Ever wondered what it would be like to live in a world where entertainment and fun were illegal? Well, that’s exactly what Hover: Revolt of Gamers is all about. Set in a dystopian sci-fi world, you must join the Resistance and fight this evil dictatorship! Or, you could just spend your time jumping around the city and spray painting walls. This is a game brought to us from a brand new studio and for their first game, it isn’t half bad. But, what can be expected from a game that is essentially based around parkour?
Storyline
As the story of Hover goes, you begin as a clone brought to life by a group calling themselves The Gamers. They want you to join their Resistance in order to overthrow the evil dictator that has made all forms of fun illegal. But, in order to be a part of their group you have to be able to do a lot of running, jumping, sliding and throwing. You can meet all the members of the Gamer group and, if you beat all their missions, you are rewarded with their DNA! Along your long and arduous journey, you will face many obstacles: figuratively and literally. There is the vast security force, the E-Cops: part machine and part organic. There are also the Breakers who equally want to overthrow the dictatorship but through more violent means. And, finally, there is the Great Administrator himself, who has a serious ego to go with his giant Orbital Station.
I have to admit, the story for this game is not its strong point. Ultimately, I doubt that this was the developers goal. The point of the game was to create a different spin on using parkour as a feature. It is not by any means a terrible story but, personally, it does feel lacking. Having said that, Hover does make up for it in other areas so don’t let this put you off.
Gameplay
The gameplay was good and for the most part, entertaining. However, it did feel extremely repetitive after a short while. Okay, so you can argue that about a lot of games. Far Cry 3 as one example. But, as much fun as running through checkpoints and throwing balls is, everyone has a limit. The mechanics themselves were brilliantly implemented. You can slide, wall run, do tricks and more; plus the bigger your combos, the higher you can climb and the further you can jump. There is also the Gameball feature where you have to put a ball into various repositories. I really liked the idea of this gameplay in particular because it gave me serious Rocket League vibes, just minus the cars. It was great, as well, that every mission used different areas of the map to suit whatever the game style was. Unfortunately, for me, it got very repetitive, very quickly. When every mission is simply a variation on the same two features, it didn’t take me long to get bored.
If you love this sort of gameplay though, then you probably won’t feel the same. It may also be a lot more fun to play with friends since this game is online and you can join in on each others missions. There is also the scoring system which was a nice touch. If you complete a level quickly or with more points, you receive some very tasty rewards. These are chips that you can use to upgrade your character to make them better at running or sliding. I certainly liked that aspect of things. I also thought it was particularly cool how they named and shamed people who had pirated the game. I’d say that was a win for the developers.
Graphics & Sound
This for me is where Hover really shines. The graphics are wonderful and it has a phenomenal soundtrack to go alongside it. When all is said and done, I really can’t fault them in this area. The graphics are reminiscent of Borderlands in its style. The anime style mixed with the expansive and beautifully built city-scape really works for this game. As well as that, the music is fantastic. Again, it simply works for what the game is and when you are racing along the skyline, it feels pretty epic to some of those tunes.
Controls
Actually really simple and I love that. It was a little tricky to get used to the “floatiness” of the character but once you do, there is no limit to what you can do. The only thing I would say is that it doesn’t give you a whole lot of direction. I often found myself running over half the city to be able to find who I was looking for. But, overall, I can’t really complain about the controls. It only becomes mildly frustrating when you’re trying to finish a mission quickly and instead you are jumping off of the wrong ledge or building. It does have a nice rewind feature though which is an added bonus. So, just in case you are as bad as me, you can undo some of your mistake. It doesn’t take you back in time, it just takes you back through the last movements you made. This is a nice thing to have for someone like me who has no coordination whatsoever.
Difficulty
This one is a tricky one for me to rate. I personally, found some parts of this game very difficult. It would take me several attempts before I could finish missions and sometimes I found myself needing to walk away from the game temporarily. However, it is not a difficult game to grasp. If you learn early on how to use all your skills in the most efficient way possible, you would probably breeze through this game. I am also not very good at goal scoring games (hence why I never play football) so, when some of the Gameball missions became harder, I found them even more frustrating. If you are not completely coordination-less, then Hover will not be a difficult game at all.
Replayability
I could see why people may want to replay Hover. It has some fun elements and there are a lot of small side missions to complete as well as the main story. Since you can create multiple characters under the same Team you might want to try out different builds and see what happens. You can unlock characters throughout the game, all of which have various baseline stats. So, you could go through trying to make the best character builds for each of the challenges in order to get the best scores. There is a lot of potential for replayability, if that’s what you choose to do.
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Catie
I've always had a passion for games and, since I found my passion for writing, I wanted to write about them. I'll play just about anything if I can get my hands on it. I have an unhealthy obsession with all things Star Wars and my motto is "Never apologise for being a nerd."
