Drive To Hell

 
Developer:  Ghost Crab Games
Steam Release: Feb 2014
Hours Played: 8.6
Similar To: Champions of Breakfast / Pressure Overdrive / Sky Force Anniversary  
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

This is one of those relatively unknown numbers that seems to have flown in under the radar. Drive To Hell is a fast-paced vertical scroller that has you whizzing down a highway to hell in a varied choice of vehicles. As you speed on your journey all sorts of bad guys swirl around, trickle downward or slowly move towards you while firing missiles at you. All the while, you fend them off in twin-stick fashion with rapid gunfire or with one of the many power-ups. Movement is mostly unlimited but there are waves where you'll be restricted by the sides of the road. Enemies are very well varied from the cannon-fodder wasps requiring one-hit, the slime-blobs that explode releasing smaller versions of themselves, spiraling demons, exploding pods, lizards, gas-balls and so on. Kills are rewarded with satisfying squelches and splats.

BALANCE & PACE

There are eight vehicles (named after signs of the zodiac) to unlock and purchase with the gold coins collected in the game. Vehicles differ in stats to do with life, firepower, item slots etc and you'll choose one before setting off. It's difficult to say which has the advantage over others although the tank might shade it. The main draw is in the fine variety of power-ups which slowly drift across the screen with a few being tantalizingly difficult to pick up. Some are encased in metal and need to be fired at to be released. Some that give you extra firepower like the mini-gun, laser, plasma shot and spreadshot are activated instantly while others like shields and mega-bombs are stored for later use. It all works very well bringing a lively and exhilarating romp to the screen.

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

Drive to Hell is a very stable game and solidly presented with no bugs in sight (apart from the wasps that come at you in certain waves). Menus are also well presented with appealing icons used at the screen where difficulty is selected along with a nice art-style used in the area-select screen for the Survival mode. Vehicles are selected by a screen-scrolling process which I'm not particularly keen on as cross-referencing requires lots of back and forth screen skipping. Having all eight vehicles appear on one screen would have been far more convenient with the vehicle selection process. The soundtrack is also fine and suits the mood of the game very well.   

 

PROGRESS SYSTEM

There are two ways to play Drive To Hell; you can start a New Game or go for Survival mode. A New Game (with four levels of difficulty) will start you off from scratch where you'll trundle along at the first area called Outskirts at Wave 1 and battle your way through four waves before encountering the boss. Polish him off to move onto the next area called City. Drive through four more waves, kill the boss and on you go as far as you can through a total of five areas until you die or reach the final boss. A high-score gets stored but can only be viewed at the end of your game. You can also continue a game but this seems ok only for unlocking the five area to play in survival mode. Survival (the best mode) lets you choose one of the five unlockable areas and challenges you to get as far as possible and records your best time.    

CONCLUSION

Drive To Hell is an unusual Space Invader / vertical-scroller type shooter because you operate your vehicle in a twin-stick set-up. The game focuses around power-ups which spawn at quite a quick rate and are satisfying to use making the game absorbing and a lot of fun. Each vehicle also comes with a unique special ability which gets unlocked intermittently while you play and this plus all stored power-ups have the colour of the accompanying Xbox button you need to press to activate it. The only drawback I find with DTH is the lack of a decent high-score chart for the standard game which just shows the one high-score (with no mention of which difficulty it was completed on) - after you have finished a run. An online leaderboard feature would also have given the game replayability and the player more motivation to repeat runs.