Holy Wars: Sons of Enoch

Note to developers: if you really want people to take notice of your game, dream up a really juicy title. Make it provocative and sinister, with a subtle whiff of controversy, and on that basis alone you're guaranteed a couple of hundred sales. There's a real art to it.

A good example is Holy Wars: Sons of Enoch. Before we'd even started playing, we shuddered with apprehension. Holy Wars? Enoch? No relation to Enoch 'Rivers of Blood' Powell, surely? We were imagining a pair of jackbooted skinheads travelling to the Middle East, off to teach the Godless hordes about good Christian values whilst waving a Union Jack.

Fortunately, it's not as bad as all that. There's an excess of biblical references, it's true, but Holy Wars is more of a swashbuckling medieval epic than some fundamentalist tract. A pair of Holy Knights, Cain and Abel, are on a mission to unite rival factions in a war-torn land. This involves plenty of of side-scrolling and beat-'em-upping, hacking 'n' slashing their way through an endless procession of assassins, mercenaries, and strange beasts.

The game also features some basic role-playing elements. As you gain combat experience, the character will automatically level-up to become more powerful; the screen flashes red and your enemies recoil from your might in terror.

In addition, you can develop the strength of the weapon you wield by visiting a blacksmith and paying out a few bars of gold for an upgrade. Finally, there's a quest element where you travel from location to location on a map, exploring the terrain (and enduring random battles) to complete various objectives.

But the role-playing is just elaborate window-dressing; Holy Wars is still very much a beat-'em-up game. You move in four directions, and you press the attack button repeatedly to lay waste to your opponents. The combatants hack chunks out of each other in visceral detail, and there's a satisfying heft when wielding a big-ass sword.

It plays well enough in those terms, but the game is never deeper or more meaningful than the title or plot leads you to expect. Perhaps a game featuring jackbooted skinheads would have been more interesting after all.

The audio is worth a mention. It's suitably dramatic where it needs to be, with a sweeping piano and blaring trumpets, and then calm and maudlin in the quiet moments. And, unless our ears are deceiving us, there was definitely some flute action in there. It's probably a metaphor about the horrors of war or something.

Despite ourselves, we did enjoy playing Holy Wars, which is why we're being more generous with the final grade than we could've been. If we can venture some suggestions for future improvements, we'd make the combat controls more varied and throw in some extra playable characters. And while we're at it, we recommend adding an option for a horizontal screen display. Make those changes, and Holy Wars would step up from being merely competent to being really good. It might even have a chance of living up its title.