Charlie's Angels: Hellfire

Fans of kitsch '70s TV shows (and who isn't?), or nauseatingly ironic big-screen remakes (and who is?) will be very familiar with the premise of Charlie's Angels. Three sassy female investigators solve the cases thrown their way by the mysterious Charlie using nothing but their wits, charm and kung fu skills.

Charlie's Angels: Hellfire concentrates primarily on the latter attribute, as you take control of one of three Angels and scrap your way through 16 stages of side-scrolling beat-'em-up action. Tying each stage together is a simple plot concerning the investigation of an arms dealer named Vlad, but all you really need to know is this: keep moving right and beat up anything that gets in your way.

This is achieved through the judicious mashing of a single attack key ('5' or the central thumbstick button), which unleashes a flurry of light attacks on the numerous goons foolish enough to appear onscreen. Other attacking options involve flying kicks (double tap the left or right key), rechargeable special attacks (the '*' key) or picking up the assorted metal bars and baseball bats strewn carelessly around each stage and battering your foes into the middle of next week.

The combat is fluid and easy to pick up, and you'll soon settle into a rhythm of dodging enemies by switching planes (you can only hit or be hit on the same horizontal plane) and nipping in to unleash a barrage of attacks.

Unfortunately, though, Charlie's Angels: Hellfire suffers from a common issue with games of this sort: the action quickly becomes repetitious and dull.

This can be attributed mainly to the limited number of attacking options available to you. The strikes mentioned above are almost all you have to play with throughout. A related problem is the overpowered special attacks, which can only be activated when the appropriate power bar is full. This bar recharges very quickly, see, enabling you to unleash a steady stream of bad guy-decimating attacks, thus cheapening the whole experience somewhat.

These issues are a real shame because Charlie's Angels: Hellfire has some genuinely positive things going for it. Its main strength is in its presentation, with polished animation and attractively detailed sprites kicking and punching their way around the screen. The bad guys are just varied enough to keep things interesting, with the odd gun-toting crook or bar-wielding goon entering the fray to mix things up.

Ojom has injected a little more depth and variety with the choice of character, with each Angel possessing a unique spread of attributes including speed and attack power. In practice, though, this makes little real difference, with the same basic tactics proving successful regardless of the Angel used.

Charlie's Angels: Hellfire, then, is a fun way to pass an hour or two, possessing as it does an accessible combat system and a decent level of presentational sheen. However, it lacks the variety and depth necessary to keep you playing for long, and you're likely to tire of the experience well before the half way point. Neither hellishly bad nor heavenly good, Ojom's latest finds itself somewhat stuck in gaming purgatory.