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You can't move for leather-clad guys and gals with a gleam in their eyes and a lust for undead blood. And here come two more grizzled, gun-toting slayers in Bulkypix'sJourney to Hell.
This is a formulaic third-person shooter featuring ten short mid-western-themed stages for your demonic carnage. Each offers a series of cramped arenas where you're hemmed in until you've dealt with a vast swathe of zombies, all eager for a taste of your bullets. Shoot, shuffle, move on, repeat.
Enemies range from mindless, lumbering drones to larger lumbering drones, with the occasional acid-spitting creature or high-speed crawler - even the odd behemoth boss - thrown in for good measure.
Rarely do they pose much of a threat, despite their rather irritating tendency to spawn a foot or so behind you while you're looking elsewhere.
Spawn of Satan
Indeed, the action isn't much fun at all. Combat packs a feeble punch and enemy AI doesn't get a whole lot more sophisticated than 'walk at player, flail'.
It's repetitive to an unholy degree, too, with cookie cutter level design and minimal variation between opponents to up the excitement and challenge. What little distractions there are between bouts of slaughter rarely amount to more than pushing a button.
Thankfully, though, Journey to Hell does more or less get its controls right. There are a few niggles regarding questionable button-placement, but mostly you're able to shuffle forwards, backwards, and strafe while dragging around your aiming reticule with relative ease.
Better the devil you know
Journey to Hell also has a decently stocked armoury for your bouts of undead slaughter, with the likes of pistols and shotguns available for purchase using demon teeth dropped by your fallen foes. Each can be upgraded and assigned to one of three weapon slots between levels, and you have access to a handful of additional abilities, such as a useful dodge, tossed in to mix up the action.
Journey to Hell's strongest asset is undoubtedly its visuals, and it makes the most of its mid-western, grindhouse-inspired ambience with some pleasingly gritty environments.
You also get a fair amount of content for your cash, with Survival and Treasure Hunt modes thrown in to beef things up. Sadly, neither makes the game's dull action any more interesting, but it's nice that they're there.
Ultimately, Journey to Hell is a bland, unexciting, and occasionally irritating third-person shooter that gets the basics right with reasonable gun mechanics, even if it doesn't know quite what to do with them.
There's a slim chance that you might find some enjoyment in the game if you're in the market for short, sharp slivers of tolerable shooting action, but there are better iOS blasters out there.
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