Hydro Thunder Hurricane Review
Buoyant.
Version tested: Xbox 360
If Limbo, last week's inaugural Summer of Arcade release, aspired to the art house aesthete's choice - Braid through a glass, darkly - Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a hyperactive celebration of balls-out, dumbass, American videogame-ness. 25-foot racing boats, whose engines roar in Texan accents, roll and bounce through white water rapids. They gobble down speed boost capsules like froth-mouthed junkies under a maelstrom of distorted keyboards and six-foot snare drum clacks.
Delicacy and finesse be damned, screams developer Vector Unit into the wind and spray: videogames are about domination and high-speed spectacle; they're about shaving a few seconds from the times of every last name on your Enemies List; about finding the odd secret bonus and, every three laps or so, making your jaw hang slack as a giant f**king sea serpent explodes out of the water and sends your boat ricocheting off into a rock face.
Videogames should exaggerate physics in search of perfecting the chemistry of play, the game argues. Spin out on a corner and you need only stab the back button for a rolling reset: combo the endorphins without pause for thought. If Limbo's deadly waters represented a cloying quicksand to oblivion, Hydro's undulating waves are ramps to the stars.
As such, ponderousness is, quite literally, for losers. Hydro. Thunder. Hurricane. A three-hit combo of elemental nouns, each threatening to whack you from your sofa into a squall of testosterone.
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Screenshots: Hydro Thunder Hurricane
And why not? Microsoft's decision to juxtapose Limbo with an uncomplicated speedboat racer in their scheduling demonstrates not only the publisher's understanding that it takes all types to make a medium, but also exemplifies the full range of approaches their service has the capacity to house. Moreover, while Hydro Thunder Hurricane's brash brand of interactivity has a different timbre, underneath the theme and colouring, the two titles sit together quite comfortably.
Both games demand trail and error, the former in feeling out its immovable solutions, the latter in feeling out the optimum routes to facilitate the fastest possible lap times. Both games demand lightning quick reactions for success. Both games offer neat twists on age-old tropes.
That said, there's no denying Hydro Thunder Hurricane's wholly orthodox framework. A sequel to the Dreamcast launch title with which it shares two thirds of a name, the intervening years have done little to shift the series' structural approach to a racing game.
There are four different types of event in which to compete, each accessed from the main menu screen. Races pit you against 15 competitors in a watery dash to the finishing line. You're free to bump into your rivals, but your efforts are best spent taking racing lines to pick up the next speed boost capsule or hunting out the shortcuts that thread through each of the game's eight tracks.
Ring Master, the second event type, goes some way to helping you discover these shortcuts, each event shepherding you through a course by picking out a route using giant rings through which your boat must pass. Miss a ring and you incur a time penalty, with the size of the rings diminishing as you rise through the boat classes, thereby scaling the difficulty. Gauntlet has you playing through each stage against the clock, the only difference being that the waterways are booby-trapped with exploding barrels that force a checkpoint restart if struck.
Finally, a set of Championships bundle together different events plucked from the other three types into structured competitions. You earn credits for placing in the top three positions of any race, the money going towards auto-unlocking new events and boats across the entire game. While the game gives the illusion of non-linearity in its approach, in reality the staggered credit thresholds required to unlock each new event enable the developer to pick out a very specific line for players through the experience.
The racing itself is breakneck and enjoyable, drawing inspiration in terms of feel and style from Nintendo's Wave Race series. Set-piece explosions in the water cause huge waves to interrupt the flow of a race in interesting, dynamic ways, forcing you to constantly respond to the shifting 'ground' upon which you race, as well as what your rivals are doing at any one point.
The placement of nitro canisters is arranged in such a way to encourage you to find routes through a course that allow near-continuous speed-boosting, and the Boost Jump button, that catapults you into the air at a cost of some of your boost gauge, allows for more dynamic course design than would otherwise have been possible. Boat classes emphasize either speed or handling, and are different enough from one another to encourage thought when matching a vessel to a level.
Level types are pulled from videogame cliché: Monster Island a dash through a cat's cradle of Amazonian tributaries and ruins, while Paris Sewers and Area 51 provide obvious, if effective, counterpoints later in the experience. The bold, colourful aesthetic lacks Wave Race's warmth and, despite the high-contrast sheen, the game lacks real personality and character.
Despite this, Hydro Thunder Hurricane hits the keynotes required of any modern arcade racer, with a re-emphasis on secrets and shortcuts that the genre has perhaps lost in recent times. The two multiplayer modes - a straight race between eight players online, and Rubber Ducky, in which two teams try to nose their rubber duck past a threshold before their opponents - provide a good balance of competition and playfulness.
Indeed, this is a good summary of the wider experience, which asks players to experiment with the tools pressed into their hands, while keeping reminders of your friend's times and scores on screen at all times to focus the mind toward rivalry. The absence of personality and flourish perhaps comes from a general lack of nuance or innovation. But therein lies a reminder that the dumb arcade racer is a cornerstone of the videogame medium. While there's scant cultural prestige to be found in that fact, neither should there be any shame.
7 / 10
Hydro Thunder Hurricane launches on Xbox Live Arcade this Wednesday, 28th July, for 1200 Microsoft Points (£10.20 / €14.40).
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Comments (45) Latest comment 2 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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Anyway... consider it bought. One of the best racers ever IMHO.
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If Sony are serious about challenging MS in the online space, they need to get the PSN into shape with big events like this and a more streamlined interface (that means demos for all games, and Steam-style sales on all titles).
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Really don't see how they can justify the price.
On the other hand, I did get 400 points free via that Red Dead promotion...
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No, it's just an excuse to release titles with too high a pricepoint. Because they're part of an 'event' that you can get rebates from if you buy a certain amount from them.
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Yeah but it still looks 100% Hydro Thunder. In the arcade i loved it and on the DC I thought it was sublime. Can't wait to dig into multiplayer. Few racers play so well naturally (like Daytona) without a killer learning curve. For me this is the essence of an Arcade racer. Loved the (over the top) water effect as well.
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...Aghh, the memories of Dreamcast come flooding back...
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Was a great game and i was going to buy this based purely on nostalgia however at 1200points i have to think about it. I dedcided just before summer of arcade i wouldnt buy any games unless they were brillant and an actual bargain. For example i bought shadow complex last year and only just recently completed it and bought BC:Re-Armed which i have yet to actually make head way at all.
Simply because i get wrapped up in the whole 'well you get points back so must be a bargain' but thats a false economy if werent going to buy straight away and wait for sale like the recent one.
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I completely agree, but the review hardly makes any comparisons of this game to Hydro Thunder DC, instead it made (unfavourable) comparisons of the visual style and handling to Wave Race... possibly why he's only given it a 7 (Nintendo bias over Sega, and a lack of any major enthusiasm for great arcade style racers), and leads me to wonder if he ever played the DC game.
All of which is probably good news as it means once again they've got the wrong person to do the review, and the game is infact a high 8 or a 9! But I'll wait for more reviews and opinions.
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Limbo was always gonna be a must-buy for me, and I'll get this if I enjoy the demo enough, but the new Lara Croft cash-in? Monday Night Combat? A bastardised Castlevania which seemingly misses the point of the series? What a disappointment. I'd like to be proved wrong on those, but compared to the last two years it's rubbish.
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Although I'm really looking forward to Lara.
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Sometimes a game can surprise you, but more often than not, if a game looks disappointing after several months of previews, videos and other write-ups, you can get a good handle on its quality without having played it yourself. I'm surprised that someone who's been here as long as you have needs to have that explained to them
edit- that's to fan btw. I agree with Beastmaster about the non-SoA releases, I'm really looking forward to Super Meat Boy and Comic Jumper.
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Didn't notice your "I'd like to be proved wrong" comment originally, sorry
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I do give the trial a go with almost every XBLA game that comes out, there are a lot of gems to be found (Ancients of Ooga is a recent one which I hadn't paid any attention to pre-release, but turned out to be very good). I'm just finding it very hard to be enthused by most of this summer's crop.
Edit- just re-read my last post and realised how arsey it comes across! I'll leave it as it is so the thread makes sense, but I promise it didn't sound like that in my head when I typed it.
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It totally pains me to say this, but don't waste your money on deathspank. Diablo-lite mistaking toilet humour for high-comedy.
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Neogaf says 30fps, not always stable
It's a shame that info about frame rate is missing from so many reviews.
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Um.. Wipeout HD? I've played all wipeouts and while I agree with you somewhat, Wipeout HD is by far the best of any of them
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It's always puzzled me where the WO equivalent for the 360 was. Looking at this, it's obviously what they're aiming for (banked water? Really?) but apart from the deforming surface (which looks a great feature), the rest looks seriously bleh in every way when put next to Wipeout.
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http://www. oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=21352
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anyway i just bought earthworm jim and doom II both of which i haven't played yet. - has the demo for Hydro been out a while i must have played it on XBL arrrghhh what is going on??! It's like deja vu x 1000
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Why they continue this trend is a mystery to me,they would sell so much more at 800pts and therefore make more money
Im no expert on these things it just seems like common sense.