You play as one of four characters -- Donna Black, "street samurai", fast in movement, weak in psionics, default weapon shuriken; Walter Surmbrand, "deep space marine", good in ranged combat, weak in psionics, default weapon assault rifle; Russell Blake, "road warrior", ranged combat good, psionics weak, default weapon dual-wielded revolvers; and Mortimer Kaine, "psionicist" (you knew it was coming, didn't you?), weak in everything but psionics, default weapon psi-missiles. Your mission is to penetrate Epsilon Bunker and descend to the bottom to find out what's causing a plague of mutant monsters to overrun the surface world.

Movement is controlled by the directional keys, and basic attacks are accomplished by the shift key. Additionally, psionic powers are in force, and special weapons are scattered throughout the various levels for your characters to use.

One way in which HGSE makes a difference is in its ability for two players to play cooperatively by sharing the keyboard. The key bindings are customizable, making it easy to configure things so the two players aren't crowding each other. The game also supports joystick control, so if that's your preferred control mode, you're covered.

There are six levels of difficulty, ranging from "On vacation" at the bottom end, to "Just kill me now" at the top end. While the default difficulty places you in the middle of the two extremes, play was very easy. Playing with any of the four characters proved to be a simple point and shoot affair; even when a large mass of enemies converged on my character's location, it was a trivial task to dispatch them all without worrying about taking any damage.

Of course, your health meter is constantly ticking down regardless, making it imperative to explore the area, where you'll find health packs to bolster your depleting life. Additionally, you'll discover small credit chits that enable you to purchase new weapons and powers, as well as character upgrades in an item shop between levels.

Along the way, the environment plays a small role in managing threat -- there are pipes that vent poisonous gas that accelerate damage, and these damage the enemy as well. There are also destructible barrels filled with explosives that are useful for taking out a clustered bunch of enemies, though if you're standing too close to them, you'll take damage as well.

Some areas are locked off, requiring a keycard to open them, which you'll need to scour the area to find. Some areas are barricaded by unidirectional fields of force -- they will allow movement through them in only one direction. To bypass these, you'll need to find the mechanism that reverses the polarity of the field. You'll also wander across a terminal that lays out a map of the area, but you'll need to memorize it as you can't take it with you.

In all, Hollow Ground Special Edition isn't a terrible game, it's just sort of dull. It's possible that gameplay becomes more engaging the father downward into the bunker one travels, but you'll have to purchase the game to test that hypothesis. You can pick up the Mac demo or the PC version right here on Big Download.