User Review : Hydrophobia

The most realistic use of water!

Name: Hydrophobia
Developer: Dark Energy Digital, Ltd.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Shooter
ESRB Rating: M (Mature)
Release Date: 9/29/10

Dark Energy Digital wanted to create a game which was completely original, but also one which includes traces of what they call “tangible future,” – factors such as Nazi zombies or Spartans – and yet keep it within reality. Hydrophobia takes place aboard the largest ship ever made, The Queen of the World. Referred to as “the city at sea,” The Queen of the World is home to the extremely wealthy and powerful, who reside in this humongous ship to protect themselves from the chaos of the world outside, and also to save the ship from danger.

It is the 10th anniversary of The Queen of the World and there is a huge celebration on behalf of it. NanoCell, one of the Five Founding Fathers of the ship, is expected to make a breakthrough announcement which the whole world will be watching. Though, their plans change as a group of Neo Malthusians, following the prophet of Malthus who said “increases in population would outgrow increases in the means of subsistence,” choose this special moment to attack The Queen of the World. The Malthusians have one motto: Save the World, Kill Yourself!

In Hydrophobia, you play as Kate Wilson, the System Engineer on board The Queen of the World. She is very intelligent, which you will see throughout the game, and she is capable of doing many things. The game starts off with a cut scene showing Kate’s recurring nightmare in which her little sister, Jenny, is shown drowning when she was a child. She suddenly wakes up during the attack of the ship and finds herself on the lowest deck of The Queen of the World. She simply has one goal in mind: To reach the upper decks and to survive!

Though, her journey through the ship isn’t quite easy as it seems. She will have to fight and use her skills in order to survive. The Malthusians have blocked every route of escape, and to unblock them, you must use strategy and critical thinking, or Kill Yourself! Kate is guided throughout the ship by Scoot, her boss, who is on one of the upper decks. Without his help, Kate can kiss her behind goodbye. She isn’t powerful enough to defeat the Malthusians on her own. She must use her surroundings and environmental hazards (drown, electrocute, and explode) to defeat the enemy and survive. With a rife of environmental hazards, killing the enemy is entertaining and should be a breeze, that is if you are good enough.

Kate starts off with limited capabilities. You can only move her around and nothing else, but as the game progresses, you unlock more moves and ways to interact with objects. In one way, this is a great feature because if you start off with limited things, the player has more time to get used to the game and how it works, and also the player won’t feel bombarded with loads of controls that it will confuse the heck out of them. But in another way, this sort of sucks because the player might feel the game doesn’t have much to offer. I personally feel this is better for the user.

The game features 3 different acts: Act 1 – Kate is on the lower deck and she starts to adapt to the environment and learning how to survive. Act 2 – She finds that she must fight and do all it takes to survive. She is started with a LP4 Security Pistol. Don’t be fooled, this isn’t a normal shooter. Act 3 – is the Escape. This act is very interesting; you can choose how you want to start/finish this act. You can choose to flood the corridors and play using the underwater combat, or you can take a more measured approach. In my opinion, flooding might be a bad idea because if you stay underwater too long, you can die. There is also a different game mode besides the campaign, Challenge Room. The Challenge Room is basically a survival mode in which you must survive waves and waves of enemies using Kate’s different skills. There is no co-op or multiplayer modes, which might be a big factor for some of you.

Hydrophobia became the most creative with the use of the MAVI (Mobile Automated Visual Interface), an in-game flexible screen which Kate possesses. The Malthusians have wiped out all the information from Kate’s MAVI by hacking into the ship’s systems. The ship’s wired network is still in contact, and Scoot is able to upload programs to consoles so Kate can update her MAVI. She can use her MAVI to do many things such as search for hidden codes and use them to unlock doors and escape routes. The Malthusians have written hidden messages on the walls and Kate can see through her MAVI to see the hidden messages, which will lead her to the cells and important codes. They are needed to escape and survive!

Another interesting factor in Hydrophobia is the Hack Mini Game. Kate will come upon certain locations where she will have to hack the system to unlock a door or perform a certain task. The Malthusians have changed the wireless frequencies, which are used to communicate with systems throughout the ship. Kate must match the frequencies with her MAVI to hack back into the systems.
Hydrophobia is loaded with about 200 collectibles, which provide an excitement to the game. They unlock checkpoints, give an insight into what the enemy is planing to do next, etc. This is a very helpful feature because it helps to avoid confusion on what to do.

I AM IMPRESSED! I was a bit skeptical about this game because it is all water based. I wasn’t sure how the water would affect or play into the game, but after playing the game for a few mins, I was left immensely shocked. Hydrophobia is the worlds first debut of fluid dynamics simulation, HydroEngine. This allows the water to flow and behave as in real life, and also causing the objects to be affected by the water, which adds realism to the game.

What I don’t like about the game is that during missions, there are no direction indicators, and if there are, they are very hard to find. How are we supposed to know where we are to go? Occasionally, there is a distance indicator showing you how far away you are from the destination, but it still confuses me a lot because it doesn’t show where exactly the destination is. Another thing I dislike is the fluid system. You are required to reach a certain destination even when the whole deck is flooded, and if you don’t reach the destination in time, you will end up dying because of lack of oxygen. What good does it do if you are confused as to where to go, and on top of that, you must hurriedly find the destination to avoid death? If there was a better form of direction indication, I wouldn’t mind the whole “flooded” idea. Also, the voices in the game are kind of weird, but they aren’t a big factor against the game.

Another thing I dislike is the repetitiveness. Throughout the whole game, you basically jump around, dive, swim, hide, and kill. There isn’t much uniqueness in every act, except the location. There are also lots of routes in the game, which tends to confuse you because you aren’t aware of where exactly you should be heading. It is more like trial and error, which makes the game super challenging.

The controls of the game are very simple and easy to get used to, and they play along well with the game. The environment and the graphics are simply amazing and outstanding. They are a plus to the game. The creativity used by Dark Energy is shocking and amusing. The storyline is great and quite original, following along with their original plan. I like the idea of a female main character, who isn’t represented as beautiful and deadly. Kate is simply shown as a powerful and flawed character, who has yet to grow. Overall, Hydrophobia has what it takes to become a retail game. With hardly any big flaws, I highly recommend it to anyone willing to challenge themselves.

Will you Save the World, or Kill Yourself?
Rating: 8/10