(Largely pasted from Console-Arcade)
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Hypership Out of Control is properly awesome.
You?re piloting a ship but the space brakes are out. This?d be OK but the accelerator is jammed. This is not a recipe for a successful voyage. It?s up to the player to manoeuvre the ship through asteroids and walls and mines and space bees and just survive as long as possible. In the normal mode, you get three lives and each ?wave,? basically a set of obstacles, increases your max speed until you?re going so fast you can barely keep up so you die and then play again and again and again because the game is like crack.
That?d be enough for a dollar, but it doesn?t stop there. Hardcore mode reduces the number of lives to one. Another mode removes the maximum speed limit and so you go much faster, much quicker. Aside from a practice mode which you can use to play any of the game?s ten waves that you?ve reached through normal play, the final mode is coindown. This gives you a number of coins to begin with and they gradually tick down, you have to collect more because you?ll lose when they reach zero.
In the other modes, coins are collected for points and to add to your multiplier, 99 coins is worth X2, X3, up to X5. Your points also rack up quicker as you increase speed. The coin mechanic is a simple one but it means that the longer you survive, the quicker your points shoot up. Points can be tracked on global leaderboards which you can access if you?ve got a gold account.
Surely that?s enough as content goes, but no! There?s co-op gameplay, and the game also comes with 20 ?awardments? for you to earn based on things like completing waves, earning points and collecting the games many power-ups. Things to slow you down, speed you up, give you a more powerful gun or a shield, or more.
It?s a ridiculously simple concept at heart, but so much effort has gone into the presentation, the brilliant music (which I?m still humming) and the wonderful humour that it?s impossible not to love it and just play it over and over again. This is the cheapest game you?ll buy all year at only 80 Microsoft Points, and is my second favourite game on the whole service.
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Hypership Out of Control is properly awesome.
You?re piloting a ship but the space brakes are out. This?d be OK but the accelerator is jammed. This is not a recipe for a successful voyage. It?s up to the player to manoeuvre the ship through asteroids and walls and mines and space bees and just survive as long as possible. In the normal mode, you get three lives and each ?wave,? basically a set of obstacles, increases your max speed until you?re going so fast you can barely keep up so you die and then play again and again and again because the game is like crack.
That?d be enough for a dollar, but it doesn?t stop there. Hardcore mode reduces the number of lives to one. Another mode removes the maximum speed limit and so you go much faster, much quicker. Aside from a practice mode which you can use to play any of the game?s ten waves that you?ve reached through normal play, the final mode is coindown. This gives you a number of coins to begin with and they gradually tick down, you have to collect more because you?ll lose when they reach zero.
In the other modes, coins are collected for points and to add to your multiplier, 99 coins is worth X2, X3, up to X5. Your points also rack up quicker as you increase speed. The coin mechanic is a simple one but it means that the longer you survive, the quicker your points shoot up. Points can be tracked on global leaderboards which you can access if you?ve got a gold account.
Surely that?s enough as content goes, but no! There?s co-op gameplay, and the game also comes with 20 ?awardments? for you to earn based on things like completing waves, earning points and collecting the games many power-ups. Things to slow you down, speed you up, give you a more powerful gun or a shield, or more.
It?s a ridiculously simple concept at heart, but so much effort has gone into the presentation, the brilliant music (which I?m still humming) and the wonderful humour that it?s impossible not to love it and just play it over and over again. This is the cheapest game you?ll buy all year at only 80 Microsoft Points, and is my second favourite game on the whole service.
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