Hover! is a game that many growing up in the 90s have played if their home had a computer, and if that computer was a Windows 95. This has given the game a legacy and a nostalgic celebrity status. I find these types of games hard to review since they have some sort of extra attribute to take into consideration when revisiting them.
To me, this game was for a long time a hazy memory, a game that I remember playing at a friend's house or one of the school's computers. But being that young I didn't remember the name, just the look and the gameplay. Several games were like that and some still are. It was not until I was in my teens and on the internet that I came across this game again and learned its name.
For this revisit of an old childhood memory, I had the fortune to have old and contemporary hardware to play it on. An IBM laptop from the time to be specific. I also tried to play it on a modern computer and it worked fine except for the fact that its resolution was locked and therefore very tiny on a modern monitor. It didn't matter to me this time though since I always try to play on hardware as intended for its time.
Hover! is an arcade-style capture-the-flag game that takes place between two teams in an arena. The objective for the player is to capture the other team's flags before they do so to you and do so for as many levels in a row as possible to collect a high score.
The game is not very large, only around 16 MB, and most of it I suspect went to the photo textures that were used in the game. Because the game is not very feature-rich. It has three different types of arenas; a castle, a sewer, and a neon carnival-like eye exam of an arena. These three arenas are then cycled with increasing difficulty.
Spread over the arena are spawn points where the flags appear at the start of the level, floor tiles with traps, and floating spheres with buffs and debuffs. These, I discovered, can be surprisingly hard to get or avoid since the low resolution that the game is forced into makes the sphere's icons hard to read when traveling fast. And you will be traveling fast.
The control of the hovercar is expectedly floaty and the faster you travel, the harder it will be to turn without some serious drifting occuring. Since the hovercars are also acting like bumper cars, they will bounce hard off the walls or other players when traveling fast.
During play, the difficulty of the game rises by making the game more asymmetrical in its play rules. For every couple of levels or so, the game adds more flags to collect, from three to eventually six. At the same time, it also adds members to the enemy team. Eventually, it divided into two subgroups seekers who hunt for your flags and defenders who hunt for you. This makes the game go from very easy to unfair very quickly. Later levels get more dependent on favorable flag locations and random luck that they spawn in a place you can reach without a power-up. I argue this because when the flags are in favorable positions, the enemy team doesn't have a chance. Luckily, if you lose a level you can start from that one again but without collected items and points.
So how do I conclude my thoughts on this revisit? Well, it was a trip. Using an old computer like a Windows 95-operated one is always a fun nostalgic trip for me and I did enjoy playing this game again for the short time that I did. I managed to beat this game in about an hour when restarting from lost levels.
The graphics are cozy chunky sprites for a 3D style that is an acquired taste nowadays. The walls are scaled-down photo textures and there is nothing wrong with that. It kind of reminds me of that old labyrinth screensaver that was on the same system. Those who remember will know what I'm talking about.
Unfortunately, there isn't enough content to play this for a longer while to me. The game is probably not made to be played for long sessions and is happy to be the short but fun experience that it is. I played until level 16, the last level before the game started to repeat and I felt happy with stopping there.
As it stands when revisiting the game it felt like a fun but honestly a very average experience. The polish is just not there and several assets are noticeable stock assets. I will probably revisit Hover! in the future, but for now, I am content with letting this rest for a while.
To me, this game was for a long time a hazy memory, a game that I remember playing at a friend's house or one of the school's computers. But being that young I didn't remember the name, just the look and the gameplay. Several games were like that and some still are. It was not until I was in my teens and on the internet that I came across this game again and learned its name.
For this revisit of an old childhood memory, I had the fortune to have old and contemporary hardware to play it on. An IBM laptop from the time to be specific. I also tried to play it on a modern computer and it worked fine except for the fact that its resolution was locked and therefore very tiny on a modern monitor. It didn't matter to me this time though since I always try to play on hardware as intended for its time.
Hover! is an arcade-style capture-the-flag game that takes place between two teams in an arena. The objective for the player is to capture the other team's flags before they do so to you and do so for as many levels in a row as possible to collect a high score.
The game is not very large, only around 16 MB, and most of it I suspect went to the photo textures that were used in the game. Because the game is not very feature-rich. It has three different types of arenas; a castle, a sewer, and a neon carnival-like eye exam of an arena. These three arenas are then cycled with increasing difficulty.
Spread over the arena are spawn points where the flags appear at the start of the level, floor tiles with traps, and floating spheres with buffs and debuffs. These, I discovered, can be surprisingly hard to get or avoid since the low resolution that the game is forced into makes the sphere's icons hard to read when traveling fast. And you will be traveling fast.
The control of the hovercar is expectedly floaty and the faster you travel, the harder it will be to turn without some serious drifting occuring. Since the hovercars are also acting like bumper cars, they will bounce hard off the walls or other players when traveling fast.
During play, the difficulty of the game rises by making the game more asymmetrical in its play rules. For every couple of levels or so, the game adds more flags to collect, from three to eventually six. At the same time, it also adds members to the enemy team. Eventually, it divided into two subgroups seekers who hunt for your flags and defenders who hunt for you. This makes the game go from very easy to unfair very quickly. Later levels get more dependent on favorable flag locations and random luck that they spawn in a place you can reach without a power-up. I argue this because when the flags are in favorable positions, the enemy team doesn't have a chance. Luckily, if you lose a level you can start from that one again but without collected items and points.
So how do I conclude my thoughts on this revisit? Well, it was a trip. Using an old computer like a Windows 95-operated one is always a fun nostalgic trip for me and I did enjoy playing this game again for the short time that I did. I managed to beat this game in about an hour when restarting from lost levels.
The graphics are cozy chunky sprites for a 3D style that is an acquired taste nowadays. The walls are scaled-down photo textures and there is nothing wrong with that. It kind of reminds me of that old labyrinth screensaver that was on the same system. Those who remember will know what I'm talking about.
Unfortunately, there isn't enough content to play this for a longer while to me. The game is probably not made to be played for long sessions and is happy to be the short but fun experience that it is. I played until level 16, the last level before the game started to repeat and I felt happy with stopping there.
As it stands when revisiting the game it felt like a fun but honestly a very average experience. The polish is just not there and several assets are noticeable stock assets. I will probably revisit Hover! in the future, but for now, I am content with letting this rest for a while.