HYPERDRIVE Review:

Identity is a very important thing when designing a game. Sure, a game developer can make a platformer, but why should I play their platformer over someone else's? Games should be designed to create memorable experiences, which does seem hard to do, but all it can take is simple additions to make a memorable experience. A game that takes a very simple route to find identity is HYPERDRIVE by Snerds. HYPERDRIVE is not a genre-defining game, but it does leave a lasting impact on the player. 

    HYPERDRIVE is an infinite shoot-em-up. You control a spaceship and go through waves of enemies, defeating them all until you inevitably die. Your entire goal is to go for a high score, so it’s like an old arcade game in that aspect. You get 5 lives, and once those are gone, you’re done. You also do die in one hit, which is something that seems fairly common in these old shoot-em-ups.

    The spaceship actually has a lot in its arsenal. You move around using the arrow keys and shoot using the “Z” key, which just fires a laser. If these were the only controls, then I'd probably have abandoned the idea of doing this article, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Holding the “X” key charges up a huge laser, which fires once the key is released. This huge laser is powerful and can one-shot most enemies, but you will have to wait for the laser to cool down before releasing another charge shot. You can also use the “C” key to dash around, but I never used it, just because I never thought to use it in the heat of battle. But that's not all, powerups randomly drop throughout the game. These powerups come in three flavors, Triple Shot, Quick Fire, and Invincibility. They don’t seem like a lot on paper, but add some layer of depth to the gameplay, and in tight situations, they can be extremely beneficial, and even necessary for your survival.

    The enemy variety is pretty good too. Enemies seem to be scaled by difficulty, with later waves introducing harder enemies. I’m not sure how many enemy types are in HYPERDRIVE, seeing as I’ve only made it to wave 13, but I’ve seen 5 different enemy types. I’m not going to describe all of them, because that would be boring, but there is one enemy I’d like to bring attention to, and funnily enough, it's the very first enemy you will see. The eyeball as I will call it, only shoots 2 shots at you, which doesn’t sound bad, but this enemy has killed me a lot. What makes these 2 shots kind of annoying is that when they are near the bottom of the screen, they begin to home in on you. If you're not paying attention, this will catch you off guard, and kill you. I swear I've died more to this guy than the others in my runs, which does kind of make me question why he’s the first enemy in the game. One notable thing about enemy projectiles is that they can be destroyed with your lasers, so it’s not necessarily just dodging them, it's destroying them so you can maneuver around safely, which is something I do appreciate.

    A standout part of HYPERDRIVE is its presentation. The game is pretty, it uses an 8-bit art style, which is common in a lot of indies, but for good reason. The thing I like the most about the art style is the use of two colors. You see these two colors in the game's logo, green, and purple. In the game, everything that is green represents you, and things that will help you, while purple represents the enemies. I like the color dynamic, it’s aesthetically pleasing and makes the game stick out to me. It’s definitely an aspect that makes the game memorable to me.

    So what do I think about the game? Well, I should mention that I'm awful at shoot-em-ups, and a lot of them are off-putting to me, but I enjoyed HYPERDRIVE. I think the extra mechanics, such as the charge, and the powerups, add plenty to the experience. Add the art style to it, and you have a memorable experience. I’ve played many games like this, and a lot of them fail to bring anything to the table that makes them stand out to me, but HYPERDRIVE is an exception. The only issue I had with HYPERDRIVE was a bug where the movement controls would get locked up. I have no idea if this is an in-game issue, or if I am accidentally pushing a key on my keyboard by mistake. Outside of that, I really enjoyed HYPERDRIVE. If I had to suggest anything, I’d recommend adding a wave select mechanic, so that you can start at the later waves, to practice dealing with later enemies.

    As I said earlier, I’ve played a lot of shoot-em-ups on itch.io, and almost none of them stood out to me, because they just took the basic route, and felt generic. HYPERDRIVE, although doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, does make a memorable experience in my opinion, and that's the most important thing. Anyone can make a space shoot-em-up but it's up to you to make yours stand out, and Snerds does this very well. I recommend checking out HYPERDRIVE, and Snerds. If you’re reading this, I hope this game did well in your class, and I hope to see future updates. This has been Travis and have a great day.

Click here to play HYPERDRIVE, and click here to watch my gameplay video for HYPERDRIVE.

I Played Every Mission in Sonic Generations So You Don't Have To

With the announcement of the stupidly titled, “Sonic x Shadow Generations” not too long ago, I wanted to do something to celebrate Generations getting a remaster, as well as just cash in on the news. Luckily for me, I actually challenged myself to do something that most people would not do, which is to complete every mission in the game. Was it worth it? No, but there are multiple things you would miss out on if you didn’t do these missions. So, let’s look at the things you might’ve missed.

    Now, I’m not going to go in-depth about every mission, this isn’t a walkthrough, just a commentary on some of the neat things, as well as my experiences. However, I should at least describe the basics of this part of the game. There are 10 missions for every Zone in Sonic Generations, 5 for Classic, and 5 for Modern. There are 9 Zones in the game, so this equates to 90 missions. You are required to do one mission for every zone to get the key for that zone. This means you only have to do 9 missions in total, which equates to only doing 10% of them. The other 90% are not required, and your rewards for doing them are unlocking art in the art gallery, music to be played at any level you want, skills for you to buy in the Skill Shop, and if you do all of them, you get the right to make a blog post about doing all of them. Most people would just ignore doing the other 90%, which is perfectly understandable, but what do you miss by not doing them?

Proof that I actually completed every mission.

    The first thing you’re going to miss out on is all of the missions with Sonic’s friends. These missions are the most memorable ones in the game. Some of them are not special at all, but others are very cool, and add new mechanics to the game. The Knuckles mission in Sky Sanctuary is a good example of this. In this mission, you need to find coins, 35 to be exact. You do this by summoning Knuckles, who will dig out these coins for you. Not only is that a nice reference to the treasure-hunting stages from the Sonic Adventure games, but it’s a fun little gimmick that only shows up here, and nowhere else in the entire game. If you skipped this mission, you would miss out on this gimmick.

The Knuckles mission from Sky Sanctuary

    Secondly, there are a handful of missions in the game that do give you new skills in the Skill Shop. The most notable of these skills for me are the elemental shields from Sonic 3. All 3 of them are unlockable for Classic Sonic, and each one has its own mission to complete, which allows them to be purchasable from the Skill Shop. There is even one other mission that forces you to use all 3 to get to the end. The elemental shields even have their special properties from Sonic 3, they aren’t just used for protection. If you skipped these missions, you may have not even known that the elemental shields were in the game.

Mission in Crisis City that uses the Flame Shield.

    Finally, there are 2 more minor things you can miss out on. First are some mission-exclusive stage gimmicks. There are a few exclusive gimmicks used in the missions, such as giant enemies, and the bomb see-saw in Hill Top Zone from Sonic 2. Secondly, there are a few missions that change the time of day in the level, such as one in Speed Highway that changes the time of day from night to dawn. Not only is that another great reference to the dawn version of Speed Highway, but it’s also just a pretty thing to look at. I know it’s a very minor thing, but I am a sucker for these small changes, they just make me smile!

Speed Highway at dawn!

    Before I end this, I should talk about a few experiences I had in completing every mission in Sonic Generations. I didn’t think it was very challenging at all, it was mostly just a nice breeze, allowing me to notice things I’ve never noticed before. The doppelganger Classic Sonic races were probably the hardest, simply because I’m not the greatest at controlling Classic Sonic in this game, and you needed to play decently to beat the doppelganger. Rooftop Run’s race is probably the hardest mission if you ask me. I expected it to go to Vector’s mission in Rooftop Run, where you play as Modern Sonic, and basically play a game of tennis with Vector, homing attacking a Music note, back and forth. I remember this mission being brutal as a kid, but doing it now, it was very easy, so I guess I was just bad back then. I don’t really have a favorite mission, and I didn't really want to replay any of them.

Vector's game of Tennis.

    Well, there’s my little tangent about the missions in Sonic Generations. Should you play all 90? No, it’s simply not worth it, just do all the friend missions, and the ones that unlock skills. Do I hope Shadow's mode in Sonic x Shadow Generations has missions? No, unless they give us a mission where we need to kill all 45 black aliens like it’s 2005, or something. The point is, I simply did this because I love Sonic Generations, and to write this post I guess. The missions are not horrible, but they are not worth a lot of your time either. Listen to me, and just go play Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers instead. This has been Travis and have a great day.