henke on 3/7/2011 at 11:47
Just finished this. It's only 4 hours long but feels shorter than that. The ending is disappointing. First there's an extremely un-fun bossfight which basically consists of your character being ragdolled around the room by explosions and in the small time you have time to get back on your feet you're supposed to take out a giant floating mech and a bunch of soldiers. After that you're rewarded with a cutscene which says almost nothing. The ending is very open-ended merely by being almost nonexistant.
I think the whole finale really drags the game down a lot because up till that point it's a fairly fun third person shooting/diving/hacking/stealthing game. In it's best moments it's reminiscent of Arkham Asylum or Metal Gear Solid 2. You get some cool gadgets and ammotypes and the environment can often be used as a weapon. Exploding barrels are all over the place, as are electrical powerboxes which can be shot to send electric currents into the nearby water. In some places glasspanes or even structurally weak walls can be exploded to let in a tidalwave of water. The water, of course, is one of the stars of the game, and it's physics of it are undeniably impressive. When you open a door into a room with less water in it, it will flow naturally into the empty space. Taking floating boxes, debris and dead bodies with it. The game is divided into three acts, the second of which is the best one. The first one is quite short and the third one is a bit too actiony. Overall I'd give the game a 7/10.
It's on sale on Steam right now for 3,40€, so anyone looking for something light to tide them over until Arkham City or Human Revolution comes out would do well to pick this up! :)
Digital Nightfall on 10/7/2011 at 10:28
I enjoyed this too. The ending was rather wtf, (why do game designers feel that they need to switch to totally new/bizarre gameplay systems for the endgame?) but I felt the rest of the game was quite good.
The developers sank quite a few years into this game, both pre and post its initial release. I think the years of post-release development probably paid off. I'd like to see them do more.
henke on 10/7/2011 at 17:30
Usually I like it when a game rewards you with some superpower for the endgame that lets you swat your enemies like flies and makes you feel all powerful, but this one is just annoying! It's no fun to use, but even worse than that is that it messes up the regular gameplay too. Worst of all is that you can't enable/disable your "superpower" while in cover, you need to exit cover, switch it off, then re-enter cover. Ugh. The whole ending is just awful. Otherwise, good game.
Matthew on 10/7/2011 at 18:39
I was interested in this game, but the antics of the developers towards negative criticism of the earlier releases rather out me off it, I must say.
EvaUnit02 on 11/7/2011 at 16:57
Quote Posted by Matthew
I was interested in this game, but the antics of the developers towards negative criticism of the earlier releases rather out me off it, I must say.
You mean the "antics" where they took the negative criticism on-board and (
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/12/20/hydrophobia-to-be-overhauled-in-pure-patch-dropping-to-10/) released a patch that greatly overhauled the original 360 version, whilst they also lowered the RRP? Do these "antics" also refer to the (
http://www.hydrophobia-game.com/features.php) further enhanced PC version, which addressed even more sticking points, which weren't possible thanks to MS' read tape for XBLA releases?
The developers are also very are active on Twitter and the game's Steam forum, interacting with their playerbase. In the PC version they even implemented a feature where a game state is taken, uploaded to cloud storage and the player is able to give very specific feedback on a certain area, or the like.
On contrary, they sound like the type of developer who I want to give my money to, simply because of their seemingly humble open door policies and attitude towards after-sales support.
Quote:
Criticism is sometimes hard to take, what was your first reaction to some of the more negative reviews?Honestly, initially we were obviously very disappointed, you can't help but be disappointed. Criticism can be hard. You make games because you love games, perhaps on occasions we may of seemed a little too defensive and disappointed. Pride can be a big virtue as well because you need to be intensely proud of something you're creating in any endeavor. From the start we wanted to make a game that gamers really loved. That was our passion. That's what we wanted to do. And that's still our passion. That's why we created and spent so much time listening to what people wanted. Criticism hurts but we quickly picked ourselves up and set about examining what people had said in a systematic way - it's the only way we could assemble a view of what people were saying
Did it take time to see the perspective of the critics?It is fair to say we didn't see their perspective from day one. The process of breaking down all the comments and then re-testing them one by one produces clarity. We also embarked on extensive market research. We tested the old game as a control group and then set about testing our changes one by one... This was a hard exercise as there is no hiding place. We took a very uncompromising line; if the community doesn't like it we try and change it no matter whose toes we tread on.
As far as I can see our approach has been pretty much unique
(
http://www.gamingnexus.com/Article/Hydrophobia-Pure-Interview/Item2925.aspx)
Matthew on 11/7/2011 at 20:17
No, (
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/hydrophobia-developer-defends-game-attacks-critics.ars) I mean the original 'antics' where they tried to claim that reviewers 'clearly hadn't played the game', or phoned up the reviewer's editors demanding to speak to them over their low scoring and that sort of thing. Because that's the sort of developer who I
don't want to give my money to.
Honestly Eva, I'm disappointed if you thought I hadn't actually read up about the game on both sides before making a decision. They may indeed have cleaned up their act more recently, but I think I've every right to reserve judgement.
gunsmoke on 12/7/2011 at 20:26
I knew what you meant, Matthew but I hadn't heard about the stuff Eva linked to. Maybe they are trying to make amends after being ridiculous earlier.
Matthew on 15/7/2011 at 19:00
It's quite possible; they certainly do seem to listen to their community and the unfortunately-named DarkNet is a great thing. Let's just hope they learn to bite their tongue a bit if people don't like the product instead of turning into Team 17 for the 21st century.
