Another game gotten cheap off a Bundle Stars bundle. I installed this one for today due to the low HDD requirements and a slow internet. Had a great time doing a marathon run in the main game mode.

Drive To Hell is a widescreen vertical shooter. Which makes a change from all the genre titles that still use a narrow segment or the older 4:3 ratio. I would not quite put it in the bullet-hell group due to the size of the levels and enemy attack patterns, but it can at times get pretty hectic.

To be honest, I was not expecting much out of this one. It plays differently than the screenshots suggest.
Starting out with a cutscene where a bar is blown up by a demon, preventing you from getting beer and having your shirt torn off for beefcake. You team up for a drive to hell to... Get revenge I guess. The plot is told through nice colourful images, and the only dialogue is later on in the boss fights and occasional quip by the player character.

In the end it does not really matter. Once you've chosen a difficulty and selected what vehicle to use, you're off on a drive to hell, shooting everything in your path.

Unlike the gloomy games I've been playing, this one has rather vibrant pixel art. Thankfully not the overdone retro-pixel-art but a style of its own. There's not a lot of different enemy types, and some of them are just the same with everything set to shades of red, but it is all nice and clean. I rather like it!

As you play you collect coins, which can be used to unlock different vehicles. I had a quick look after playing with enough credit to unlock a few, and they set different powers for the vehicle. Some drive faster, have different Hitboxes, use different special weapons, hold a different amount of powerups. There's a good amount of variety to them.
Cosmetically you can change the default colour to a few preset options, but I saw no full colour slider. The default for me was green. I approved.

In the stock car, and I'm assuming the others, you have one basic pew-pew weapon. This does minimal damage and enemies may require a few hits to take out. You can control it with the mouse and can aim a full 360' circle from the vehicle.
The longer chain of enemies you kill increases a multiplier score, which at certain tiers will allow you to shoot faster and harder. After a certain amount of time/kills you can also unleash a special weapon, this changes per vehicle and the one for the first car shoots high speed bullets out the front and read of the car. The other vehicle I tested could generate a time limited shield.

The car itself moves differently from other titles like this too. You can move faster forward and back than you can to the sides. It does not control like an actual car (thankfully!) but will be different from the typical space-ship often used in this type of game.

Along with the stock and special weapon, you can find time limited pickup weapons. Strong plasma balls, 3-way missiles, spread attacks, a giant frickin PURPLE laser, high speed bullets... They only last a few seconds but can be shot for the total of the period you have them.
This does mean you have to consider if to pick one up right away, there might not be anything worth while to use them on until a few seconds later.

You also get some pickup specials, such as Nukes, Bombs, and Shields. These are unleashed on demand, but only a limited amount can be held at any one point.
I mostly held on to them until the boss battles, but in the longer levels you can safely use them on the drive through each wave. And the Boss battles have these pickups anyway.

While there are only 6 different boss battles, there's some good variety to them too. And the game does a decent job of teaching you how attacks work on them by the way it introduces the smaller enemies on the drive towards them.
I did find Boss 4 the hardest, and the Final Boss the easiest. But this was all played on normal difficulty and there are several higher levels of challenge.

Drive To Hell is a nice fun little game, and non sale price is around 5USD which I'd way it is worth the price of entry.

While there are opportunities to make it harder, it is an easier but still challenging game that entertained me this afternoon when I initially went in expecting to not get anything out of it. Good to drop in to play for a bit and not be too frustrated by gameplay mechanics and an unfair AI.

Game Acquisition: Purchased on Sale (Bundle Stars)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 14 February 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009

OS: Windows XP
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 9.0c compatible video card with 256 MB video memory
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 550 MB available space