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There was a lot of controversy surrounding Hydrophobia shortly after its release.  The development team and some review sites butted heads over the review scores and I stayed away from the game at launch because of this controversy, because I thought it was rather Bush League for a developer to be so public with its criticisms.  Over time, I ended up picking the game late and after finishing it, I was surprised with the criticisms, because I found Hydrophobia to be a good game.  Not necessarily great, as it does have some issues with its ending and controls, but overall, it is a rather good story that ended up getting mired in the overall controversy.

Hydrophobia takes place in a world where people have flocked to a huge ship called the Queen of the World, because of issues with mass flooding of the world’s landmasses.  It probably has some subtle hints towards global warming, but it I never found a complete correlation with that political statement and what is stated in the game.  You play as Kate Hudson, a tech consultant, who conveniently happens to be an Olympic quality swimmer.  She becomes an unwitting hero of the story as a group of terrorists known as the Malthusians decide to fix the population crunch of the world by killing massive amounts of people.  I mean there is no subtlety to you their message as their slogan is “Save the World: Kill Yourself”.  The Malthusians bomb the hell out of the Queen of the World and you find Kate trying to work her way out of the ruins of the ship.

Playing through Kate’s story, you find yourself working through a rather diverse set of environments as the ship starts to submerge itself under the ocean.  At its heart, Hydrophobia is a puzzle game, as you have to work through environments and hacking mini-games to unlock doors, cameras and other items to work your way out of the ship.  There are other side quests that you can entertain, like saving important people on the ship, or you can just press on and save yourself.

While Kate is the hero that you play in the story, the water becomes the star or Hydrophobia, as it plays into most of the environments that you work through in the game.  The water moves like an animal, slowing you down as you walk through some areas of the ship, and in other submerging you completely.  Electrical wires dangle into some areas leaving Kate to find ways to disconnect power to progress through an area, and for some reason tons of flammable containers float through areas that you will shoot to open new locations.    The water physics are amazing, with rolling waves, blowing out doors with pressure and so much more.  It is an impressive site to just watch as the water moves through the levels, starting off low in areas, but flooding those levels out over time, slowing your escape from impending doom.

At some point, combat does play into Hydrophobia, as you gain access to a pistol that can be armed with several ammo types.  It starts with sonic rounds, which will stun enemies, but with enough hits, you can take an enemy out.  However, using the environmental hazards, you can make quick work of enemies.  Hitting strategic barrels or electrical panels, you can kill a lot of the enemies that try to deter your progress out of the sinking ship.  Sadly, I never found myself switching ammo types from the default sonic rounds, as they are never needed, except for when the game specifically wants you to use them.  It does not help that the shooting mechanics are not great, as they start to overwhelm the player towards the later stages of the game, when you have enemies that are swimming underwater, and come in huge waves that will have you staring at the reload screen more often than you should need to.

Other issues come from the control scheme when you are swimming underwater.  The controls can sometimes leave you struggling to surface from water due to unseen obstructions, leaving you as a floating corpse again and again.  It is sad, because the swimming segments are easily the most tension filled moments in the game.  Kate is a quality swimmer, but she can only hold her breath underwater for so long, and hearing her heartbeat start to thump harder as she gets low and her gurgling sounds as she starts to slowly drown is wrenching sounds.  Many times, I found myself panicking as I tried to find the end of a passage to surface, only to drown right before I was enveloped into the safety of a zone not submerged.  Control lapses just kill some of this as you know you are in a safe area, but you cannot seem to get yourself pointed right-side up to get out of the water.  Also, when you have to jump across areas, the camera can get in the way, leaving you jumping with a tinge of faith, hoping that you have lined yourself up for a backwards jump.  It does not happen often, but it happens enough that it gets in the way of your enjoyment of Hydrophobia.

The bigger issue, without too much of a spoiler is that the ending just happens, and you are left literally sitting on an escape that never happens.  Sure, the game is a planned trilogy, but with the poor reviews, one has to wonder if that escape will ever happen, leaving you with a confusing ending very similar to other unfinished trilogies like Beyond Good and Evil and Advent Rising.  I hope they will finish the story, as it was very enjoyable, with quality voice acting and solid looking graphics, but I fear that this will end up being an unfinished work, and it does hurt the overall enjoyment of the game.

Hydrophobia is a good game, complete with a good narrative, solid voice work and it creates a great amount of tension with its underwater environments.  I have no problem recommending it as a game to pick up on the Xbox Live Arcade, but it does come with the caveat that you may never see the actual end of the game.  Hydrophobia gets 3.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out Hydrophobia and other XBLA  reviews at Test Freaks.