Today we are going to take a look at Hyperrun. This arcade racing/trick game promises to bring back the nostalgic feelings you experienced while playing games like Tron or the Tony Hawk’s games. It is available on Steam for 9 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.

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Video Review

Text Review

When I first saw this game I was pretty excited for this. A game that combines racing and tricks? That sounds like a great fun casual game. But the question is as always, will it deliver the fun it promises?

Gameplay

And right of the bat, I’m gonna say, the game does not deliver. And while that might mean you won’t listen to what I have to say further, it doesn’t matter, it needs to be said.
But let’s start with the game mechanics. Well, you know what, first I think we should look at something I found really confusing when I started the game. It’s not really a racing game and the fact that it is listed under the racing tag is pretty much a disgrace in my opinion.
If anything it is actually closer to the Tony Hawk’s games, but even here the games is massively less fun because of the lack of free movement.

Now let’s go into the mechanics. In Hyperun you become one of the racers of the a “massively popular” future sport of driving a motorcycle very very fast in straight lines. Seriously, who ever came up the idea that this sport will be popular what not very clever. And while the speeds are higher then what we see currently in motorcycle racing, unless you become really really good in the game, they wont reach ridiculous levels.
Apart from driving quickly in straight lines, you can do tricks. There are done by mashing a certain button combination and jumping. And the tricks are really really boring. They just spin you around and the goal is the reach the highest score.

And that’s all there is to the game. You can do these things in one of two modes, either you go on a track and try to go the furthest you can get while picking up speed gradually or you go into a Trickpark where you got a bit more space to do tricks. But both of the modes are really boring. The “race” mode isn’t a race, there are no enemies to beat. You are just going there alone, trying to reach the highest speed.
The Trickpark can be at least a bit entertaining for a while, you just jumping around and doing tricks. The problem with the tricks is that they really isn’t a huge number of them and they are all done by simply mashing the A and D keys. And even the patterns are super simple, just either alternate between these two keys or just one of them a few times and then the other a few times. That’s isn’t fun for a long time.

Another thing that I really disliked about Hyperun is the fact that is uses procedurally generated tracks. I mean, why? It just means you results don’t come fully from your skill, but are also heavily influenced by how lucky you get with your track, whether you will get a lot of quick turn that require your full focus or whether you will get these longer pieces of road where you get a bit of time to orient yourself and prepare for the next turn. Not fun, not fun at all.

So, gameplay wise Hyperun is super lacking in any substance. It’s just driving in a straight line while performing a few really simple tricks.

Graphics

Okay, I think I’ve criticized the mechanics enough to the point where you guys will understand why I didn’t like the game much. So it’s time to move on to the graphics.
Here I’m gonna be a bit more positive. So Hyperun used very heavily stylized graphics and they do fit the game pretty well for the most part. The few complaints I have is the fact that they are highly repetitive and after playing for like a half hour you will see everything the games has to offer in terms of the graphical assets. This may be a problem for some of you guys out there, but for me it was a minor issue, considering the larger issue of the boring gameplay.

Music

Now onto the only thing I really really enjoyed while playing Hyperun. The music. Man does this game have music that fits it well. It very fast and is actually the thing that made me stick the to game longer then it deserved.

Performance

And now onto performance. And here I’m really split. Because the game runs well, doesn’t have any noticeable bugs nor does it crash. But there are some weird decisions made during the development I can’t just put into any other category then here.
So first off all, the settings menu is incredibly lacking. I mean, it’s there but most of the options just don’t work. The only part of the settings menu I could actually access is the controls mapping. I couldn’t adjust the games resolution, the volume or anything else. I mean seriously, who releases a game when even the settings menus don’t work.
Another thing is that exiting the “race”/trickpark just abruptly takes you out, the game just freezes for a second as it’s loading the menus and just directly goes there. No transition at all and it just feels weird.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion. Hyperun is not a good game. It claims to be inspired by the great games of old, but it took only the things we didn’t like about them and didn’t improve on their mechanics at all. If anything it only simplified them. And the price the developer is asking for this is much higher then what is warranted. If the game cost like 2 bucks, it would be a decent buy, but at a price of 10 euroes, it just doesn’t warrant the buy.

disclaimer: All the images have been taken of the games Steam story page