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Hydrophobia revamp announced

Title update promises to change the game.

Manchester-based developer Dark Energy Digital wants gamers to give watery Xbox Live Arcade game Hydrophobia a second chance – and to help convince them it has announced the release of a title update it reckons completely changes the game.

The title update, due out tomorrow, 21st December, coincides with a price drop from 1200 MS Points to 800 MS Points. The Trial has also been extended. New and exclusive screens are below.

Pure, as it's called, introduces new button mapping and improved controls, combat, cover and camera systems.

You'll also notice clearer damage feedback and objectives.

The Pure update was based on feedback from gamers and critics, DED said in an exclusive Eurogamer Hydrophobia interview published today.

As part of its research, DED read 250 reviews of the game. "We even translated all the foreign ones," managing director Pete Jones told Eurogamer.

Simon Parkin awarded it 4/10 in Eurogamer's Hydrophobia review.

"The game fails to match its ambition, and, in its cumulative small failings, drags the player down into infuriation," Parkin wrote.

According to Jones, the infuriation has been eradicated.

"If people had a frustrating element of the game, that's been turned around and corrected and it will give them the experience we wanted to."