Your character, Captain Nicholas Conner, is in charge of a huge space station. After several drawn-out cut scenes and a few mindless errands, he’s off to gather samples from a distant rock. When he comes back he finds the station overrun by snarling aliens. So begins his quest to find out what happened, rescue his girlfriend and restore peace to his little corner of the galaxy.

It’s clear right from the get-go that some time was put into this new version. But whether it was time well spent is a different story. The level layouts and cut scenes are slightly different in some places, extremely different in other places. The first 30 to 40 minutes of the game, for example, are a drawn out introduction consisting of cut scenes and menial tasks. The layouts of the hallways are different than last year’s PS2 version but as far as making the game different or more interesting it’s a wasted effort.

The top-notch voice talent is there. Unfortunately, so is everything else from the PS2 version. The cut scenes look ridiculous for a game put out just last year. Boxy heads and terrible mouth movements rule the day. The graphics don’t improve during gameplay, either, with choppy animations, an utter lack of detail and the same boring interiors over and over. It’s clear the game is trying to be spooky and foreboding but it ends up dark and nondescript.

Most missions involve looking for some device or other, finding it, then doing it all over again. It’s a big ship and apparently there are lots of little devices that need a home. But instead of Run Like Hell being a creepy, dangerous, tense exploration adventure it’s a boring, methodical chore that makes you appreciate other games all the more. The new equipment you’ll find doesn’t serve much purpose, the aliens don’t provide much in the way of a challenge other than target practice and the environment is just one metal room or hallway after another. That’s a bad combination for an action game with a whole space station to explore.

There’s literally no break from the boredom because the combat is just as bad as the story. With unlimited ammunition and brain-dead aliens spawning from certain points in each room, Run Like Hell requires little or no strategy. There are several weapons and a few different outfits to be found throughout the game but they barely qualify as variety because the mechanics are so pedestrian. Combat uses a lock on system, and dispatching aliens as they drop into a room (usually out of thin air) gets old fast. Go in the next room, figure out the spawn point for the aliens, step aside and blast away. Once they’re all gone scour every inch of the level to find item X and you’re done. In other words, once you get the mechanics down the only challenge left is a game of hide and seek with various items.

Let’s not forget the mini games. They reference old arcade classics but play nothing like them and have no payoff whatsoever. ‘Nuff said.

Licensed music plays during each boss fight. I’m sure this is meant to be an added value, but all it does is break up the pace and shatter what little atmosphere the game had. To have a completely different style of music click on when a certain boss appears just seems like a cheap add-on.

Speaking of cheap add-ons, the Xbox version includes a new level, a few more rooms and a couple new monsters. Xbox Live users can download new character skins and mini games. Obviously, none of these offerings make a bad game playable so despite the fact that this version has more garbage than the first version, it only deserves the same score. Run Like Hell was first released last year and hasn’t improved in any meaningful way during it’s move to a new platform.