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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