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 Hover: Revolt of Gamers is a game about running really fast and bouncing around like a lunatic. Also you're saving video games from an evil mayor or something but I'm ignoring that part because it's dumb. Hover takes obvious inspiration from Jet Set Radio mixed with an arcade-y take on Mirror's Edge parkour mechanics and weird French cartoon aliens that occasionally remind me of Beyond Good & Evil (but don't ask me to justify that comparison because I can't). The game's still very early in development, so it's missing a bunch of planned features, the world is closed in by "WIP" barriers, and there's not much in the way of an end goal, but running around the city is already fun in spite of some early-alpha jank and this thing could be pretty cool once it's complete. The Game After completing a brief tutorial explaining the basic controls, you're dumped into the slums at the bottom of the city and are free to run around, take on maybe 20 missions or so, jump through signs, and pick up open-world collectible trinkets. You unlock new characters by completing missions and earn experience points to level up and increase your character's stats, and unlocking all the characters and reaching the maximum level are the closest things you'll find to an end goal right now. In terms of actually running around, you've got the basic parkour moves you'd expect--wall runs and wall jumps and the like--as well as some grinds and slides and flips, a bounce you can use to regain height off of a long fall, and the power to rewind your character's movements to correct a bad jump or get back where you were after a fall. The controls are a little loose and floaty, but with how fast you move and how high you jump they kind of need to be. Once you put some points in speed/acceleration/jump, get used to your character's momentum, and learn to manage your energy meter (which mostly serves as a limit on consecutive walljumps) and Hoverheat mode (which boosts your stats and gives you infinite energy when you do grinds and tricks), you pretty quickly start launching yourself all over the place and finding new ways to get around. The game gives you enough leeway that even awkwardly flailing about when you don't know what you're doing can be fun, and it's great when you manage to pull off something cool. In addition to your basic checkpoint races and stuff, a lot of missions revolve around picking up objects (game consoles, pets, removable media) and taking them to places. Carrying things slows you down and limits your jumps, plus you'll drop what you're carrying if you rewind or fall too far, which forces you to think harder about how you're going to get around and find more complicated lines through the city (since you can't just jump over everything). It's kind of a pain, but it makes sense. Also kind of a pain are the security drones, which used to activate if you passed a camera while carrying something and forced you to drop the item, but now activate any time you pass a camera and stick you back at the nearest respawn point. They're kind of obnoxious and there isn't a good way to deal with them yet, but I'm sure that's going to change eventually (if only because it seems like such a bad idea as it stands). When you level up you get a point you can put in Speed, Acceleration, Jump, Grind, Strength (which lets you carry objects without being slowed down as much), or Energy (which lets you do more walljumps before your bar runs out). In my experience, Speed, Acceleration, and Jump are as useful as you'd expect, Grind is less useful than you'd expect, and Strength and Energy are nice quality-of-life stats but not very exciting. Every category has 3 levels and you get 10 points to spend in total, with no takebacks. It's pretty barebones and there are screenshots showing a more elaborate upgrade wheel so I'm almost certain that's going to change eventually too. Oh, also, there's a mission editor if you want to go and set up your own races or whatever. The interface is clunky and I don't think there's any way to share missions with other players but hey, ~it's an alpha~. Multiplayer It exists! Technically! There's not much point right now, since missions don't work with more than one person, but you can watch other people bounce around the city along with you and that's kind of neat I guess. This is one area that's obviously going to see a lot of development later on, but it'll happen when it happens. Characters I couldn't find good single images of all the playable characters, so this lineup will have to do:  Not pictured are the so-called "Anonymous Gamers." They're just faceless hoodie people and the metaphorical Mario of Hover, with no special strengths or weaknesses. Comes in "ambiguous hoodie person" and "curvy ambiguous hoodie person" flavors. They're the only characters you can create at the start of the game; everyone else you need to unlock by completing a chain of missions, usually the ones given by that character themselves. The green-haired girl in the middle is Greendy, who's sort of a cocky, short-tempered tomboy type. She's the first character you're likely to unlock, because her missions are all simple checkpoint races and they're fairly close to the starting point. She comes with the "Light" trait, which increases acceleration but decreases strength. She's a solid character and one of the best choices for gottagofast, though she has trouble with any mission where you need to carry things. Watabax is the rabbit guy also there in the middle. He's timid, afraid of heights, and usually gets blamed when things go wrong. Because he's in charge of retrieving confiscated "Gameballs" (like a Gamecube but the opposite, get it) and returning them to their rightful owners, he gives you delivery missions where you need to take a ball from point A to point B, usually because the delivery point is somewhere high up and he doesn't want to do it himself. He has the "Shy" trait, which lowers all of your stats but gives you a massive boost when you enter Hoverheat mode. I haven't played too much of him but I suspect he's actually really good, since in my experience it's not hard to trigger Hoverheat and keep it going just by doing the occasional flip. Over on the far left is alien mohawk girl Veelan. She's only loosely associated with the gamers and seems to take the whole "rebelling against an oppressive regime" thing a little more seriously than they do. She gives you Chase missions where people run away from you and you have to catch them. They're pretty easy so she's not hard to unlock. She's the fastest runner but has poor air control and struggles with turning in general; the menu doesn't name or describe her trait, but that's what I've gathered from using her. She's my preferred character right now, but she's relatively unforgiving and it's easy to lose the speed advantage if you misjudge a jump or fail a turn and have to rewind. Next to Veelan is Otello, Moorish soldier of Venice. He's the gamers' de facto leader and main tech guy. His missions are a little more varied than most, in that he gives you two simple checkpoint races designed to make sure you understand rewinding is a thing you can do, and then he gives you a couple of Jet Set Radio-style graffiti missions. His trait is called "Gifted" and it boosts all of your stats but disables the Hoverheat bonus. In other words, he's a solid all-rounder but is probably going to be outpaced by other characters since the Hoverheat bonus is pretty significant and, as mentioned before, easy enough to activate. The last character in the current build is the E-Cop, that one-eyed robot thing towards the right. I think he's some kind of mass-produced enforcement robot. You unlock him by completing Potatox's missions, which involve luring security drones into traps. His "Heavy" trait is the opposite of Greendy's, boosting strength at the expense of acceleration, and I haven't played him yet because that doesn't sound terribly useful. I think strength is supposed to play a role in collisions with other players in PvP scenarios so maybe once that becomes a thing he'll be like Bowser in Mario Kart. The rest of the characters haven't turned up yet, but the green dinosaur (?) guy towards the left has his head in a couple of dialog boxes (his name is Liff), the big guy who looks like an evil mayor is probably the evil mayor, and I'm guessing the burly red dude on the far right is related to the "Breakers," a third faction that's alluded to in one of the mission dialogs. I think there's eventually supposed to be some kind of pick-your-side faction thing between the gamers, the evil mayor, and the Breakers, but there doesn't seem to be a mechanical framework for it in-game yet. Music They got Hideki Naganuma, you guys! He hasn't finished any tracks for the game yet, but he's going to eventually! And what is early access if not the promise of things to come? In all seriousness, I'm super excited to hear what Naganuma comes up with, and he's supposed to be finishing up his first track soon, but right now there's basically four tracks in the game (exploration/missions for night/day) and they're okay--I like the new night tracks a good deal, actually--but they get old after a while. Still, it's not like music is something any game finalizes early on, so I'm waiting to see what we get.  Early Access If I haven't been beating it into the ground enough, this game is super not finished. The basic framework is there, and it's good, but there's an obvious dearth of content, stuff that's clearly placeholder, and a general sense of bugginess, which is of course what you get with the early access model. The game is being made by a team of three French people calling themselves Midgar Studios, and English isn't exactly their first language (the store blurbs are pretty indicative of how the in-game text reads, and while part of me hopes they get a native English speaker to look over that stuff by release another part of me kind of hopes they don't), but the updates they're putting out--though infrequent--have been significant steps forward in terms of features and content. They seem like they care about what they're doing and as far as I can tell this will probably be A Real Video Game eventually, even if it takes a while. The fundamental thing that's missing right now is an overarching structure that gives you a compelling reason to run around beyond just "running around is fun" and we've still got a ways to go before that gets addressed. I'm only making a thread right now instead of waiting for the game to be more of a game first because a big update just hit, the game's on sale, and I haven't seen anybody really talking about it outside of the SPUF and the forum on the developers' website (and as we all know both of those things are universally garbage). Is Hover worth a full $20 purchase in its current state? Eh, probably not. But if you share my specific crippling weaknesses and "Jet Set Radio mixed with Mirror's Edge" plus "we got Hideki Naganuma" is enough to ensure you're going to buy this thing no matter what, there's enough fun to be had just tooling around that it's worth putting in a preorder when the game goes on one of its occasional minor discounts (like right now). These French dudes found the exact combination of influences that'll guarantee my  , and the movement mechanics are solid enough that I come back every few months when there's a big update and get another good couple hours out of it, so I can't say it's been a bad early access experience.COOL MOVES -The first-person camera mode doesn't fudge your character's perspective, even when they're doing backflips and poo poo, which is admirable enough that I'm glad it's there and disorienting enough that I'm really glad there are other options. If you want to play in first-person, keep the camera on Auto mode; it's basically first person except it busts back out to third when you do flips and that's infinitely more playable. -The shift key (I'm not sure what it is on a controller) is basically your all-purpose trick button. You can use it to grind on rails, slide on walls or the floor, and turn jumps into flips, which all build you towards Hoverheat mode. A single flip can be enough to get you Hoverheat for a second or two, which helps a lot when you're trying to climb something but can't quite jump high enough for it. -The game doesn't handle turns in the rail you're grinding very well, which is made worse by how many railings in the game consist entirely of hard angles. This has to be something they're going to smooth out eventually but for now try to make sure you're facing the way you want to go when you hit a turn and you'll be less likely to grind off the rail or get turned around. -One mission involves a guy asking you to take his pet for a walk. I'm not entirely sure how the scoring on that one even works, but you seem to get points for falling and/or grinding a certain distance while carrying the pet. I've only managed to clear it by finding a nearby fall or section of a railing that gives a point and looping it over and over. -There are 60 lost Gamegirls (like a Gameboy but the opposite, get it) scattered around the map. Finding one gives you a sizable chunk of experience, so it's worth keeping an eye out for them (although I wouldn't worry about getting all of them or anything). For the most part they're a decent balance of out-of-the-way but not unfair; if you see any kind of nook or cranny just off the beaten path and you expect to find a collectible you probably will. -Jumping through the red holograms gives you a bit of experience, but you need to have enough speed or you'll just bounce off. If you're having a hard time getting fast enough try to find somewhere nearby you can get a running start, or else drop on it from above since you don't need to fall very far before you have enough speed to break it. -You can repeat missions, but at a significantly reduced experience payout. Once you've completed all of them once (which should take you up to level 7 or so I think) your best bet for leveling is to run around breaking signs and grabbing Gamegirls. The last few levels take a lot of experience and there really isn't a whole lot of benefit to grinding for them, so don't bother unless you really like running around the city. I really like running around the city. -The Secuboxes are slow but persistent. They'll despawn eventually if you run far enough but it takes some doing. If you're trying to climb a specific building or do something that's going to keep you in one general area for any length of time, you might have to get caught to make the stupid thing go away.  Current patch: Alpha 3.0 (8/5/15) -New, completely redesigned city. -New missions. -New playable characters (Veelan and curvy ambiguous hoodie person). -Day/night cycle with new music. -New sound effects for leveling up, picking up Gamegirls, etc. -Secuboxes chase and capture players. -Updated graphics. (New textures, new animations, new effects, etc.) -Better performance (for most people at least). -Revamped tutorial. -The full patch notes aren't on Steam for some reason but you can find them on the developer forums.
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Aug 9, 2015 16:30
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 12:25 |
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