"Substandard"

A glistening beam of amplified power named Hellfire wrecks all the helpless henchmen that stand in its way. You're there, gloating with gamer's pride as you indiscriminately crush each measly monster. Suddenly, your ship and gamer pride are both torn into bits by nothing more than a lone bullet. Rage abruptly takes control and you break your controller (or keyboard) because were about past that “hard part.” Finally, the whole level starts over and you're left there with nothing.

Welcome to Hellfire.

Hard isn't a suitable adjective to describe the ball-busting difficulty featured in Hellfire. In fact, the most meticulous of shooter enthusiasts might fall to what some claim is the Genesis' most challenging shooter (aside from Thunderforce 4.) Admittedly, if you travel to other formats, you'll run across some real teasers. You know, the ones that get you excited with the prospects of completing one difficult level, but end up smashing your dreams with something as silly as a misplaced enemy. And when I think teasing, I think of the Arcade's stubborn Rezon and Neo-Geo's unforgiving Pulstar. Each with a level of difficulty only a sadomasochist could enjoy.

However, Hellfire isn't like the two aforementioned games; it's simply not an conglomeration of other aspects found in renowned shooters simply thrown into a worn out mold and marketed as new. You might be lead to believe differently considering how trite the introductory stage is. It places you in the cold, most desolate regions of space with your ship and a myriad of pitifully weak eyeball-like monsters swarming around. Delve deeper, I dare you, press a button or two. Suddenly, the usually unexciting ritual of “testing the controls” holds a surprise; your ship will change colors. This is the heart of Hellfire's game play, the ability to change the ship's weapon system in correlation to what ever situation you encounter.

Each color ship corresponds with a certain attack. For instance, if you're the purple ship your attacks that go horizontally and to the front. If you're the yellow ship, your attacks will go horizontally to the back of you.

So you have your front and back shots, what's the big deal? Well, there's two more as well, the green and blue ships. The green ship will shoot vertically and blue will shoot go diagonally. To make the most out of this shooting system, they strategically placed monsters in certain locations that can only be hit with a ship mode. Some monsters stay in holes that can only be reached via purple ship. Other monsters will stealthily hide in crevices that must be accessed by the green ship. Be warned, however, one hit from any of these opponents means a quick death. You better have those nimble fingers ready to dodge. Random enemies drop icons you can collect to speed up your ship so it can more easily dodge shots

The problem is that speed ups are the only thing that'll facilitate the experience. Hellfire implements a check-point system that's absolutely horrendous when in combination with its demanding game play. Flying around will be short-lived since you'll most likely be blown from mid air and forced to start much earlier in the stage. Once you start over at the beginning of a stage, all is lost. You're not longer able to swiftly move from place to place; instead, you'll languidly shift around on the screen until you find some more speedups. Advancing into later stages only makes this fault more apparent, as you'll probably be forced to quit after being blown apart by the same monster ten times in a row due to speed problems. Surely not my cup of tea.

Hellfire has its distinctions but its faults are too crippling. A company can create all the different types of ships and ways to commence the enemy as they want, but when serious fundamental flaws keep hacking away at the shooter experience, you're left with a shell of a great idea. I'd only recommend this one to the most sedulous and hardcore of shooter enthusiasts.

Final - 4

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/04, Updated 06/10/04