Hydro Thunder Hurricane Review

Hydro Thunder, the ultimate powerboat arcade racer has arrived on Xbox LIVE Arcade thanks to Vector Unit. It’s been ten years since the series last graced a console. Does Hydro Thunder still float or should it be beached? Read on to see if Hydro Thunder Hurricane is worth diving into.

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Hydro Thunder Hurricane features four single player modes as well as two Xbox LIVE modes in which up to 8 players can race against each other. For local multiplayer fans there is split-screen racing support for up to 4 players. Single player modes include Race, Ring Master, Gauntlet, and Championship and they vary between novice, pro, and expert. Multiplayer modes are basic, and you’ve got your standard races and your Rubber Ducky mode which I’ll explain soon. The game includes 8 tracks and 9 boats though you can only choose from 3 boats per difficulty level. All medals in the game are time-based, and you’ll have to beat the predetermined top times to earn the gold, silver or bronze medals.

The controls in the game are pretty basic and you shouldn’t have any troubles learning them. However, the physics of the boat often feel “floaty” (Sorry, pun couldn’t be avoided) and you’ll realize it’s quite common to lose control of your boat, especially at higher speeds. Each boat has stats based on handling, acceleration, top speed, and air control so you’ll want to choose carefully depending on what event you’re playing.

High speed is required to take the medals and you’ll need to find the best shortcuts as well. It often takes many, many attempts to properly learn the course. If you played the original Hydro Thunder in the arcades, you’ll remember that it seemed very unfair, and its goal was to keep you popping quarters into the machine. The expert difficulty tracks in Hydro Thunder Hurricane, it’s the same thing. While advanced players and veterans of the series may not have any trouble, newcomers will find it frustrating hard to even place 3^rd unless they maneuver perfectly through the entire course and boost as often as possible – one imperfect move can make all the difference.

In Race mode, you’ll compete against 15 AI racers while racing at high speeds and attempting to collect scattered boost containers to help earn a medal on each of the 8 tracks in the game. Boost containers are blue mostly, but each course will have a few red ones which give you noticeably more boost power.  While boosting increases your speed, your handling also becomes much tougher, especially for quick and finely-tuned turns. In any mode, as long as you have even a fraction of boost power, you can perform a jumping maneuver which is helpful in many situations, and often required to beat many events.

Ring Master places you on the course with various rings laid out throughout the course. Passing through each one gives you boost power to help you beat the required times to earn a medal. If you miss a ring, you lose the boost power completely and you’ll have three seconds added to your current time. This often means the difference between winning and losing, more likely on the higher difficulty races. Ring Master on the higher difficulties is a great way to learn about new shortcuts that you may not have discovered otherwise. Each course can be played on all three difficulty levels in this mode so there are essentially 24 tracks to play through, each with a different course of rings to follow.

In Gauntlet mode you have free reign of where you’d like to go in the course. However, explosive barrels are littered throughout the water and colliding with them will cause your boat to burst into a fiery inferno. You can respawn immediately with your ‘Back’ button, but you’ll definitely lose a little time in terms of having to accelerate back to your previous speed. You’ll also be able to collect boost packs in this mode, but keep in mind that they’re surrounded by the barrels so you have to use extra caution.

Finally, topping off the single player is the Championship Mode. Each championship varies in the number of included events, but they mix and match events from the other 3 modes in the game. If you’re in a three race set, and you screw up badly on any event, you can restart that one even safely and not worry about having to do all events over again.  There are 10 championships to win and like all other modes, the events vary in difficulty levels.

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Back on the topic of multiplayer, there are the two modes – standard races and Rubber Ducky. Standard races are pretty much the same as playing offline, except you won’t find AI racers online.  Online racing is limited to real players, whether it’s 1 versus 1 or you and up to 7 other people. In the time spent online so far, I was able to participate in approximately forty 1 vs. 1 races with no lag, but time will tell on the larger populated races when thousands of others own the game.

Rubber Ducky mode splits the players into two teams and each team has one person sailing the Rubber Ducky boat. Its handling isn’t that great, nor is its speed, and it looks ridiculous. Only one player gets the “honor” of driving this, while other players are in the standard boats, and you must clear the path of the opposing team to help your Rubber Ducky across the finish line first.  While I haven’t had the chance to try this mode due to lack of players at present time, it sounds intriguingly fun.

In terms of graphics, Hydro Thunder Hurricane isn’t a bad looking game, but it’s also not a beautiful game. Water graphics are similar style to that of Waverace Bluestorm though with more polygons. The boats leave visible wakes behind them you others to draft or jump, and you’ll often see massive rolling waves – though the water surface often remains very flat in that case. The courses are largely-scaled and you often feel quite tiny in some areas and you’ll have lots of room to drive around. You’ll be very impressed with the sense of speed in the game, and you’ll often feel like you’re hydroplaning faster than the speed of light, it’s super fun! Explosions are quick and leave your boat in a partially crushed and destroyed physical state, but once again they don’t really look amazing. In a way, the game keeps its arcade-style visuals though it’s much smoother overall thanks to better technology that we have now.

The sound effects are decent and each boat will have a unique engine sound based on the class or its overall power. You’ll hear the change in sound as you carve through the water, or make a splash landing sending waves out behind you. The menu voices use the classic “cheesy” announcer-like sound to call out the name of the boat and track that you choose.  During the races, you might hear loud cracks of thunder, or the rumble of debris falling into the water, often making the experience more intense.

With some practice, Hydro Thunder Hurricane becomes increasingly more fun as you unlock more powerful boats and learn the mechanics of each track. The achievements may frustrate some people, and a one in particular truly isn’t fair to many people, but majority will be attainable in a short period of time. Regarding one item collection achievement in which you have to collect 10 hidden tokens per track, a tracking mode should have been included to view from the menu of each track – because this feature isn’t included, you have to keep track as you go, or you’ll unfortunately end up at a point where you have no idea which hidden token(s) you haven’t found, unless you search high and low in every track. Frankly, combined with the lack of top times on your HUD, the lack of these features is almost unforgivable.

After all is said and done, Hydro Thunder Hurricane will definitely give you your money’s worth if you enjoy arcade racers as well as a little grueling punishment. It’s not for the faint of heart, and it will require a lot of practice to master it – but there are 50 medals to earn and it’ll take you at least 15 hours, likely longer unless you’re a Hydro Thunder God.  It has a few flaws, but the gameplay is purely fun and challenging and you can easily spend hours in one sitting with the game.

To check out the demo or view more information about the game, visit the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.