MORE zombies than dawn of the dead, more vampires than underworld and sadly, over quicker than an early Mike Tyson fight, Hunter: The Reckoning threatens to deliver only to disappoint.

This hack n slash title has plenty of blood all right but after a while you realise it's shallower than a paddling pool even though you have access to four different characters and plenty of levels to gore your way through.

Each character comes complete with a melee weapon, a ranged weapon and a selection of magic spells with which to cut a bloodthirsty trail of destruction through the hordes of undead that have suddenly appeared in the town of Ashcroft.

Hunter is very pleasing on the eye and it's obvious lots of work has gone into designing the levels and the characters to be found in them but all that aside I was amazed at just how repetitive gameplay is.

I completed the game first time round (which is definitely not a good sign) and immediately went for a rerun but this time with a different character. One Saturday afternoon is all it took.

The storyline is pretty weak but that's nothing compared to the overall gameplay which goes something like this; start a level, lots (and I mean lots) of enemies appear and you shoot, hack, burn or magic them to death.

After what feels like your 10,000 bad guy has been cut in half you start to get the feeling that things are not going to get any better. Trust your feelings!

To make things worse, you have absolutely no control over how your character develops it just happens. This all adds up to a feeling of 'I can't wait for this to end' and when you have paid good money for a game that's not the feeling you want.

You are also forced to play through the game from a fixed camera angle. Some titles, like the awesome Resident Evil series, benefit from atmosphere churning camera angles, sadly, Hunter does not.

Take some advice: rent before you buy if you buy at all.

GRAPHICS 4/5 SOUND 3/5 GAMEPLAY 2/5 GAMESPAN 1/5 OVERALL 2.5/5

Review by Paul Phantis