While the story and graphics of HELL: A Cyberpunk Thriller (from Gametek and Take 2) are both pretty unusual and interesting fare, it's no secret what the selling point of this game is, at least for me: the voice of Dennis Hopper! (Yeah, man, frickin' A!) Of course, like most red-blooded American males, you may be more interested in Stephanie Seymour or Grace Jones, or, for some strange reason, Geoffrey Holder (known universally as "the Uncola guy").

	However you slice it, HELL has an unprecedented amount of star power for a computer game, and most of the units sold are going to move based on those big names. This begs an important question: Is there a game here?

	The answer is a decisive, um, sort of. The folks at Take 2 were also pretty awed by those big names, and, not surprisingly, wanted to get as much out of them as possible. So the CD is packed with dialog. In fact, it goes beyond packed. I would say choked. Conversations go on, literally, for 20 minutes or more at a time without any player input whatsoever. There's an awful lot of ham-handed banter going on. But, at least when the agents of the involved celebrities looked at the script they found a lot of material. Personally, I suspect this story could have been carried by half as much dialog or less.

	The story of HELL is a semi-subversive little number, with the occasional reference to recent headlines to add a smidgen of plausibility. In the year 2095, the democratic government of the United States has been replaced by the theocratic "Hand of God" party, led by Solene Solux (Grace Jones), a charismatic androgyne with a platform strongly rooted in traditional family values. While the former regime could only hold the word of law over its citizens, the Hand of God has the power to send its dissidents to everlasting damnation in the fiery pits. And it's not a matter of waiting until you die, either. That's how their PR has it, anyway.

	One of the greater sins declared in this golden age is the use or possession of virtual reality equipment. In a future equivalent to the "war on drugs," Solux founded the Artifical Reality Containment, or ARC, agency to deal with widespread VR activity. Gideon and Rachel (Stephanie Seymour) are two loyal ARC agents who suddenly find themselves stalked by their own colleagues. They have been accused of "crimes against the state," but nothing more specific. Starting to suspect that their government is perhaps not as righteous as it claims to be, they start to investigate the source of these charges, a trail that leads them right into the smarmy hands of a demon called Mr. Beautiful (Dennis Hopper), and soon thereafter, into Hell itself.

	Do the infernal regions offer much in the way of graphic possibilities? No question. The artists on the design team decided to take this opportunity to give everything they see as "hellish" a special place in the land of fire and brimstone. Some of these were obvious, like the paramilitary tone of some of the rooms. (After all, Doom is just Castle Wolfenstein with much uglier uniforms.) But it was also nice to see the dentist's office and the school classroom in the ranks of the infernal. These areas are superbly hideous.

	Once you get past the gloriously vile scenery and the seemingly endless conversations, you are left with the occasional item puzzle. These are fairly challenging, but it doesn't seem like enough, somehow. It's almost like the designers thought you might mess up their beautiful work, so they decided to give you as little to do as possible. Even combat shifts into automatic once you enter the right room with the right weapon. What satisfaction do you get from incinerating a demon if your PC does all the work for you?

	While HELL is an attractive package, the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts. The pleasure of having celebrity voices in the game is marred by universally mediocre performances, with the occasional exception of Hopper. And even if everybody had turned in Oscar winning performances, there's way too much talk here for a game. This fault is driven even further home by repetitive motion sequences. Imagine talking to a guy at a bar who keeps drinking the same swallow of beer every fifteen seconds or so. That'd get pretty distracting after a while, wouldn't you think? And you'd be right.

	This is certainly not to say that the product is not worth buying. Just realize what you're getting: a lot of really cool locations, a somewhat nifty storyline, and adequate voice acting by big names. Not much of a game underneath it all, but, hey, you can't have everything.