In case you missed it, Hydro Thunder was a motorboat racing game from 1999 that Dreamcast owners still use as proof that there were good games for the system. A decade later, Microsoft has released the sequel Hydro Thunder Hurricane in the unenviable position of following up Limbo in their “Summer of Arcade.” How could Hurricane possibly live up to the expectations of the critically-acclaimed Limbo? I don’t think you’ll find anyone calling Hydro Thunder Hurricane an “experience,” but as a game, I believe it stands up incredibly well.

This game puts you behind the wheel (or is it control stick?) of one of ten super-fast boats in pure racing bliss. Fans of old-school arcade racers will know what to expect here: tight controls that don’t punish you too much for over-correction, power-ups, slight A.I. rubber-banding, and epically unrealistic courses with plenty of shortcuts and hidden secrets.

The gameplay is virtually flawless. The ten available boats have different advantages and disadvantages, but all of them control the way you’d expect them to. The water physics come into play in a major way to separate this game from any racer with wheels, as sudden waves send you careening off course and drafting behind another boat gives you a major speed bump. Crashing into something hard enough to blow up your boat or veering too far off course can be easily corrected by hitting the Back button to get back on track.

The visuals are incredibly impressive for a fifteen dollar downloadable game. The water effects are as good as any I’ve seen in any game, and other environmental features look fine — not that you’ll ever slow down enough to really see them.

The masterpieces of the game, however, are the track designs. In this game you’ll go from the sewers of Paris to a peaceful lake to the canals of Seoul — and then, ahem, around a monster-filled island and through Area 51 to another planet. But these aren’t just for the scenic views. The aforementioned monsters will rough up the water as you’re racing, and a trip though Asgard wouldn’t be complete without colossal statues of Norse gods chopping at you with stone battleaxes.

The game has plenty of modes for everyone. Multiplayer is handled with up to four player split screen and theoretically up to eight players online. I say theoretically because I never saw more than six playing in one race at any one time. I also got bumped from matches due to connection issues or waited several minutes to find a game several times, so I probably spend less time playing online than staring at the connection screen. Split-screen with a buddy, however, was a total blast. Oh, and of special note is the online mode in which a red team and blue team each give one player control of a giant rubber duck, then do their best to knock the other team’s duck out of first place.

Single player is where I spent most of my time. Hydro Thunder Hurricane comes with four modes: Race, a standard free-for-all that pits you against 15 A.I. boats; Ring Master, in which you speed through each track, slaloming through rings; Gauntlet, a more or less typical time trial — except the track is full of exploding barrels (hope you know some shortcuts, as the main path is much more mine-infested); and Championship, a series of ten events that combine the other three modes. Each of these modes is available in Novice, Pro, and Expert flavors, with three boats in each difficulty level.

My personal favorite mode is Ring Master. The slaloming through rings thing is fairly ho-hum, but following the pre-determined path teaches you the shortcuts, environment-altering power-ups, and hidden package locations. But that’s not to say that this mode holds your hand and reveals all the game’s secrets — on more than one occasion I missed rings and had to double back to figure out that I was supposed to go through a waterfall or jump over a wall to a hidden path, and there are tons of hidden packages I can see but not get to. This mode also reveals the truly epic nature of the different tracks — after dozens of runs through the first track, Lake Powell, I thought I’d seen all there was to see… until I did the expert Ring Master run, revealing a whole chunk of area I didn’t even know was there.

As much fun as I had with the game, I suppose there were one or two sticking points. There are times when your boat blocks your view of an upcoming ring or obstacle. I would have liked more than eight tracks (though at this price and with the quality of each track, it’s hard to complain about that).

The main frustration is that the game starts you out with one boat and one track until you earn enough credits to unlock more content, which can sometimes be a bit of a grind. However, this does prove to be the carrot that makes you say “one more race” a dozen times until it’s two in the morning and you have to wake up at five.

All in all Hydro Thunder Hurricane proves to be a fast-paced, addictive, and most of all fun arcade racer. I see myself sinking a lot more hours into getting wet with my friends in this game.

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Things We Liked: Fantastic controls. Beautiful visuals (especially in the water effects). Brilliant track design including tons of shortcuts. Fun modes for single and multi-player. The price.

Things We Disliked: Occasional camera issues. Track and boat options extremely limited until you grind for credits to unlock everything. Trouble getting into and staying in online matches.

Target Audience: Arcade racing fans. Former Dreamcast owners. Anyone with fifteen bucks and a couple of friends.

(Hydro Thunder Hurricane – Developer: Vector Unit. Publisher: Microsoft. Available on Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)