Score: 9
"interesting gameplay."
date: August 23, 2008
i thought it was a great game overall, and the graphics had me always wanting to play the next level just to see what went whizzing by. but while it has nice gameplay, it has a really weird difficulty curve. for me, the hardest part i the whole game was unlocking level 3. then the game was significantly easier until i came up to the last level, and tried to at least qualify for the locked content to show that i had pretty much mastered the game. the last level was hard- making split decisions while traveling at 12000 MPH would leave just about anyone smashed into the nearest intergalactic lamp post. overall, the strangest thing about the entire game was the controls. okay, moving the mouse to control where you are is about as complicated as tetris, but when you throw in the fact that you cant SEE the mouse and the change between where you are and where you want to be is gradual, split decisions will often end up throwing you off the track permanently. which brings me to my next point- it's a little hard to define what will take you INSIDE a shape and what will send you glancing off the edge of it with hardly any speed boost at all. i guess that comes with having the camera stapled to the front of a starship that's breaking every speed law that ever came into existence.
i guess the whole point im trying to make is this. its a good game and a cool concept with awesome visuals. but the one thing it lacks is accuracy. the game gives you a percentage of how accurate you were after every level, and even after qualifying for every track, i only got above 50% once. and that's for the rings i went through.
August 23, 2008
Author's Response:
Very interesting comments, thanks!
If you watch the reticule at the centre of the screen you can effectively see your mouse position - it shows you (very subtly) the direction you are moving in.
We thought this worked better than showing the mouse on screen, having tried both ways.
I guess the unlock times could be harder, but the game was not really meant to be about that, it's about improving your race times. There is a lot which can be done to get increasingly good times.
However, points taken for Hyperdrive X2 :-)
Cheers,
LongAnimals
