Hydro Thunder Hurricane – review (Score Update)

Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a sequel to the original boat racing game, Hydro Thunder which was released in 1999/2000 on the Dreamcast, PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Ten years on from the original games release, the base of the gameplay hasn’t changed much. Hydro Thunder Hurricane features high-speed races of speedboats that morph. Yes, morph. The basics of the game involve tearing around varied environments which throw up unpredictable elements in super speedboats that  rip through the water while bouncing around like a mad caffeine-injected bunny. And it’s a lot of fun.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a ‘classic’, ‘old fashioned’ arcade game, in that what the game lacks in stunning visuals and a large amount of features it makes up for in good old fun. Not that Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a lacklustre game though. The graphics are of a good quality from the boats, to the environments, to the best part of the graphics- the water. The water may not look as fantastic and flowing as Hydrophobia’s, but it sure does look good. Your boat will bounce off waves, and in some cases get shot up in the air by an environmental disaster that leaves a huge wake behind. It all makes for a very edge of your seat race that is frantic, exciting and a lot of fun.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane features four single player modes and an online component too. There are standard races which feature 16 boats for you to trade presumably waterproof paint with, Ring Master which involves you directing your super powered boat through ring checkpoints in order to earn boost and keep the clock down, Gauntlet which has the track littered in red exploding barrels and you guessed it, you have to avoid them. And finally Championship is what you expect, a number of events combined into competitions.

The racing itself is very simple, you race like almost every other racing game and you won’t find much trouble competing with the AI, even on the higher difficulties. For the main part of the game the huge water wake element adds unpredictability to the events and keeps you on edge but it can get very annoying in the Gauntlet and Ringmaster events as it can really mess up your run. The rest of the game is pretty cool too- there are motion blur effects when you go super fast and when you launch from one of the huge jumps throughout the tracks. The boats look varied and all have different stats so you’ll need to pick one that’s almost tailored to the event you want to do.

However fun Hydro Thunder Hurricane is though, it’s not that deep or lengthy. Sure you can blast around and have fun on it for while but there’s no options like customizing boat appearance or the option to set up your own races. The only major annoyance in the game comes from those huge environmental pieces that I previously mentioned, it gets really frustrating to have little control over your boat when it comes to these things.

Despite these minor flaws and the fact that it won’t fill up much summer gaming time, Hydro Thunder Hurricane is still a very fun, high energy and frantic water racing experience. Did I mention fun?

By Daniel Brookes