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Perhaps the most frustrating element of Hydro Thunder is the outright difficulty. So, in short, the best boats to select are the slowest ones, unless you're less concerned with winning the race than you are with placing the fastest time. This makes it a bit lopsided, as you get none of the pros but all the cons inherent in choosing a more difficult boat. If you choose a faster, more difficult boat to control, you'll be up against faster opponents. It's still the case that the computer-controlled opponents are faster or slower depending on which boat you select. While some areas of the game have been improved, the incredibly frustrating AI hasn't been. The most apparent change in the sound effects is the noise your booster makes, which is obviously a loop because it gets louder in midrepetition. Now all the boats pretty much sound the same, and the sound effects have gotten pretty generic. While the in-game music is pretty much the same, the audio cues from your navigator and the engine noises are very low quality.
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Still, there is almost no pop-up, and the graphics are good enough for you to understand what's going on.Īnother department that faced heavy losses was the audio department. Gone are the amazing water effects, and the normal water looks so bad it's questionable what you're actually racing on. The frame rate suffers at times, turning into a choppy mess. All the little graphical touches littering the Dreamcast game aren't in the PlayStation version, and some of the effects are so poorly translated that they're almost laughable. While the graphics found on the PlayStation version aren't terrible, they definitely hurt the game. Hydro Thunder's greatest asset was its incredible graphics, which just don't translate well onto the PlayStation. This makes it all the more difficult to pull off boost jumps, as the boost button is now nowhere near the brakes. Unfortunately, the PlayStation version doesn't let you completely customize your controls and instead makes you pick one of three different preset control schemes, none of which emulates the controls of the Dreamcast version. Still, the user interface has been much improved, and it now sports a "restart race" command from the pause menu and offers a more comprehensive option menu. The time-trial mode lets you race a track without opponents or a time limit, but it isn't that useful because you aren't allowed to explore the track and look for secret paths. Unfortunately, there's nothing to spend your accumulated wealth on, making the mode almost worthless, as you can neither save your progress nor switch boats between races. The circuit mode is a somewhat awkward attempt to make the different tracks fit together, as you pick a boat and make money depending on what rank you place in each race. This basic concept remains the same throughout, as it's only trivial details that change between modes. Along the way you'll run into various obstacles, collect boosters, make insanely huge jumps, and do your best to keep your boat afloat. You're still racing one of nine different boats across 12 different courses in an attempt to place first.
PLAYSTATION HYDRO THUNDER TRIAL
The addition of circuit and time trial haven't changed the game a whole lot. While it's obvious the developers spent more time making this version of Hydro Thunder more complete, without the graphical muscle of the arcade hardware or the Dreamcast, the PlayStation version simply isn't as impressive. Now, more than half a year later, the game has landed on the PlayStation. The game was rushed to the Dreamcast so that it could have the advantage of being one of the few reasonably good games available at launch, and it ended up being a beautiful, if not painfully exact, arcade port. Hydro Thunder is one of those games that prove that timing is everything.