Hydro Thunder (Dreamcast) review "Yes, Hydro Thunder employs what some have described as the rubber-band sort of mentality. Here, though, it’s worse than ever. It doesn’t matter if you have the best time anyone has ever managed when playing the game. There’s about a 70% chance you’ll rank fourth or worse. That’s just how the game works. Completion times are irrelevant."

It would be easy to talk about the amazing highlights that fill Hydro Thunder, one of the Dreamcast’s launch titles. I’ll do that in a moment. But first, I think we should get something out of the way: the game kind of sucks. I know it’s not cool to play my hand so early in the review. I should work up to it gradually. But the game makes its flaws obvious pretty quickly, so I figured I’d be generous to you and do the same.

Imagine the most beautiful racer the Dreamcast ever saw. In a nutshell, that’s Hydro Thunder. The environments here, particularly the first six, are nothing short of breathtaking. Consider Lake Placid. The water reflects an auburn sunset as hot air balloons float overhead and hang gliders soar on the evening breeze. As you follow the race course, these distractions vanish from sight and suddenly you’re riding through caverns while the water laps against the limestone to your side. As you emerge from the cave, you find that darkness has finally descended. Racing quickly, you fly over the edge of a dam and soar through the air toward a bridge far in the distance. It’s almost possible to feel the wind whipping through your hair. The exhilaration is that tangible.

Then your boat crashes against the water and you slide over the finish line in fifth place.

Just like that, we’re into those flaws I mentioned. They really reach out and slap you in the face. Then they laugh at you as you give the race another attempt. But who could blame you? After all, you finished with a time of 2 minutes and 13 seconds. So you give the race another shot, keeping an eye on the timer for its duration. You’re about to give up. You’re coming in at 2 minutes and 20 seconds and your performance this time around has quite frankly stunk. Then you realize something odd: you’re in first place! You finish the race, not caring that your time was pathetic or that you didn’t even rank among the best times for the lap because, for the first time ever, you managed to win.

Yes, Hydro Thunder employs what some have described as the rubber-band sort of mentality. Here, though, it’s worse than ever. It doesn’t matter if you have the best time anyone has ever managed when playing the game. There’s about a 70% chance you’ll rank fourth or worse. That’s just how the game works. Completion times are irrelevant. Some might wish to use them as a progression meter, but there’s really no point.

It’s difficult to put into words how frustrating this fact really is. Suddenly, you won’t care that you’re skidding down ancient Greek architecture as a beautiful village passes beneath you. It won’t matter that you briefly had a good time racing along a massive ocean liner and past a string of killer whales and penguins. The flaw is that debilitating.

But if that weren’t enough, there’re also your boat’s controls to consider. Most of the time, you control like a stick of margarine sliding around in a hot frying pan. Maybe you’re coming up to a shortcut. You scrimped and saved so that you have some turbo boost remaining. Carefully, you aim yourself squarely at a ledge that rises toward a hidden cavern. It’s a shortcut, and if you play your cards right you might be able to shave a few seconds off your time. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a boat rams into you from the side and you’re sent flying. Quickly, you steer hard to the right, back toward the cave, but your boat doesn’t even seem to be aware that you’re directing it anywhere. It just sort of drifts around on the water and doesn’t go anywhere.

This happens all over the place, and your opponents don’t even have to be directly involved. If you’re even close to their wake, you can’t do anything but accelerate and hope you move in a direction vaguely related to the finish line.

When you consider the rubber-band AI and the lack of control you often have over your vessel, Hydro Thunder suddenly becomes a much less tempting proposition than it should be. But wait, I’m not finished! If you are ‘lucky’ enough to be playing one of the original discs (as I was), you’ll definitely want to make sure that you’re using one of the older VMUs. Otherwise, the game may lock up while you’re loading it. This can be particularly frustrating if you’ve worked like crazy to unlock courses and suddenly you can’t play them because of a game glitch.

In the end, Hydro Thunder is something of a relic. The amazing visuals just don’t make up for the frustrating gameplay. This is something you might want to rent for a weekend, but never purchase. Better yet, go to the arcade and drop a few quarters. At least there you can hold a steering wheel and when you leave, the disc isn’t spinning in your Dreamcast, taunting you. In the game, there’s a boat called ‘damn the torpedoes,’ to which I say “What did the torpedoes ever do?” Forget about them. Instead, how about we damn this game? Sounds much better to me!

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Staff review by Jason Venter (July 14, 2005) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.