Review: Hydrophobia

Yeah, there’s still nothing new for me to review. The market has done its usual thing where it releases so many games in the month of November that I can’t keep up, and now it’s completely stagnant. 

With that in mind, I decided to do something a little daring this week: I’ve decided to cut away from mainstream gaming, in all its explodey, shooty, testosterone-overloaded glory and explore the Xbox Live Market Arcade. 

For those of you unfamiliar, the XBLA is a forum for games companies who don’t possess the secret to unlocking the Void of Infinite Money like the Bungie-Infinity Ward-Square Enix Master Race (the secret is “make a clone of HALO or Call of Duty”) and instead have to develop games like the rest of we peasants: by staking a life savings somewhere in the five-figure range into developing a game they intend to sell for $5-20 instead of the standard $60 ($80-120 if you’re obsessed enough to buy the collector’s editions). 

So in the spirit of both patronizing the arts and sending a message to the Big Boy companies that reads “stop making the same game over and over,” I gave Hydrophobia a try. God only knows how long this one’s been rotting in the discount bin (since 2010, it looks like), but it looked more interesting than most of the crap that was floating around there, so what the heck?

Just so we’re on the same page, Hydrophobia is a survival horror whose main selling point is it’s water physics, so much so that they put it right there in the title in the proverbial equivalent of grabbing you by the back of the head and rubbing your nose in it. 

The free demo wasn’t quite long enough for me to tell if the game was going to be good or not. But, I needed a new game, and I was not about to review Halo Anniversary, so I coughed up the cash and dove in (no pun intended). 

Plot

So it’s the future (Holy Innovation, Batman!), and overpopulation on Earth has become a major problem. To counter this problem, a cruise ship/city that is roughly ten times the size of the Titanic has been launched to see if it’s possible, with modern technology, for a large populace to live at sea. The ship, dubbed the “Queen of the World,” is celebrating its tenth year afloat without some idiot sinking the ship. 

The cinematics begin with a young woman named Kate having a nightmare about nearly drowning as a child.  She wakes with a start to find that her cable has gone out, so she decides to run to the lower decks of the ship to see what the problem is. You know, instead of going out into town to participate in the celebration or browsing the Internet or even just reading a book. Ok, ok, she’s an engineer, but she was off duty! On top of that, her boss made it clear that he was not going to give her overtime!

Speaking of the boss, he’s called “Scoot” by Kate. He remains in contact with Kate throughout the game.  I haven’t decided if that’s a good thing, though, because the voice acting in this game is literally the most atrocious thing that has ever assaulted my ears. It seriously sounds like the developers didn't bother to hire any talent and just did the dubs themselves, and given that this is an independent game that could very well be the case. 

Anyway, Kate goes to the lower decks to check on her cable. While she’s down there, everything starts exploding, and water begins to pour in from every direction. Now she has to get out before she drowns. Oh, and on the way she discovers some terrorist/death cult plot to kill everybody for the sake of killing everybody, but it’s so poorly written that after a few minutes I didn’t bother to read the diaries that each terrorist I killed left behind. 

Gameplay

Honestly, the reason I bought this game despite warnings of horrendous controls and mentally challenged voice acting was because of the intriguing gameplay. As I mentioned, the big selling point of the game is the water physics, and I have to say, they’re pretty phenomenal. As you make your way through the claustrophobic corridors, the water is constantly rising and moving about in waves. Shooting the water causes ripples and explosions cause waves.  

The continually rising water combined with flickering lights, groaning steel, and the occasional gas fire work fantastically together to create a wonderful sense of tension and urgency as Kate wades through the dark, narrow corridors. 

Unfortunately, this tense feeling is constantly broken by the game’s terrible habit of pausing every time you pick up a new item or a terrorist’s diary and cutting out all music and sound. It’s like we’re in a thrilling action movie and the screen goes blank every few minutes. It breaks the flow like a sledgehammer against a dirt clod. 

Another big problem I have with the game is the horrid controls.  Seriously, why is Y the jump button? I thought it had been universally established that A is the jump button (yes, I know it is in Skyrim, too, but jumping isn’t an integral part of gameplay in Skyrim, where it is in this game). That’s what it is in just about every other game, right? 

I appreciate you guys trying to be unique, Dark Energies, but this is like penalizing a veteran ballet dancer for not realizing on her own that she was supposed to dance on her hands for this particular performance! There are plenty of other issues as well, but I’ll let you see for yourselves. 

And if all of that isn’t bad enough, our old friends Regenerating Health and Cover-Based Combat are back in a spirited attempt to suck any uniqueness out of the game. As I stealthed (I.E., played red light, green light with some incredibly dim-witted AI) my way through the sinking ship and paused for the occasional shootout, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was playing yet another clone. 

That said, there was some uniqueness to the fighting, there just wasn’t enough of it present, and even the bit that was ended up drowning in inefficiency. The ability to shoot out gas lines and blow enemies up or stun your foes in a shallow pool of water and let them drown was pretty cool, but I found that the most efficient mode of combat was to simply hit them with the stun gun repeatedly until they died. 

Personally, I would have been happy if no weapons were involved at all. If the developers had taken all the time and money they had sunk into programming the shooting and cover system and used it to fix the awful controls and make the stealth mechanics better (meaning actually good), then the game would have been perfect. 

I would much rather have played a game where I was forced to sneak by the terrorists while avoiding death by drowning. That would have created a fantastic sense of oppression and terror. Instead, we have yet another game that could have been great, but isn’t. 

Overall

At the end of the day, I actually liked Hydrophobia. Yeah, it has horrid controls, and yeah, it has retarded voice acting, but I’m telling you, the water physics make up for it.  In the moments between hunting for door codes and listening to Scoot’s cheese-grater voice against your ear drums, you’ll find that feeling of urgency and immersion that makes for a good game. When weighed against its flaws though, Hydrophobia ends up being the kid that barley graduated high school near the bottom of his class. I’ve heard that they’re about to release another one, though, so maybe that one will iron out the issues and be great. 

Investment suggestion: well, you either buy it, or you don’t. There’s no renting a XBLA game. It’s only $15, though, and I thought it was worth that, so give it shot. If nothing else, it’s a little bit different, and the concept of different is becoming increasingly endangered as the zombie-like horde of shooter clones continues to grow. 

The above is only my opinion. It just happens to be right. 

Where to Purchase

Here's some great local places to pick up this game: , , , and .