Boiling Point Road to Hell review

The boiling point of water is reached at 100 degrees Celsius. The boiling point of Saul Meyers is reached when his investigative journalist daughter goes AWOL. And our boiling point? Well, funnily enough, it came after Boiling Point's thousandth crash...

Road to Hell is as much of an adventure as a shooter. You won't even fire a gun for the first couple of hours as Meyers learns how to pilot vehicles (isn't this guy supposed to be ex-military?) and pumps locals for info in the fictional South American city of Puerto Somba.

Boiling Point's 'realistic' inventory management, weapon/character upgrade system and 'crap to start with but grows on you' body part-specific gun combat is uncannily similar to Deus Ex (i.e. great).

Meanwhile, the game's sheer scale recalls the likes of Operation Flashpoint and Far Cry, with over 600-odd square kilometres of landscape to trawl across. It's immersive stuff that certainly beats a weekend's rambling in Bognor.

Unfortunately, Boiling Point looks decidedly weak compared to your typical PC first-person shooter. And Josef Mengele must have been up to his old tricks judging by all the identical clones walking around Puerto Somba.

Bugs and crashes are also a constant pain, and Boiling Point's enemy AI harks back to gaming's dark ages.

The voice acting is a mixture of decent (Arnie Vosloo) and dreadful (everyone else). Likewise, while the Samba soundtrack is totally funky, weapon and vehicle effects are truly awful.

Despite the flaws, it's hard to ignore Road to Hell's many charms, but if ever there was a case of a great idea sloppily executed then this is it. Please Atari, release a decent patch and perhaps we'll see what Saul Meyers can really do.

Boiling Point Road to Hell is out for PC now