Hyperdrive Massacre – review

Ok, so I looked at this game with an ignorant point of view as indie games are not something that wets my appetite, but as the past has proved I’m starting to fall in love with indie games. It kind of reminds us where “we” came from in a gaming industry kind of way.

There is not too much in this game to really get your teeth into unless you have 3 mates a crate of beer and a kid and wife free evening to really (slightly) enjoy what Hyperdrive Massacre has to offer.

Now whilst modes team deathmatch, deathmatch and last man standing require you to obliterate your opponents in a frantic score kill ratio. Space Soccer and Spong offer alternatives objectives such as two vs two space soccer where just as in real football you have to out score the other players. Death race will have players racing towards checkpoints while taking out their opponents if necessary. And last but not least is Spong which is very similar to air hockey where you stay in your own half and get the ball in the goal, exactly the same as Space Soccer.

The car designs look awesome before you enter each arena such as the iconic DeLorean, a beetle car with a tank’s cannon attached to the roof to name a few, but once the gameplay starts the excellent artwork goes out the window as there reduced to tiny floating colour blobs. The power ups offer you something similar to any space age 2D shooter i.e bigger bullets, bigger rockets, mines and laser beams. What i will say is the graphical effects for the weapon power ups offer little in the excitement department as they are pretty dull and don’t do justice to the very well presented arenas.

Now i’m going to be brutally honest and say i got my behind handed to me especially the first few rounds as the AI is extremely challenging when you do not have any friends to game with at hand. This is a plus for me as i’m fed up of predictable AI which does not offer you a gaming challenge. This game is basically muscle cars in space shooting lasers at each other spinning round and round darting in and out of the screen trying to catch each other out or dodging and directing other players mines. Imagine green and orange Tic Tac’s spinning round shooting even smaller Tic Tac’s at each other and you will have pretty much summed up this game in a nutshell. But i have to say the game is jam packed with vehicles and maps to unlock which is integrated into the interactive backgrounds with floating asteroids and special abilities filling your screen.

“Imagine green and orange Tic Tac’s spinning round shooting even smaller tic tacs at each other and you will have pretty much summed up this game in a nutshell.”

The game doesn’t try to be anything fancy, it’s purely energetic chaotic 8 bit gameplay which i’m actually starting to love! Maybe actually the simplicity of the game is it’s biggest strength. Hyperdrive Massacre is a social game but also a time filler, for me it’s best played with friends for a bit of early evening banter.

So far for me the best game mode for me is Death Race against 3 other players or against AI, it’s the frantic gameplay which sees you spinning to avoid everybody else’s rays of destruction but be prepared to die quite often!

Visually for a £7.99 game it’s actually quite easy on the eye with a lot of vibrant colours bouncing off each other, which compliments the electric beats soundtrack. Even when the game was installing it had a few cheesy quirky lines to amuse you such ‘applying hair gel’, ‘upscaling to 8 bit’ to name a few. The downside to the controls is that it’s very easy to get out of control, you end up spinning as you are forever trying to counter your opponent’s moves while avoiding their lasers, I kind of forgot to take my finger off the hyperdrive forward button so i was continually ending up going forward while spinning.

Hyperdrive Massacre is available on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Review copy supplied on Xbox One