Game Reviews

Electro Hunter

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| Electro Hunter
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Electro Hunter
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| Electro Hunter

We're often told you shouldn't judge a book by its cover and the same can be said for a game and its title screen.

Electro Hunter is incredibly slick from the outset: shimmering graphics, atmospheric music, and a well-designed menu stocked with options. While the Puzzle Bobble / Bangai-O mash-up that lurks behind this impressive facade is solid enough, it doesn’t quite live up to the promise of such a potent cocktail.

Colour’s doom

There are several variations on the central mechanic, all of which involve rotating central character Raven around beautifully drawn hubs populated with coloured orbs called quarks. Intermittent levels use the same mechanic, but replace the quarks with imaginatively designed boss creatures.

Destroying enough of the orbs within a set time yields bronze, silver, and gold medals, earned by firing missiles along a line. If your missile hits at least two quarks of the same colour, they disappear – and sometimes set off cascades which award extra points.

Various power-ups are also thrown into the mix, too, including lead boots that enable you to stomp the playfield, atom bombs that are capable of destroying all quarks with taps of the screen, and the wonderfully named Colour’s Doom, which obliterates all the quarks of one colour.

Dark Matter

This promising set-up is marred by two poorly tuned control schemes – tilt or tap – neither of which provide enough accuracy for such precise gameplay. The diminutive nature of the quarks, together with their constant visual fizzing and washed-out palette often makes it hard to see where combinations lie – something the ability to cycle the colour of your next missile (itself hard to spot) doesn't alleviate.

Worst of all, it's possible to complete the game by spinning in any direction, repeatedly firing with no concern for where your missiles land, only breaking orbit to avoid the dangerous expelled quarks, collect power-ups, or line up shots on the bosses. My scores were actually considerably improved using this tactic.

It's a great shame, as Electro Hunter has some unique ideas. The boss battles are especially enjoyable and require genuine skill. It’s just a pity Vivid Games didn’t spend as much time balancing the game as it did polishing the menu.

Electro Hunter

A genuinely charming experience that’s let down by an inadequate interface and lack of challenge
Score
Ben Maxwell
Ben Maxwell
Ben is an eager young games journalist who, when touring with his band, happily replaces sex, drugs, and rock & roll with Advance Wars, Drop7, rock, and Rolando...