[Mechanical R]

Round two of the Summer of Arcade and a powerboat racer splashes onto our marketplace. Hydro Thunder Hurricane, the sequel to Hydro Thunder way back on the PSX/N64, is the only racer of the summer of arcade which aims to bring all the fun back into old school arcade racers.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a mixture of game types. With traditional races there’s also time trial events involving checkpoint rings, and another time trial but with explosive barrels hindering your fastest path. There are also championships combining all three of these into league like formats.

Almost the entirety of the game is unlocked via completing events. Coming in the top three which in some modes can be pretty tricky, will unlock credits which will then unlock boats, race tracks and events as you slowly accumulate a huge amount of credits. These credits work both in single player and multiplayer.



The game supports online and local multiplayer. Something games lack these days is a 4 way split screen multiplayer which Hydro manages greatly along with A.I. racers to give the players quite a challenge.

The boats are all unique and great looking, not to mention sounding. Each boat has their own attributes like handling and speed, and new skins for each boat are unlock able by winning races with them, or finding hidden tokens.

Another age old game classic featured in Hydro Thunder is the use of hidden tokens around the race tracks, there are 10 tokens in each track and they are available to collect over ALL game modes including multiplayer. Some are quite easy to find, whereas some will require cunning and a sharp eye to find. Using jumps, the boats nitro jump, or sometimes even strong waves to collect them.



Because there is no free roam, it means you may need to throw a race to find some of the harder tokens, but it makes for good fun with a group of you scouring the entire map, finding and learning new routes and shortcuts to find all of them.

The tracks are all well varied and imaginative. Most of them are point to point races with some being traditional lap races. The settings vary from dams and sewers to more exotic areas like glacier and tropical islands. The levels are filled with shortcuts and entertaining set pieces to make sure the race isn’t all smooth waters.

The games has a good fair amount of races, with plenty to participate in, and all the tokens to find, not including multiplayer Hydro Thunder Hurricane has plenty to keep you going. With both online and offline multiplayer the game can be played as a party game with mates or as something more serious on Xbox Live.



Hydro Thunder Hurricane is that of a good fun arcade racer which caters for gamers in more ways than some full triple A retail racers do. For those looking for some fun, or those who miss the games of the likes of N64’s Wave Race or the PS2’s Splashdown. Hydro does well for bringing water sports back, and who knows if we’ll see anymore?

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