But we know a lot of fans have favorites in the Novice and Pro classes like Damn the Torpedoes and Tidal Blade. “The ships you unlock early in Hurricane are designed to be accessible to new players, so they’re easier to handle and a little slower. “To be competitive on the Leaderboards and in online races you need to be driving an Expert boat,” explains Ralf Knoesel, Vector Unit’s Technical Director. As an added bonus, developer Vector Unit is including supercharged versions of the six Novice and Pro boats available in the base game, bringing the total number of playable Expert class boats to 11. Whiplash and Psyclone give Rad Hazard a run for its money.”īut the new vehicles don’t stop there. “You can tell from looking at the Leaderboards that Rad Hazard was the boat to beat in Hydro Thunder Hurricane. Whiplash is a futuristic cross between a v-hulled speedboat and a Formula 1 race car, while Psyclone is a souped-up flat-bottomed fan-boat. The DLC also adds two new Expert level boats to the pantheon of Hydro Thunder favorites. That’s what puts the tempest in Tempest Pack.” “The weather is stormier, the waves are bigger, and the levels are packed with more interactive obstacles and more potential for chaos and destruction.
“The new environments are all about ratcheting up the level of insanity,” says Creative Director Matt Small. New tracks include the volcanic ruins of Atlantis, the hurricane-whipped waters of the Bermuda Triangle, and a medieval obstacle course packed with exploding barrels and interactive cannons known as Castle Von Boom.
The Tempest Pack will include three brand new racing environments, two new Expert-class rocket-powered speedboats, a slew of new boat skins for existing boats, as well as new Championship, Ring Master and Gauntlet events.
Microsoft Game Studios and developer Vector Unit today announced the “Tempest Pack”, a downloadable expansion pack for the Xbox LIVE ® Summer of Arcade hit Hydro Thunder Hurricane, available for download on Xbox LIVE ® Marketplace for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft in October 2010. The new tracks are great, and if you enjoy player against other players, the X-Boats are a necessity and something we wish had been included in the original game.Downloadable content pack adds more tracks, more boats, more water-soaked goodness Not only that, but they added a few new designs to the game.Īll in all, this is a great value for fans of the Hydro Thunder game. This brings the total of expert boats up to 11 now. Vector unit realized that online play is dominated by expert boats and quickly rectified the situation releasing the X-Boats. The two new boats match up nicely with previous boats offering players to chose something new that may match their style better. Bermuda expands the insane weather of Storming Asgard as player’s race through the open seas and eventually through a whirlpool where all hell breaks loose. The track features a unique design where each lap requires going back and forth through a middle segment causing oncoming boats to meet in the same pathway. Castle Von Boom adds in an interesting cross -traffic mechanic and massive explosions, as players will dodge exploding barrels, cannonballs and other boats. In Atlantis, players race through the sunken city in a three lap race were new pathways become available each lap.
The Tempest Pack for Hydro Thunder: Hurricane contains three brand new original maps (Atlantis, Castle Von Boom and Bermuda), two new, original Boats (the super agile Whiplash and the slip-slidery Psyclone), one new skin for every boat in the game, six X-Boats (upgraded to expert versions of current boats) and of course 50 additional Gamerscore.Įach of the new tracks is on par, if not better than the tracks released with the game. Clearly it could, as two months later, the game’s online community is still thriving and Vector Unit has released their first piece of DLC. This wasn’t to say the game suffered from significant flaws, but we questioned if the game could hold attention long enough to match its $15 value for the majority of players. A copy of the DLC was provided to us for review purposes.īack in August, we reviewed Hydro Thunder: Hurricane for XBLA and gave it a Try rating. The Tempest DLC pack retails for 400 Microsoft points.
The full game retails for 1200 Microsoft Points. Hydro Thunder: Hurricane was developed by Vector Unit and published by Microsoft.