Hydrophobia; great concept, horrible execution

[dpodblood]

I just finished the game Hydrophobia on Steam (it's also on XBLA). If you were thinking about giving this game a try let me save you the hassle. Don't bother. This is a game which had a lot of potential. It has a neat core concept, but in the end it falls flat by failing on such rudimentary levels.

The level design is actually quite good, however the controls for the game kill any fun you could be having. The transition from water to land is not smooth. Often times you will be trying to get out of the water but your character will simply refuse to do so even when you are swimming in only a few feet of water. Other times you will the fetched up on some piece of terrain. The lock on system... well it's not really a lock on system at all. If there is an enemy in the vicinity of your cursor they are then "locked on" and you can hit them, even if you aren't aiming at them at all. A GTA style lock on would have made a lot more sense. The cover system; it's there but it barely works. Sometimes I would be standing next to a piece of cover pressing the cover button and nothing would happen. Finally my character would decide to duck behind the cover, but in the process of ducking would be shot and killed. How fun... In addition the clipping is insanely bad. At times I would have a direct line of sight with an enemy and not be able to hit them because a wall was apparently blocking them. By the same token I could very clearly be taking cover behind a wall and an enemy could still shoot and kill me. So the worst of both worlds.

The physics are also really bad. There is one part where you're supposed to fill a container with floating barrels to lift it out of the water (a-la half life 2). I would go put a bunch of barrels into the container, then I would leave to get some more. When I came back all the barrels I had already loaded into the container had floated away. To make matters worse the wonky controls made it extremely frustrating to pick up in the first place, and at times the character would inexplicably drop the barrels en-route. Another issue is the power to control water telepathically. Actually there's nothing wrong with this game mechanic; except that it isn't introduced until the last 15 minutes of the game...

It's too bad really. This is a game I was really looking forward to and really want to like. It does some things well. The story and voice acting is decent. The level design is good. The water effects are cool. Everything about this game in theory should make it a good game, but the controls completely kill it. Not to mention the campaign is only 3 hours long. That may be a good thing though, since it's frustration for most of those 3 hours.

My advice is stay away from this one. If you really must, wait until you can get it for $2 or less.

 

[Veliko]

I played the demo and came to pretty the same conclusion about the controls. Some of the attempts at regional British accents for the characters were pretty bad as well...!

 

[coloumb]

/agree on most points.

After watching various videos and reading about the game, I wasn't expecting some multi-billion dollar blockbuster. I was expecting a 3-5 hour low budget action title.

I'd have to say it's a low budget version of the classic Tomb Raider games - climbing, jumping, avoiding danger, solving puzzles, and killing bad guys.

Control scheme [WASD/Mouse] was ok with the exception of switching from land to water - camera view was a bit wonky at times.

The part with the barrels was slightly painful / annoying, but it worked eventually. One of the barrels became lodges between the top of the container and the wall, but the container was high enough to allow me to continue on with the level.

The only things that really annoyed me were the sheer # of cut scenes and the poor voice acting and script.

$10 for a low budget title that takes about 3-4 hours to finish is pretty typical these days though.