Steam Backlog: Hydrophobia: Prophecy

I have plenty of titles on Steam, almost 800 games in fact. It’s an obscene number. An amount far more than any person really has time to play. I discovered recently that Steam allows users to sort games by ‘most recently played’, allowing me to see which games I haven’t played in years, or at all in some cases.

There are plenty of games I’ve purchased almost a decade ago, with less than an hour of playtime. Abandoned so I could go back to trusted classics like Skyrim or Counter-Strike. Games that I never really gave a fair chance. Maybe there’s some hidden gems in there? Maybe there’s some hilariously bad stuff in there? All I know is, a combination of lockdown boredom and me needing some new content to appease the dark overlords at GameGrin have led us here. To my Steam backlog. To Hydrophobia: Prophecy, in fact.

The Stats:

Purchased: 20/11/11
Last Played: 20/11/11
Total Play Time: 9 minutes.

I think it’s incredibly important to note that the date I purchased Hydrophobia: Propehecy was only nine days after the release of Skyrim. The poor thing never really stood a chance. The second most important thing to note is, this game is set to boot in 480p. I’m unsure if this is its default setting or if college Adam invested poorly in desktop hardware and my settings from nine years ago have since been retained. It’s quite possibly the latter. Regardless, I switch to a crisp 1080p and click launch. As the game launches in 480p despite the settings I just changed, I begin to tremble in fear at the series I’ve created.

As I finally reach the start screen in decipherable resolution, I hit start game, only to be greeted with a warning about losing my current save game progress. Unfortunately, my memory of the opening nine minutes of Hydrophobia: Prophecy is a little hazy, so starting anew seems like the only appropriate thing to do. With that, we were underway. The jumpscare right at the beginning of the game did catch me off guard. I’m not really sure why it happened and over the course of the game it’s never really referenced again either, despite it being the most interesting thing that happens.

The game is set aboard a ship called The Queen of the World and our protagonist is the reluctant hero Kate Wilson. As the boat is attacked by a terrorist group known as the Malthusians, Kate must get herself to safety. I hear your cries dear reader, ‘but Adam, she’s on a boat! How could she get to safety?’. I do not have the explanation for you. It’s a plot with more leaks than the actual boat itself. Regardless, for the first two acts of this three act extravaganza, Kate is guided by Scoot. I believe Scoot is meant to be a good guy in this story. Despite that, he comes across as an awful human being who seems to constantly mock everyone currently suffering due to the ongoing terrorist attack. Despite having the best personality of any character in the game, he somehow manages to be the most insufferable.

Finally in control of Kate, we lose control of her almost immediately. Several times in fact. The cutscenes become very tiresome, very quickly. There are three cutscenes in the opening room alone. None of it is needed. Starting a game with filler cutscenes doesn’t leave me brimming with hope, but I’m willing to push on. As we do, the ship suddenly explodes and begins filling with water. At this point, I’ve got to admit, the water physics in this game are incredible. Built on the HydroEngine, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise it looks as good as it does. The entire premise of the game is built around water. Unfortunately, it’s about the only thing Hydrophobia does right.

Starting the game with a jump scare that’s never referenced again, the unexplained sounds of a crying child whenever you're drowning and then ending the game on a cliffhanger. After one of the poorest final boss battles I’ve ever experienced. The Malthusians ‘save the world… kill yourself’ slogan is so uncreatively edgy you’d struggle to cut through hot butter with it. Yet they plaster it all over the game world. Every screen, every wall. They put this stupid slogan everywhere. The ridiculousness of it all is summed up with Kate Wilson’s epic quip, acknowledging it as “not a very kind thing to say”. Good one, Kate.

I powered through Hydrophobia: Prophecy in just under three hours, completing it nine years after my initial purchase. It was a clunky, unpolished mess with far too much effort focused on its fancy water physics. People always remark about the frustration of water levels in video games of the ‘90s. The entirety of this game is a frustrating ‘90s water level. It’s not surprising that stop-start opening lost my interest so quickly in 2011. Frustrating combat and enemy AI that spawns before your eyes. It’s three hours of directionless narrative, repetitive hacking puzzles and lethargic jumping segments.

I should have left this one in 2011.