Developer: 34BigThings
Publisher: Digital Tribe
Platforms: PC, Mac, Xbox One
Tested on: PC
Hyperdrive Massacre – Review
Hyperdrive Massacre is 34BigThings’ latest love child. It combines the good old 80’s with muscle cars and Asteroids. It features local multiplayer with quite a bit of game modes, a great sound track and a lot of vehicles and maps to choose from. Use your submachine guns, sniper rifles, homing missiles and much more and wreak havoc on the other players.
Story
When looking at Hyperdrive Massacre, it’s kind of easy to assume that the game doesn’t feature any story at all and doesn’t even try to. However, this isn’t really a bad thing because it feels like adding a story mode would be pretty damn weird, since the game is intended for just jumping in and having some action right away, no frills attached.
Graphics
The game itself is heavily inspired by the 80s and it (kind of) reflects that in the graphics. The in-game menu looks very retro but the gameplay itself is a bit more modern. It’s of course not the prettiest of games, but it’s better than a lot of the indie games out there. The backgrounds in the levels look pretty nice and the cars and projectiles themselves look pretty neat as well. There’s also a “cool graphic” option in the settings, but as far as it’s noticeable it just turns down anti-aliasing, which kind of brings a retro effect to the game.
Sound
Sound wise, Hyperdrive Massacre is surprisingly good! The music fits perfectly with the style it’s trying to achieve. It provides a very retro feeling while still having pretty modern graphics, which makes a perfect combination. There’s quite a bit of soundtracks as well so you’ll never get bored of them. Sound effects are also done pretty nicely, they don’t sound great but aren’t disturbing or overly loud either.
Gameplay
When looking at Hyperdrive Massacre, it’s best compared to the old Asteroids games. But instead of attacking asteroids, you’ll attack other players moving around on your screen. And instead of being a simple space ship, you’re a muscle car! However, the game only supports controller so watch out if you don’t have one! The controls themselves are pretty simple though: you can aim, shoot, go backwards/forwards, use a shield, drop a mine and use your horn, which is always fun to use after you’ve killed your friend.
Hyperdrive Massacre features six game modes in total, each pretty different from one another. There’s the classic Death Match and Team Death Match which are pretty self-explanatory, Death Race where you race to a sphere that appears randomly on the screen which gives points to the first player touching it, Space Soccer which is everything you’d expect it to be, Last Man Standing which gives you a limited amount of lives and you have to kill the rest and last but not least Spong which is pretty similar to Pong.
For each of the game modes, you can set up how many rounds you want to play and after how much score each round ends. This gives you the opportunity to customize the game a little bit as this obviously influences game length. However, there are a couple of game modes which can’t be played with just you and the rest AI: Team Deathmatch, Space Soccer and Spong. This might be very disappointing to a lot of players because a) which PC gamer has more than one controller lying around and b) the game doesn’t support online multiplayer whatsoever.
In most of the game modes you’ll be able to attack your enemies, destroy debris and pick up powerups. These powerups can be sniper shots, grenades, homing missiles and a couple more. In total there’s 10 powerups, each helping a different play style. In order to protect yourself you can use your shield, which deflects most bullets that come straight at you. Another fun thing to use is your bomb, which will sit on its spot on the field until someone gets close, then it will start homing in onto that player. There is a trick you can use to get rid of the bomb however: you can use your shield and make the bomb stick to it and then launch it at another player, which is extremely satisfying to do.
Hyperdrive Massacre also has quite a lot of maps and cars you can choose from. In total there are 16(!) cars and 9 arenas to pick from, which is quite a lot for such a small game. In addition to all of this, you also have a lot of achievements you can get, which will take quite some time to unlock. There’s also a very detailed statistics page which show kills with every weapon, suicides, maximum speed, average speed and much much more.
Conclusion
Hyperdrive Massacre was quite a fun ride (get it, because you play with cars?) from start to finish. It has a good amount of content accompanied by great music and a lot of variety. It’s very easy to play and isn’t hard at all, which makes it a nice casual game to play with friends who aren’t the gaming type. The only frustrations are that the game can only be played with controllers and there’s no online multiplayer if you don’t have the luxury of having people over to play, which will ultimately lock some game modes.
Hyperdrive Massacre - Review,
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