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Haha… well, it’s good to see that we’re still making games that that are teaching our tub-jawed meat-brained male populous how to be a good-guy stalker. I am of course talking about Hydrophobia: Prophecy.
Hydrophobia Prophecy is an “action” game where you take control of Kate Wilson, an engineer on some… ship… whereupon waking up on her day off, her peaceful home life is ruined by an unforeseen terrorist attack. To be fair though, most terrorist attacks are. In order to escape, you’ll control Kate as she runs around through water-filled corridors while some thick-headed smooth-talker tells you what to do and comments on your every little action. All the time. It never stops.
It’s hard to get a good feel for the rest of the plot beyond that in just an hour. While Kate seems to dream of drowning, she doesn’t seem to have a fear of water. The terrorists are boring and generic–kill all humans because they are overpopulating the earth (ship?). Generic cryptic “Kill Yourself” phrases and other messages are scrawled all over the place, many of which are only viewable when using Eagle Visio–er, I mean–hacker vision. Apparently this is the first chapter in a 3-part game that was cancelled after chapter 1. I have never understood why so many developers shoot themselves in the foot with this tactic. Very few single-chapter game series survive.
Gameplay is basically all the staleness of old Tomb Raider with none of the fun. Pathways are largely linear, stupid annoying collectibles are littered everywhere with little meaning to their collection and ladders–LADDERS my FRIENDS!–will be climbed. Admittedly, the water’s pretty and flows realistically, but it means little if that’s all we have. There’s a bit of acrobatics in Kate’s arsenal such as the ability to scale certain pipes on the wall and to swing from one pipe to another ledge (covering a distance of about 3 feet which, while realistic, is a tad dull) but it’s nothing special and frankly games should stop using the existence of linear wall-scaling as a substitute for real game mechanics. Even older Lara Croft’s exploits were not so painfully linear. No doubt later on we would gain some sort of power or fighting skills, but for a game that’s rated at 4~6 hours long I can’t imagine they would be that great.
The worst aspect of the game by far though is storytelling itself and the heavy lean towards the good-guy stalker syndrome. I once heard a quote concerning the newer Tomb Raider games that effort was being made on Lara’s model so that the players would want to “protect her.” This idea is repulsive on so many levels. There is absolutely nothing wrong wanting to protect a person. There’s nothing wrong that if the person you want to protect happens to be female. The problem is, that this is not how the sweaty-palmed male-targeted audience will receive these games–and it’s not how the developers designed them either. Kate is designed to be sexually appealing to hetero-sexual men. She’s well endowed, wears a skimpy skin-tight tank-top, taut jeans and has no bodily defect that would be considered unattractive. Kate is designed to titillate her male viewer, stimulating their primal urges into associating feelings along with the game that aren’t really there in substance.
Keep in mind here though, that Kate’s appearance alone isn’t the source of our problem. Our problem is that while she’s spunky, energetic and active, she’s also timid, innocent and needs the constant direction of the man in her ear, the alleged “Scoot.” Scoot is who the male audience is supposed to want to be. He’s fit, muscular, has a commanding American accent and has complete omniscience to Kate’s whereabouts and actions at every second of the journey. Jump to a ledge and he frets over her choice to take a dangerous route. Run into a corridor filled with water and he passionately yells at her “Don’t stop! You can do it!” Kate asks Scoot to leave her and find safety and Scoot responds with “No, don’t even think about it. You’re my responsibility and I’m staying.” Why is Kate Scoot’s responsibility? Why does her safety belong to him? Chivalrous bullshit, that’s why. Unless Scoot is Kate’s father (which is about as likely as getting the second chapter for this game) or some similarly audience-informed explanation, Kate belongs to herself. You want to know what’s worse? In the original Hydrophobia (yeah, this one’s a remake) Scoot was fat and had an Australian accent. He was not the mold that male players were supposed to inject themselves into so that they could feel one step closer to their precious Kate. The good-guy stalker syndrome devalues people (and in almost every case women exclusively) by assuming that their existence depends on the good-guy stalker.
In the end, this strikes a hard Tier 3 garbage level, only avoiding Tier 4 because the water really is so damn pretty. Otherwise? Why bother playing this misogynistic piece of crap. Old Lara Croft would have a thing or two to say about being sexy and “needing protection” and she’d probably say it while gunning down Bengal tigers, awakened dinosaurs and raider thugs with an arsenal of weapons that would make even Rambo nod his head in respect.
