[quote]Follow my Curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41363546-Fruit-N-Doggie-Reviews/]Fruit N Doggie Reviews,[/url] so you can be updated whenever I post a new review.[/quote]
[h1]Overall Rating Seriously Flawed ★★☆☆☆[/h1]
[h1]First Impressions[/h1]
I can't recall where I obtained Hypership Out of Control (HS), but it likely came to Steam during the time when porting apps was the trend. Nowadays, the big thing seems to be trying to replicate the latest indie game that went viral. In that sense, even though I wasn't that fond of this release, at least it's not a copy cat of someone else's work. If it is, at least I don't recognize the source material because I've seen it 1,000 times elsewhere.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
There are four game modes available: Normal, Hardcore, Super Speed, and Coin Down. As you can guess, Normal Mode throws you right into the action, with three lives, and ten levels to beat. Hardcore removes all of your lives, so you'd have to clear every stage without making a single mistake. Super Speed offers difficulty in the form of removing the cap on your maximum speed, so you'll continuously keep speeding up. Theoretically, I'm not sure if you can dodge everything, due to not having enough time to move in front of a breakable wall fast enough for your lasers to hit. You do have the same amount of lives as the Normal mode though. Coin Down requires you to constantly gather coins to sustain yourself. Practice lets you select any wave you've already reached and play through it freely, meaning that you could learn all of the upcoming obstacles and patterns in advance. Even with this available though, few people earn many of the game's achievements, as they have very low clear rates.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3714095560
[h1]Controls[/h1]
This is implied by the title, but the irony is that surviving only makes it harder and harder to handle your ship. The upcoming obstacles arrive quickly, but as you learn how the developers tend to arrange obstacles, you can somewhat predict where a viable route will likely be. Sometimes I've questioned why I didn't dodge an obstacle in time, because I moved my ship far enough in front of a destructible wall, but seemingly my lasers didn't fire fast enough to clear it away.
[h1]Story[/h1]
Because of the gameplay I understand why there isn't any story behind this concept, but it could have led into an interesting idea easily enough. Something going wrong with your only means of transportation through space immediately makes for a solid conflict to resolve. There's no lore to the game though; you just jump into a game mode and try not to crash.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3714096427
[h1]Visuals[/h1]
As expected, space is used as the background, and you could probably switch this with several other SHMUP titles, without noticing a difference. There's nothing wrong with it, but I don't know how you'd make one iteration stand out compared to any other space game. If you activate fun stars, it'll make the background change color like a light show, but I'd think it'd be a distraction when you're trying to dodge things. Since you're not fighting enemies, something of a rarity for this genre, all of the obstacles come in the form of inanimate objects, such as blocks, barriers, and comets. Honestly, I'm less disappointed in the blandness, and more perplexed by some of the odd choices. When there's already far too many colored blocks in your game, putting eyes on some of them isn't going to turn around how I feel about your designs.
[h1]Sound Design[/h1]
I don't know who's decision it was, but the title “music” is incredibly annoying. If you've heard complaints about bad music from the NES era, the worst offenders revolve around looping a short burst ad nauseum so that you get sick to death of constant repetition. That's what happens here, and it's literally looping the same one second of notes without stopping. Thankfully, once you actually start playing one of the modes, it plays a tune that's much less grating. Unfortunately, it does make use of some sound effects that are still pretty annoying, so to say it's an improvement isn't clearing the bar by much.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3714096721
[h1]Pros[/h1]
🌟 You can practice levels if you really want to improve your high score.
🌟 The levels can be inverted, which would mildly change things up.
[h1]Cons[/h1]
❌ It's not uncommon for your lasers to fail hitting a wall fast enough, even though you moved in front of it in time.
❌ Since the game modes don't change the levels or layouts, the gameplay gets stale and repetitive.
[h1]Tips[/h1]
🔍 Keep your ship near the bottom and center of the screen, and only move it when necessary. Needlessly moving back and forth increases your chances of hitting an obstacle.
🔍 You can use the sound of your lasers hitting something as a clue. The sound of hitting an unbreakable object is different than when you blast away blocks.
[h1]Final Thoughts[/h1]
Considering its price and emphasis on short bursts of gaming, this is essentially something you'd have in your library as a 10 minute time killer. There's no reason you'd ever want this to fill a larger gap in time, but if you have a short wait and don't want to scratch the surface of a much more engaging title, this could be a waiting room experience. Even if you only got this for some pocket change, I think there's many other options that would do a better job of holding your short attention span, so it's not a game I'd suggest getting.
[table]
[tr]
[th]PC Specs[/th]
[th]Performance[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Ryzen 2700
RTX 2070
16GB RAM
ADATA SSD
1920x1080
[/td]
[td]The game ran without incident on default settings.
💖 - HS is healthy
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
