Hydrophobia

**ExtremeGamer** · 09-29-2010, 09:52 AM

Re: Hydrophobia

Never heard of it, but more shocked you bought $200 worth of MS points. LOL

**Dr.J** · 09-29-2010, 10:56 AM

Re: Hydrophobia

Was a first day purchase until a saw the edge review.

**Valdarez** · 09-29-2010, 12:35 PM

Re: Hydrophobia

Originally posted by ExtremeGamer

Never heard of it, but more shocked you bought $200 worth of MS points. LOL

Checked and I have roughly 240 games downloaded on XBox Live Arcade, that includes XBox games (only 3), DLC for full games, and Live arcade games, game demos, and about 70 movies, so I have definitely spent my fair share on there.

I found a deal online to get them for 1 penny for 1 point, so took the opportunity to stock up for the next 5 to 6 months. Ordered a new 250GB HD as well as I only have 10 GB free and that's with ZERO movies on the console (on sale on Buy.com for only $56 today! Check my twitter for link / info if you need one).

Bought Hydrophobia. Gameplay seems decent so far. The water is done well. The character moves a little to fast for my tastes. For a DLC it's fairly well done. The voice overs are decent, good, but the writing isn't the best. There's a lot of Jesus and cursing in scenes where it feels forced. The writing / dialog isn't horrible, but it definitely could be better. Then again, I just finished playing Alan Wake, so I'm coming in off a fairly high quality line.

The settings / surroundings feel alive and realistic in open areas and yet oddly repetitive pretty much everywhere else. Being stuck in halls over and over will do that to a game. At 1200 M$ Points ($15 or $12 depending on how you buy your points), it feels like a good buy, but don't expect a high quality / killer game. It's a decent game, that entertains, but that's about it.

The only neat thing that I have liked about the game is the Mida console that lets you decipher keys and see the world as a 'wire frame'. You can even move the console as you walk and it displays it in real time. It's neat in the sense that you can see the real world, textured with color on the outer edges, and the shapes/wireframes with varying line colors and no textures/paint beyond the wires.

The game requires a lot of reading if you really want to understand what's going on. There's a lot of objects to find, and documents to recover. The documents reveal the storyline ever as much as the dialog / story do, at least so far into the story. If you don't enjoy reading in a game, then you're probably not going to get into the storyline of the game near as well.

Two things that I consider negatives thus far are the noise of the game, and the objectives. The noise is overbearing and constant. There's rarely silence and it isn't even good noise, just a low rumbling and crunching sound, which makes sense, but they could have really added to the mood and pacing of the game with better use of sound modulation. Objects are displayed on a map, but they are typically on different floors, and it's difficult to determine 'which' floor the location is located, and then even more difficult to find the path to it. A simple arrow pointer, or even a 'your location 2nd floor, objective location 3rd floor' would have been extremely helpful in getting to the next location/objective. I don't mind puzzles, but getting to your next location isn't a puzzle, it's just obtrusively difficult to determine the appropriate path.

That's all for now. Continuing playing and will update later today.

**Valdarez** · 09-29-2010, 03:33 PM

Re: Hydrophobia

That Edge review is garbage. The game is definitely better than 3. Looks like the critic score is about 7.3 so far, but that will go down after the GameSpot review. I'd give it a 6 to 6.5 right now if I had to rate it.

Hydrophobia Review

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/hydrophobia/review.html?mode=web&tag=scoresummary%3Bcritic-score

An unusual take on survival horror with incredible water effects, Hydrophobia is ultimately let down by frustrating gameplay issues.

Hydrophobia Reviews

<table summary="Other reviews of Hydrophobia"><caption>Other reviews of Hydrophobia</caption> <tbody><tr> <td class="site">IGN **</td> <td class="score"> 8 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 29, 2010</td> </tr> <tr class="alt"> <td class="site">TeamXbox **</td> <td class="score"> 8.2 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 27, 2010</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="site">GameZone **</td> <td class="score"> 7 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 27, 2010</td> </tr> <tr class="alt"> <td class="site">1UP **</td> <td class="score"> C+ </td> <td class="date">Sep 27, 2010</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="site">Hooked Gamers **</td> <td class="score"> 8.7 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 29, 2010</td> </tr> <tr class="alt"> <td class="site">ZTGameDomain **</td> <td class="score"> 7 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 29, 2010</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="site">GamingExcellence **</td> <td class="score"> 6.5 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 28, 2010</td> </tr> <tr class="alt"> <td class="site">Gaming Target **</td> <td class="score"> 7.9 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 27, 2010</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="site">GameFocus **</td> <td class="score"> 7.6 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 27, 2010</td> </tr> <tr class="alt"> <td class="site">Gamer Limit **</td> <td class="score"> 7 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 27, 2010</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="site">Official Xbox Magazine **</td> <td class="score"> 9 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Nov 1, 2010</td> </tr> <tr class="alt"> <td class="site">Xbox World 360 Magazine UK</td> <td class="score"> 80 / 100 </td> <td class="date">Sep 28, 2010</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="site">Edge Magazine UK</td> <td class="score"> 3 / 10 </td> <td class="date">Sep 27, 2010</td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="3">** = Only these sites count towards average score. Visit Game Rankings for criteria.</td></tr></tbody></table>

**goh** · 09-29-2010, 04:36 PM

Re: Hydrophobia

I'm sure there's already a topic for this game.
Yup.

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...d.php?t=205822

Hydrophobia

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