Written By: Patrick Orquia
TITLE: Hive Jump
DEVELOPER: Graphite Lab
PUBLISHER: Graphite Lab
GENRE: roguelike arcade shooter
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 1-4
RELEASE DATE: Sep 28, 2017
PLATFORM: Wii U
PRICE: $14.99
There are now tons of games that got their backing from Kickstarter and other crowd-funding sites. Some are awesome (Shovel Knight), quite good (Hyper Light Drifter), and not-so-good (Mighty No. 9). Another one of these quite good Kickstarter games, Hive Jump, which was first released on PC and Mac, has been released on Wii U. Yeah, Wii U, it’s still alive, and Hive Jump is perfect on it.
Like most indie games nowadays, Graphite Lab went for a retro aesthetic, making this game with a 16-bit graphics look, which really complements well the game mechanics. This game is like Contra meets Starship Troopers, with a bit of metroidvania and roguelike elements thrown in. The player controls a group of soldiers, affectionately called jumpers, that has to go through the depths of alien hives and blast their way through swarms of insect-like creatures. Each level is procedurally generated, which can be fire-, ice-, or forest-based, or a combination of the three, and is filled with, aside from the aliens, mud/acid/lava pools, caverns, spikes, explosives, alien nests, walled sections, platforms, etc. Alien creatures, when killed, drop goos that can restore a bit of health (purple goos), or be used to upgrade and unlock weapons, fortify fortresses, or scanning alien hives (yellow goos, basically the in-game currency). There are also rooms in stages that the player can enter and beat to get ability-enhancing relics, additional goos, or grenades.
Multiple weapons and utilities can be unlocked in the game. Some are the basic rapid-fire weapons and some are overpowered, like my favourite Tesla Orbs. Upgrade them to make them even more powerful. Aside from the weapons, the player can also use explosives, which also of different kinds and can be unlocked as the player progresses through the game and accumulates alien goos, and additional unlockable utilities, such as an additional shield and other abilities.
One cool aspect of the game that I like is its permadeath mechanic. Like what I mentioned earlier, the player controls an entire group of jumpers, one at a time. When one jumper dies, another takes place. Doesn’t seem like a permadeath, but each jumper has a name, and at the end of each mission, the names of each of the fallen jumpers get shown, like a memorial. What ties each of these jumpers is the trasponder backpack, which the player can control and keep from harm’s way for a few seconds as another jumper spawns, and this backpack has its own separate health bar. If the backpack gets destroyed, game over, and mission failed. It cannot defend itself and thus will be very prone to damage when a jumper dies so it’s up to you to move it out of danger, and when a new jumper spawns, you’re back in action. As long as the backpack is still intact, you continue fighting. It is possible for the health bar of the backpack to be restored, but it is quite rare and can only be obtained by rescuing one of the persons of interest inside one of the rooms in a stage.
Each hive jump compose of at least 3 rounds/levels, or depths, with the last one a boss fight. The higher the difficulty, the higher number of depths, and the harder it is to survive a mission. Which is why it is needed to upgrade your gears and open every chest located in the level to get a better fighting chance. Blasting away through enemies is fun, and it’s more fun if you use better weapons.
Aside from the hive jumps, the Campaign Mode also has overworld scenarios where you fortify and defend your bases against invading aliens. If the aliens successfully invade a base, it becomes another hive that needs to be conquered to be made a base again. On the map, you will see all of your bases with the number of soldiers in them, and the alien hives with the number of depths and difficulty to conquer them. The more alien hives you turn into bases, the harder the difficulty becomes. But of course, as the game progresses, you will improve on how you play. If you fail a mission, you can try again, and you can mix and match different weapons and abilities to suit your play style.
Along with campaign mode, the other modes in the game are Arcade Mode (where you play a hive jump with a set number of depths based on difficulty) and Challenges Mode (where you play similar to Arcade Mode, but with additional requirements or settings, such as a clean run, speed run, and other difficulties). Each of the modes can be played solo or couch multiplayer (at least on the Wii U, online multiplayer modes is available on other platforms). Multiplayer is quite tricky for me and will probably be to other Wii U owners as well, as this would mean additional peripherals needed in order to play. Wii remotes are not supported as far as I know, so each player will need a separate and more expensive Wii U Pro Controller. Also, I don’t know a lot of people who owns a Wii U that I could play this game with, so I played this game solo for the purpose of this review. I reckon that playing multiplayer will be more fun, especially on levels with higher difficulties.
Despite this game being really fun to play, it is not a perfect one. I encountered some bugs in the game, like my character on screen suddenly falls through the solid floor and gets taken all the way back to the entrance. There is a catch error accompanying it so it may be part of the game, but it is annoying and unnecessary. I could live with that, though. What really annoy me in this game are the frame rate drops, where the action almost slows down to a halt, and in at least three times, completely freezes my Wii U. Those three times that it happened, my play session for the game suddenly comes to an end, as I would be too frustrated to fire up the game again.It’s frustrating, especially when I’m about to finish a level and my Wii U freezes and all the hard work on the last level gets thrown out of the window. Good thing the game auto-saves after every level, otherwise I’d be very pissed. I hope Graphite Lab patches this to make the game better. Maybe throw in online multiplayer as well.
Hive Jump is a flawed but very fun game to play. I wish I had friends to play it with but playing it solo is still a blast. Despite the flaws, I still recommend this game and it is worth the money, as it offers a very good replay value due to its roguelike elements and high level of customizability. Go try it out, solo or with your friends. If you are a fan of arcade shooter games, this game is for you.
REPLAY VALUE: high
PROS:
- Good visuals, game mechanics, level design, character design, 16-bit graphical aesthetics, and musical score
- Procedurally generated levels
- Cool permadeath game mechanic
- High customizability on weapons and gears
- Multiple Arcade/Challenges Modes
- Wii U gamepad provides instant access to the in-game map and off-TV gameplay
- The codex lists all the enemies, unlocked weapons/gears, rescued personnel, and relics obtained
CONS:
- No online multiplayer mode
- Numerous bugs that would frequently slow down the framerate almost to a halt and even freeze the entire console are present. Quite annoying and frustrating
RATING: 4/5 alien swarm blasts
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