At a glance...

Hydrophobia Pure review

The big thing in the gaming world right now is 3D technology, culminating in the launch of the Nintendo 3DS in the coming weeks. Before that, however, physics was the technology to have. I’m sure many of you will have heard of Havok, that powers the physics in most modern games, on almost all platforms currently available. Perhaps even the rare few of you out there will have owned a PhysX card. Water physics though, are tricky to pull off. Sure, there are many engines that able to do a pretty good job, such as the Source engine, but the effect isn’t perfect. Dark Energy Digital aimed to change all this when they set about creating the HydroEngine; a video game engine designed to model 'flowing water and other liquids'. Any good engine needs a game to show it off and from this need came Hydrophobia.

Set on-board the fictional ship, Queen of the World, you are Kate Wilson, a systems engineer working on this boat. In the midst of celebrations, a group of terrorists make their way on board and start a massacre. Morbid messages appear on the communication systems, displaying 'jolly' phrases such as ‘Save the World - Kill Yourself’. These Malthusians are a happy bunch, aren’t they? Your objective is to make your way topside alive and, if possible, figure out what’s going on. Initially this sounds like an interesting setup, but Hydrophobia left me feeling disappointed. What little plot elements occur in the game are sparsely separated and are so disjointed and unconnected from each other that they don’t really help you make sense of things. There’s a never a sense the game is building towards anything. Along the way, your journal will get populated with entries which help you make sense of the story, but relegating these items to a menu entry means that the story is too disconnected from actual gameplay. Along the way you're aided by a fellow engineer named Scoot. Whilst he does drop hints and plot points to you across the game, he happens to be voiced in the what is certainly the most over the top Scottish accent I have ever heard, and he quickly irritates you as soon as he begins talking.

The problem is, for a game that is so focused on showcasing its water physics, the HydroEngine needs to be be up to scratch and whilst impressive, it's not quite there. The HydroEngine gets some of the dynamics correct, but it just doesn’t look right. The main reason behind this is the lack of textures. It treats water like a semi-transparent body made up of a single texture, when in fact it's not. There is no wave or foam texture which means the splashes and crashes of water into surfaces or crashing down a corridor look strangely odd. This is the uncanny valley of water physics.

Perhaps this can be redeemed by the gameplay, but unfortunately not. Gameplay sections come in two forms; environmental-based platforming and combat sequences. The former consists of getting from point A to point B whilst navigating the various hazards of the ship which is usually tearing itself apart in front of you. As you go through these corridors, opening the various water tight doors will inevitably lead to flooding certain sections of ship, or at least force you to wade at waste height through pools of water. The water physics are at play throughout this, which more often than not means that an errant wave will surge down the corridor towards you, knocking you off your feet. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for you to get back up, or at least attempt to swim against the tide, meaning you have a wait a few seconds for the wave to deposit you at a convenient place (usually against a wall or in the corner of a room). Hydrophobia isn’t great at leading you either. Luckily the level design means that you're funnelled down narrow corridors, but when the game opens up a little, you are often a little confused as to exactly how you are supposed to get to where it says you should be, and that's not counting the times when the game glitches and doesn’t register that you’ve reached the point it's telling you to go to. Usually this is because there’s a bad guy hidden in the watery depths that you happened to have missed, but the game doesn’t help matters when it doesn’t point these things out. Even though the game is set on board a ship, Hydrophobia doesn’t really use this to its advantage. If you ignore the fact that there’s water leaking everywhere, you’re essentially walking through generic industrial corridors. There’s no view of the watery depths or the horizon outside, and the inside of the ship is so huge it requires its own transit system and has massive elevator shafts.

The combat is equally frustrating. You get a single gun that supports a number of ammo types, but the most basic one, sonic rounds, doesn’t feel particularly powerful and each shot must be charged before it can do any real damage. You do get other types, such as triggered explosives or rapid fire, but ammo is sparse. A basic cover system is also present but there are a number of bugs here, most notably that it doesn’t always pull you back into cover when you pop out to dispatch someone who got a little too close. There’s also the ability to sneak, but without the power to take someone out silently with melee, you usually alert the guards the moment you make an attempt to attack them. These issues aside, there are some interesting environmental hazards that you can use to dispatch the Malthusians. The obligatory exploding barrel is present but there’s also other hazards here, such as machinery that can explode, or electrical rope that can be cut with a well-aimed bullet. Adding water to this mix also introduces some cool concepts; fire from barrels will float on the surface for a time and shooting glass that has water on the other side will flood the corridor, sending waves crashing into your opponents, knocking them to the ground.

We’ve been unusually negative up to this point, so it is worth mentioning that Hydrophobia does have some interesting concepts. In addition to the water-based combat mechanics we’ve already mentioned, the game also has other good uses for water. There are a few puzzles where you need to open doors to move water around the environments, so as to put out a fire or to get access to a higher section. You also have a system called Mavi which allows you to remotely trigger doors and other devices such as cameras. It also has an augmented reality mode which lets you see hidden messages which sometimes contain encryption cyphers. Whilst the game informs you when you’re near mission-critical messages, it can be hard to spot other information, and it feels like a missed opportunity to flesh out the back story. Hydrophobia also scores you in each of the game’s three acts, and these can be compared with the community in an effort to tempt you to play again. There’s also a series of challenge rooms that pit you against waves (pun intended) of enemies.

We appreciate that the 'Pure' part of Hydrophobia indicates a patch rather than a complete rewrite and there's only so much that can be done. However, there are still a number of bugs present in the game. Coupled with the horrible mechanics and gameplay means that Hydrophobia ends up being disappointing even after the significant improvements made for this 'Pure' version. I was ready to embrace the HydroEngine as the next step in water physics, but whilst it is a significant improvement, it's not quite there yet. The ending of Hydrophobia sets itself up for a sequel and we’re left wishing that Dark Energy Digital had concentrated their efforts on this rather than to revisit the first game.

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