El Shaddai Vol.1

If you've played enjoyable action romp El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron on either Xbox 360 or PS3, you may well prick your ears up at the news that there's an Android spin-off of the game available to download.

This relatively unknown companion game continues the exploits of high priest Enoch as he seeks to bring back the seven fallen angels and save mankind.

The Android version of the game takes the 3D adventure and squashes it flat, providing a 2D take on the big-screen quest. Unfortunately, this also leaves the action itself feeling rather flat too.

El Shaddai is a pretty standard platforming affair. The left side of the touchscreen provides movement, while the right side has buttons for jumping, attacking, and blocking.

Your job is to hack to pieces anything that stands in your way and reach the goal on each level. There are three different weapons to pick up as you go, but this is essentially all there is to it.

The visuals and animations look crisp and fit the game's overall mood well, while the voice-overs during static cut-scenes are well-produced. There's a lot of personality seeping through El Shaddai's cracks.

The aforementioned weapons also provide a fair bit of variety, as you look to kill enemies up close, from a distance, and with a combination of blocking and charging.

However, beauty is only skin deep, and El Shaddai is nasty on the inside.

The controls aren't tight enough at all, meaning that jumping between platforms and battling enemies is a frustrating experience. Sometimes the 'jump' command even refuses to work, and we watched Enoch simply walk off ledges far too many times.

There are boss battles at the end of each chapter that are as dull as ditchwater, asking you to simply button-bash to victory. A severe lack of content also brings the title down - you'll easily be able to clear the entire thing within the hour.

To top it all off, there are lots of buggy sections that see you falling through platforms, and the poor English localisation can make some commands very confusing.

And that's without even mentioning the awful G-Gee interface that you're forced to install and run to make the game work. It's shoddily built and eats the resources on your phone while you play.

Weak smartphone cash-ins are ten a penny these days. It's just a shame that El Shaddai Vol.1 - with its promising source material - is one of them.