and the voice clips of characters saying things like ‘I’ll jingle your bells’. Amusing once, but not over and over again.

As for the overall Christmas feel? It’s more like cheap decorations than a loving example of the festive spirit. In fact, it would be easy to believe that this game came in a different guise once before and had the festivities plastered over it in an attempt to sell it again.

Regardless of all these complaints, it’s not the worst game you’ll ever play. What it does, it does competently enough, and isn’t that what Christmas is all about?