Honestly the most frustrating part of this game was just the complete failure to capitalize on the more interesting story and background elements that they set up for you. The game opens with the main character having a nightmare, in her nightmare she has drowned, and at the end she turns into a zombie and lunges at the camera, thus waking her up. Right off the bat I was thinking the character was going to be cripplingly afraid of water and that we were going to get into some really good survival horror type segments. Wellp, I was fucking wrong. THEY NEVER MENTION HER FEAR AGAIN. It's like it just never happened, seriously if you are going to make a game, and realize half way through that you cant afford to complete it as you originally intended, JUST CUT THAT SHIT OUT. I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up for it if you hadn't left it in the game. It's like if Live Free or Die Hard started with some fucked up nightmare sequence involving a goat and no small amount of crisco, but nothing else in the film was changed. It just feels completely out of place, like it doesn't belong there at all (that's probably what the goat was thinking). And the odd part is, I played the updated version, so that bizarre little tidbit made it through 2 iterations of the game.
Hydrophobia also has a problem with names. Throughout most of the game the main character refers to her handler as "Scoot" and the only other friendly character is the security chief, who is ALWAYS referred to by his last name. But when the terrorist leader captures one of them (i don't know who because the cutscene graphics are MUCH different than the ingame) she refers to him by his normal first name, so I had no fucking idea who she was killing or why it should matter. In a game this short, it seems like a serious misstep to assume that the players are going to know the characters well enough to recognize them by a name they have never been referred to with. It's REALLY HARD TO CARE ABOUT A CHARACTER'S DEATH WHEN I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO IT IS.
And then we get to the combat, this starts up just shy of half way through the game, and is severely frustrating, especially when it all but cuts out the very entertaining platforming bits. The problem with the combat isn't balancing, your enemies are typically fairly easy to kill (and so are you). But they can pop out from god damned anywhere. But the thing is, the game gets you accustomed to a "kill what you see" approach, where you walk into a room, there are 4 enemies, you kill 4 enemies, and the fight is over. But then randomly it will throw respawning enemies at you, and their respawn points make NO FUCKING SENSE. For example, in one scene I was running down a narrow hallway, the door behind me was sealed and the room on the other side of it filled with water, ahead of me was one enemy, I quickly killed him, only to be shot in the back of the head by a shotgunner who came from NOWHERE. Did the fucking guy just happen to be out for a swim in that particular part of the ship? What the hell. And because of the lighting sometimes an enemy can be shooting at you, from somewhere in front of you, but remain completely invisible even when firing. That is just about as frustrating as combat can be, being killed by an enemy who is invisible not due to some special suit he is wearing, but due to bad lighting programmers.
However, beneath the many layers of dust and tarnish there is a pretty solid 3D platformer here. The story is pretty negligible, the combat is very very hit and miss, and the voice acting and story telling get pretty damn rough. But jumping and swinging and shimmying from place to place is really very fun. And the underwater scenes are usually tense enough (though they would be much more tense if the characters fear of water were ever acted upon). And, in keeping with its name, the water graphics are absolutely stunning, they achieved a rare feat here, water that actually behaves like water. When you open a door the room quickly floods, if you take a wave directly it will likely knock you over and sweep you away.
There are even a couple of Half Life 2 like puzzles that involve moving floating objects underneath platforms to get the platforms higher. Basically, whenever you don't have a gun, and you aren't worried about substance, Hydrophobia is a hell of an entertaining game.
When all is said and done, I have to take into account the fact that I only paid 3 dollars for this game. And for that price, it's absolutely brilliant (thank you steam sales). It is far from a perfect animal, but when I get more fun out of it than going to a movie, and it costs far less, I'd say I'm satisfied. As a game critic though I can't be biased and rate this game higher than it deserves just because it was cheap. So I give it a 5 out of 10. There really is a good game here waiting to be made, but it just isn't here yet. If an updated or finished version was released though, I would almost certainly be on board to give the franchise a second chance. Especially if it's released as another inexpensive title. At the best I get what Hydrophobia should have been, and at the worst I get an afternoon of fast paced occasionally frustrating entertainment. Hydrophobia is still on sale through steam for about 4 dollars for the next day or so, and it really is worth picking up if you have a few bucks lying around.
Hydrophobia Prophecy and Live Free or Die Hard are property of their respective owners
All else is ©Alex Jenkins 2011
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