Hydrophobia's 'Challenge Rooms' test powers slated for its sequel
Our preview of Hydrophobia from E3 2010 covered what we saw in the first installment of the planned trilogy; however, if you want an idea of what to expect in the next installment, we got a better idea by checking out the game's "Challenge Rooms," which unlock only after the player finishes the main campaign. What's tucked after the break may be considered spoiler-ish, so click on through if you're willing to take the plunge.
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The Challenge Rooms introduce players to nanotech powers, allowing them to manipulate the water flooding the ship/city. Once again, according to a representative for developer Dark Energy Digital, these powers are not part of the first game, but are certain to be in the sequel, which is already in development and should be done in about a year.
If you ever played Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, you've got a pretty good primer on how Hydrophobia's powers will work. The main difference being that instead of the protagonist's mind manipulating objects, she manipulates the water. She'll push boxes around with the water, lifting them up in the air to help with obstacles or tossing them across the room at enemies. One of the cooler things we saw is when she lifts the water around an enemy, causing them to drown in a six-foot column of H2O they can't swim out of.
It's a shame that these powers won't be in the first Hydrophobia, but it's nice to see that players will have them in the Challenge Rooms and can look forward to using them in the sequel. It's an interesting test for the developer -- for those who become fans of the Challenge Rooms, they'll have higher expectations for the sequel if they've been playing with the powers for a year. Of course, the developer will get pretty good feedback of which powers the players think work well and which ones need tweaking for the in-development sequel.
