Racing games don’t age well. You can remake classic puzzle games, platformers and side-scrolling shooters, and they’ll retain their old school charm, but that doesn’t usually work with racing games, especially arcade racers. It’s why they tend to gather dust once the new ones come along. So it’s natural to approach the HD remake of Hydro Thunder, an old Midway coin-op arcade racing game, with a hint of scepticism. Then again, this is one of the showcase titles from this year’s Xbox LIVE Summer of Arcade promotion, so it may just have a couple of tricks up its sleeve.
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Hydro Thunder Hurricane is essentially nautical WipEout without the weapons. You control powerboats around some fairly imaginative tracks, where apart from your 15 AI opponents, several obstacles are laid out to impede your progress. These include everything from barriers and floating mines to sea lion-like creatures and a giant dude with a big hammer. Tracks feature big jumps, massive drops, obstacles, shortcuts, and alternate routes, so this isn’t your standard point A to B racing game. Boost is always in ready supply and though it only lasts for a short time, there are enough boost pick-ups lying around to let you pretty much complete a race without ever running out of it.
Amongst the other pick-ups, there are the fairly useless hidden collectibles, and the rather useful short cut pick-ups. These will pull up ramps or break down walls to create shortcuts or alternate paths for you to take. Short cuts are few and far between though; more of them would have made the racing a lot more exciting. On those rare occasions that you do run out of boost, you can also use the draft option to get behind an opponent’s slipstream and slingshot yourself ahead. This is clearly not a straight port of the original arcade game, because the boats control fairly well and the water physics are quite impressive too, believably affecting your boat’s performance based on the current and the roughness of the tide.
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There are times when the game’s age does creep through. Some of the boat physics are a little clunky and collisions feel dated, but overall, this is quite an overhaul from the PS One and N64 original, and to its credit and my surprise, it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a game that’s over a decade old. There are three single player game modes, and a tournament mode, which basically includes an assortment of events from the other three modes. These comprise of standard three-lap races with 15 AI opponents; Ring Master – a time trial that requires you to pass through a set of rings, where failing to pass through a ring results in a time penalty; and Gauntlet – also a time trial, but with floating mines all over the place to slow you down.
There are around 50 single-player events in all, which is substantial, plus you’ll keep unlocking newer boats as you rack up points by winning podium places. Boats are broken up between Novice, Pro and Expert levels and the performance difference between them is pretty big. The boats also behave differently from each other, and they perform very much in accordance to their respective handling, acceleration, speed, and air control stats. So you’ll need to pick your vehicles according to the events; boats with good speed and acceleration are ideal for races, whereas good air control and handling are vital for Ring Master and Gauntlet events.
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If you get bored of the single-player events; and after a while you just might, you can also play the game in split-screen. There’s support for up to 4 players offline and 8 players online, and all four offline players can enter online races together. I didn’t have a chance to try out split-screen, but online play works pretty well and, at least at this point, finding a game isn’t that hard. There are leaderboards too, of course, and even during single-player races, you’re constantly being updated on where your lap times figure in the online leaderboards.
Hydro Thunder’s transition to high definition is quite an impressive one. The game is full of colour and it runs very well even when the action on screen gets hectic. It certainly isn’t the prettiest game around, but it looks great in motion, and since that’s how you’ll be seeing it most of the time, that’s what matters. But despite its fresh lick of HD paint, the game constantly reminds you that this is an arcade game at heart. Nowhere is this more evident than in the announcer’s booming overenthusiastic voice. The soundtrack is also suitably arcade and up-tempo.
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Conclusion
Hydro Thunder Hurricane took a while to grow on me, but it really is a fun little arcade racer with plenty of variety and content. The tracks are well designed, the boats handle well, and the water physics are impressive. This isn’t a lazy port, but rather a completely reworked game that manages to both be relevant in today’s times and retain its arcade flavour. The wealth of single-player content, and offline and online multi-player options make its 1200 Microsoft Points asking price well worth it.
- Good controls
- Well designed tracks, impressive water physics
- Plenty of single-player content
- Split screen
- Collisions and some vehicle behaviour feels dated
