http://www.zhell.co.uk
http://zhell.atari.org
Amstrad
Atari
Sinclair
Atari and Atari logo is copyright of Atari/Infogrames.
All other copyrights recognised.
Hell Bent
Novagen 1988. Programmed by Donavan Prince. Graphics by Mo Warden.
Arrgghh! Yet another mediocre
vertical shoot 'em up. Surely we've had enough of these games now. This
one borrows heavily from Goldrunner, so you can fly up and down the screen
rather than being forced in one direction, which I suppose makes it slightly
less tedious than it could be if it were just a straight up shooter. It's
wretchedly hard though with various bits of landscape destroying your
ship on touch and a host of annoyingly tiny aliens flying round the place
zapping you at every turn. Of course the game throws inertia into the
mix, which makes manouvring even harder, as you have to take into account
the stopping distance of your ship. To cap all of this, your ship has
all the fuel efficiency of a stretch hummer trying to reach ninety in
first gear. It runs out of fuel literally in seconds. There are various
refueling pods littered across the level, but they are sheltered in nooks
in the parts of the level that kill you on touch. Frankly the designers
of this vessel should be taken outside and face a firing squad. What sort
of idiot would design a ship which runs out of fuel so quickly it has
to rely on free fuel handouts from the enemy. In fact what sort of enemy
gives free fuel handouts to these annoying space heros, who insist on
coming to their planet and blasting them. Clearly very friendly enemies
that's who. I would suggest to Mr Space Hero that, based on the evidence,
the enemies aren't all that bad after all and it might be a good idea
to leave... before your horrendously unmanouverable ship crashes into
another indestructable part of the landscape.
Graphically the game isn't all that bad. There is some parallax and the
levels and ship are big, bold and colourful. The music is of the more
ear drum melting variety of ST chip tunes, but I've heard a lot worse
and it doesn't play all the time. All
in all then a very frustrating experience and possibly one you won't want
to repeat.
Zogging Hell Rating: 5/10
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