Hydrophobia game

Set in a dystopian near future in which the world is suffering from severe overpopulation, the events in Hydrophobia unfold on The Queen of the World, a huge ship containing the Five Founding Fathers, corporate men who have prospered while others have struggled to sustain themselves during the massive population surge.

The ship is attacked by terrorists calling themselves the Malthusians named after politician Thomas Malthus, who predicted that population growth would outstrip agricultural development. Cue the reluctant hero, systems engineer Kate Wilson, who attempts to uncover the terrorist plot and save the ship's passengers.

Wilson is a believable central character, and it is refreshing to see a strong female protagonist. Water can be used to your advantage, as well as act as a tough obstacle. Throughout Hydrophobia you have to contend with highly realistic flowing water that, while often a source of tension, can be manipulated to solve puzzles or to gain a tactical advantage in combat. Exploding a floating fuel drum can give you a major advantage in a fight, even if the explosion doesn't damage your enemy. The force of the blast can create huge waves that unbalance your foes or send them flying into the environment, knocking them out and drowning them.

You can even start oil fires on the surface of the water and then manipulate the waves to push the flames toward hiding enemies. In puzzles, water is generally used to help you traverse an area or reach something that was previously inaccessible. One such scenario has you destroy a section of the ship's already damaged hull to fill a large area with water, allowing Kate to swim up to an area that was previously out of reach. Unfortunately, in scenarios where Kate needs to swim, the water physics actually work against you and ultimately cause major frustrations.

So much effort has gone into the mechanics of the waves that it can often be difficult just to climb out of a pool. The protagonist bounces up and down at the water's edge, as the button prompt to climb out barely stays onscreen long enough for you to respond. Swimming underwater is challenging too, because the controls aren't as responsive as they should be. Hydrophobia also does a poor job of letting you know how long you can last underwater before drowning.

The screen only fades in slightly to indicate that Kate has little air left. This problem also permeates the combat, where the same minimal heads-up display fading does little to communicate when you are being hit by enemy fire.

This is especially irritating because Kate can only take a handful of hits before being killed, even on the normal difficulty setting. The combat will feel familiar if you've ever played a cover-based shooter. Kate takes refuge behind obstacles with a press of the A button and can then lean around them to take out enemies. Kate's handgun can be upgraded with different ammo types. You begin with stun rounds that have to be charged by holding down the fire button. The game was hyped massively before release, being touted as having production values of a full-priced commercially released game.

The critics metaphorically crucified it upon release. In response, the developers released a patch known as Hydrophobia Pure that fixed most of the issues except the voice acting, which understandably you can't simply "tweak" like gameplay issues , and dropped the price by MS points.

In another response, the developers released Hydrophobia Prophecy , a remake of the game, on Steam and the PlayStation Network. It took Hydrophobia Pure and improved it even further in just about every area: visuals, level design, narrative, gameplay, audio, etc. The story is expanded on, as is Kate's " waterbending '--the Malthusians attacked the Queen of the World in order to seize Nanomachines intended to purify water on a massive scale which would produce enough resources to make their philosophy obsolete , intending to turn them into a Depopulation Bomb.

Kate interrupts them in the act, resulting in a Freak Lab Accident that eventually allows her to manipulate water with a gesture. According to the game's creator , Pete Jones, Blade Interactive already has plans for a sequel.

It will take place in the eastern United States--specifically, in a "drowned Boston", because " New York has had more of its fair share of fictional and real disasters over time. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here. All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted.

All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. During the celebration for the ship's year anniversary, a group of terrorists called the Malthusians attack the ship, taking control of the ship's engines and killing the workers. The attack also has the side-effect of flooding many of the compartments in the ship. Kate with the help of Scoot via radio must make it off A-deck alive while fighting off the armed terrorists and saving her workmates.

The theme is water —water flowing, flooding and drowning. Your initial weapon is a "sonic pistol"—a stun gun granted surprising properties in the flooding environments of the ship's lower decks.

It has infinite ammo, and will stun mooks for several seconds, knock small objects around and shatter glass. However, it also has a Charged Attack that causes an impressive, albeit small explosion.