Last week BonusEXP.com recieved its first review copy of a game and I was the reviewer.  The original Hydro Thunder was one of my favorite games of all time, and I've been excited about this new Hydro Thunder game for some time.  If you read my review below you can see I am happy with how the game turned out.

Another fun note, I am ranked #1 on EVERY race leaderboard in the game.  Yep, as of the last time I checked there isn't a single reviewer in the world that plays the game better than me.  It'll be interesting to see if I can hold my ranking when the game goes public, or in fact if they don't wipe leaderboards altogether.

We might have beaten Giant Bomb to the review punch this time, but don't expect it to be a common occurance.  We're still pretty podcast focused at BonusEXP, and none of us are doing this professionally (we're not getting paid).

It has been an interesting experience.  Even though I finished the review with five days to spare I still felt a tiny bit of pressure.  This review HAD to be done in time.  As I've said in the past, I have no particular plans to actually get into games journalism as my day job, but it's a fun hobby for now.

The review is up on BonusEXP, but to be community-friendly here is the entire review with no omissions :

"Hydro Thunder Hurricane by Vector Unit hearkens to an age of arcade racing classics such as Daytona USA and San Francisco Rush.  A time when video game race tracks were designed for entertainment value instead of mimicking real world locations.  An era when you might crash through a building to grab a floating powerup only to smash into a wall and explode into a massive fireball.  Hydro Thunder was a product of the nineties, yet its solid gameplay and emphasis on fun are timeless.  Can Hydro Thunder Hurricane reclaim these values and live up to the legacy of its past?

Hydro Thunder fans will be pleased, virtually everything they loved about the original has returned with Hurricane.  You pilot a screaming-fast jetboat through cleverly designed waterways, picking up boost tanks and discovering hidden shortcuts.  You'll blast through canyons and canals, dams and ancient temples, tropical jungles and glaciers.  The lighthearted humor, over the top set pieces, and fun fast-paced gameplay have all been replicated with great care.

However, Hydro Thunder Hurricane is not simply a port of the original game.  In addition to the classic race mode Vector Unit has added the Ring Master mode where you must navigate through rings or be penalized, an explosive filled Gauntlet mode where you must beat the clock, and a Championship mode that challenges you to a series of these events.  There are eight new courses, all packed with crazy hazards and jumps.  One brand new boat (Vector) and one multiplayer-only boat (Rubber Duck) join eight redesigned boats from the original game.  Mighty hull, which allowed you to smash opponents' boats out of the way when boosting, has been removed to foster more balanced competitive play.  A less flashy but nonetheless useful slipstream drafting system adds some additional depth to the racing.

Online multiplayer is technically excellent but perhaps a bit shallow.  Every race I played was completely free of lag and hitching.  Although the maneuvering area is usually wide enough that boat to boat contact rarely happens, slamming into an opponent never exposed any deficiency in the netcode.  There are only two online modes, a standard race with up to 8 players and a team-based mode where one player on each team selects the rubber duck boat and attempts to finish the race before the other team's duck boat.  One fault that comes into play is the boat balance, higher class boats really are better in every way.  You'll be seeing a lot of Rad Hazard.  Overall, online play is fun and skill-based, but offers little incentive to keep coming back.

Hurricane's graphics are good for a downloadable racing title.  The framerate is smooth, fluctuating between 30 and 60 frames per second.  The ever present water is beautiful with nice looking reflections and impressive boat wake ripples.  Environments range in fidelity but are typically interesting to look at, with several truly inspired areas such as vast underground sewers and an alien planet.  I especially enjoyed the artificial canals of the Japanese stadium, which feel like something that should exist in the real world.

Hurricane delivers a lot of content for a fifteen dollar downloadable racing game.  The point system for unlocking new gamerpics, boat skins, and avatar awards increases longevity.  Ten medals hidden in each course and the well designed leaderboards will occupy the obsessive gamer for quite a while.  However, unlocking all the tracks and boats can be accomplished quickly, which may leave some players feeling they have nothing left to do.  Players will have to find the drive within themselves to replay the basic race mode.

I've enjoyed playing tracks over and over to improve my placement on the online leaderboards most of all.  If you have a competitive nature this bug might grab you like it did me.  Unfortunately, once you've gotten used to the expert class boats there is very little reason to ever select the inferior boats.  This could have been rectified by making the expert boats significantly harder to control or crippling their acceleration.  So while I've enjoyed my time racing these tracks, now that I've reached near leaderboard perfection there's not much to keep me interested.

Notwithstanding, Hydro Thunder Hurricane provides a great example of the raw thrills that can be had with an arcade-style racing game.  Hydro Thunder fans will probably be safe buying the game outright, but every gamer who enjoys fast action should check out the trial.  With its waterslide-esque courses no game fits the "Summer of Arcade" theme better and Hydro Thunder Hurricane is easily the best racing game on Xbox Live Arcade.  It's a shame Microsoft doesn't sell a moisture spraying accessory for the Xbox 360 to complete the illusion.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane is available on July 28th, 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 Microsoft points.

Note : I was unable to sample the 'Rubber Ducky' online mode or the four player split-screen offline multiplayer as of the writing of this review."

So, if anyone has any questions about Hydro Thunder Hurricane, feel free to ask.

Congrats man, and well written review.

Great review!
Expert is very hard...