Impressive tech doesn't guarantee a great game.

Reviewed by Cannon Fodder on or around 20th Jun 2012

Hydrophobia: Prophecy is billed as a marked improvement over the original Hydrophobia released to mixed reviews on the Xbox360. Having not played the original, I cannot say how well Prophecy improves the game. But, if this is indeed better than Dark Energy's original effort, their first effort must have really stank.
 
Hydrophobia: Prophecy isn't a bad game by any means, but it relies too much on its fluid physics engine. The water is so realistic! It ebbs and flows, filling rooms, draining into others, and finding a level like water should. That's all great. But it's stuck in a cliched near-future sci-fi world.
 
Terrorists are trying to sink a floating island of super-geniuses. You play a woman who runs and guns her way through cookie-cutter bad guys, occasional puzzles, and a lot of water.
 
The gunplay is nothing new. The levels are pulled right out of a sci-fi b-movie set. Aside from the water, this is every average game you've played, now in a convenient downloadable package. Near the end of the game, the heroine earns a water-manipulation super-power which controls poorly and doesn't give the player enough time to acclimate to before the final boss is beaten and the game is over.
 
To their credit, the developers included a feedback feature in the pause menu. With this, players can send feedback directly to the people who made the game, voting up or down on the graphics, sound, controls, gameplay, and other aspects of the title. It's a feature that I applaud and hope more developers are brave enough to build into their games moving forward.
 
Dark Energy Digital certainly has impressive technology. But they need to work on their game design skills if they hope to impress with a well-rounded game in their next effort.