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The king of powerboat racing games has returned.
What’s Hot:

Easy to control
Beautiful environments
Lots to do in the single player and multiplayer modes.

What’s Not:

If you don’t like racing games you wont find anything here that will change your mind.

Hydro Thunder: Hurricane is the second in this year’s Summer of Arcade Games line up and is the sequel to the 1999 arcade powerboat racing game Hydro Thunder created by Indie Developer Vector Unit. Hydro Thunder Hurricane is not a remake of the original game, but does feature speedboats from the original including: Razorback, Damn the Torpedoes, Tidal Blade, Rad Hazard and many more. The tracks in the game are all original, but feature the same style of shortcuts and big jumps the series is known for.

The presentation in Hydro Thunder Hurricane is very beautiful. The water and the boats look amazing and the range of different courses and landscapes are beautiful from the Jungles to the Paris sewers and the icy seas.

Controlling the boats in Hydro Thunder Hurricane is very easy, not matter what type of boat it is, with boats being graded by acceleration, top speed, handling and air control.

Littered throughout the tracks are boost canisters, blue canisters giving you a little bit of boost, letting you go faster than would be normally possible and red boost canisters gives you tons of extra boost, essential for taking the lead in races. To access most of the shortcuts in Hydro Thunder Hurricane you will need to use your boost to make your boat jump over objects or find items in the track that will open extra shortcuts.

The single player component in Hydro Thunder Hurricane is split into 4 different events, a straight up Race mode, Ring Master in which you need to navigate through rings while trying to finish with the best time, Gauntlet mode lets you race through courses while avoiding exploding barrels and Championship mode combines these modes together to which racers compete for the most points over the specified amount of tracks.

The tracks and boats in the single player mode are unlocked by winning races and gaining credits. The single player will take some time to finish with tons of tracks to race in the 4 different modes.

The multiplayer of Hydro Thunder Hurricane has 2 modes: The standard race mode or a Rubber Ducky mode which is similar a game mode called Cat and Mouse that can be found in other racing games in which players are split into 2 teams, red and blue with one member on each team being elected as the games equivalent of the mouse, a rubber duck and the other members of the team have to get their teams duck to finish first. Both modes can played locally for 4 players split screen, or those 4 players can play online with an extra 4 players online.

Overall Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a very good racing game and as long as you enjoy them then it is a great purchase.

3 Comments

Martyn - 26-07-10

I remember this on the PS1. I bought it in the Co-Op for a tenner.

Smurf_Assassin - 27-07-10

is this the same as the one on the dreamcast?

Paul Rowley - 27-07-10

Originally Posted by Smurf_Assassin

is this the same as the one on the dreamcast?

Like the revew says it is the sequel to the arcade version and all the other ports of hydro thunder are ports of the arcade version.