Hyperide

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Hyperide is an Arcade-style obstacle course-style game where you are steering a space ship through an asteroid field and collecting pickups.

This is a simple game made to be played in short bursts, with a clever built-in mechanic that has you spending increasing amounts of purple “crystals” to continue after a death – the same crystals you use to unlock more game content. So every time you die, you’re weighing in the odds of making back that investment against just taking your winnings and spending them.

This is a really cool mechanic, and I wish it was used on a better game. Hyperide has a few problems that weigh it down. Firstly, the gameplay here is very repetitive. While the game does have a few different gameplay modes to shake things up, for the most part you’ll just be dodging the same rocks and picking up the same purple crystals and floating astronauts throughout.

Secondly, the expansion content you can purchase in the game with in-game currency seems to largely consist of entirely cosmetic details – beyond the two extra game modes you can unlock, the rest is just new backgrounds and new looks for your ship.

However, what really hurts this game is the sluggish controls, with your ship taking far too long to change course for such a fast-paced arcade-like experience. You have a very limited time to react to objects you need to pick up and objects that can instantly kill you, so every split second counts, and this game forces you to waste far too many just getting the damn ship to move.

Visually, this game looks nice, although it’s nothing special. And while the sound is largely forgettable, I have to commend the nice touch of having the floating astronauts you’re picking up apparently hailing from various nations and expressing their thanks in their native tongue (or native bark, in the case of the occasional doggie astronaut). It’s a cute little detail.

In the end, it doesn’t save Hyperide from being a repetitive game with sluggish controls. And while the game makes use of decent graphics and an excellent risk/reward mechanic, it feels wasted on a game that’s this flawed.

tl;dr – Hyperide is an Arcade-style obstacle course game where you’re flying a spaceship through an asteroid field collecting pickups. The game has a clever risk/reward system and decent graphics, but suffers from terrible, sluggish controls and highly repetitive gameplay.

Grade: C-

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