It’s telling that French indie studios Fusty Game and Midgard dropped the Revolt of Gamers subtitle for Hover. For all its attempts at coolness and swaggery, nothing screams ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ like the use of the word ‘gamer’. It’s a term this game uses a lot in its story to denote a team of young rebels hoping to stick it to the proverbial man, but hey, at least they had the sense to drop it off the name.
This is also a set of developers who aren’t afraid to show their undying admiration for Sega's seminal Jet Set Radio. From the neon colours of its online open-world setting ECP17 (or Hover City as it’s known to some of its denizens) to the rail-grinding and graffiti-painting of its moment-to-moment gameplay, Hover is an elaborate tribute to the Dreamcast classic; an interactive love letter that wears that affection on its cel-shaded sleeve. Hell, it’s even got Hideki Naganuma - the composer of Jet Set Radio - contributing a handful of EDM-style tracks. This is a game that absolutely wants to be the spiritual successor to a much-loved series, but does it pull off this lofty tribute act?
You start off as a customisable clone with the handy ability to parkour around the city's surroundings at high speed. You can customise your Statistics from the menu, and the more you rank up, the more slots open up on a trait-based grid (a skill tree, in other words). Completing missions will reward you with Items, which can be placed in these slots to gradually enhance your stats (such as jump height, bump resistance and hacking). The idea is to create multiple ‘builds’ on a single team. Your rank applies to your team, so you won’t have to re-rank, but you will need to earn more Items to enhance stats in the right direction.
So, back to that all-important parkour. Pressing ‘ZR’ or ‘B’ will make you jump, while holding either button a little longer will extend the height you get out of it. Pressing ‘ZL’ will enable you to pull off tricks in mid-air, slide along you floor and grind on almost edge or rail in the game. You’ll build speed as you push forwards, enabling you to wall-run across gaps - Prince of Persia-style - or even wall-slide for some extra trick points. It's got a real TrickStyle vibe to it, which seems intentional considering that was another Dreamcast classic. You can even play in first-person, which makes its Mirror's Edge-aping movement far more intense.
When you’ve generated some serious momentum and you’ve nailed the floaty movement Hover serves up, mantling and leaping your way around the city can be a blast. You can even run straight through the brightly-coloured NPCs wandering its multi-tiered setting, so crashing to a halt only ever happens when you fail to effectively read the environment around you. Verticality also plays a big part in navigating ECP17, and it’s here Hover’s floaty movement can sometimes be an issue. Your avatar will automatically grab any ledge above them, but pressing jump once too many times will bounce you away, too often leading you to plummet down to the bottom. Ouch.
Thankfully, you can’t die from taking fall damage, but the real saving grace is a rewind feature. Rather than rewinding the environment around you, pressing ‘R’ or ‘X’ will turn back time on your character’s position. So if you mistime and jump and fail to reach a far platform, or jump to reach a ledge and bounce away in frustration, you can just hold either button to drag your avatar back to a previous location in the last few seconds of play. You also leave a neon trail behind you, so recounting your previous movements is easy and negates the lack of tactile response climbing often produces.
There are even spawn points located on almost every level. These enable you to respawn via a series of glowing blue portals, but the fact you have to manually access them by scanning with ‘L’ or ‘A’ (rather than having them log your last position automatically) renders them redundant if you’re moving at pace and need to keep that speed going. There are, thankfully, plenty of green smoke-coughing jump pads that launch you to much higher platforms, but the hitbox for these is tiny, so it’s easy to miss them entirely.
The city is also filled with a generous serving of missions to complete (over 90 in total), but these often boil down to two main types: races and Gameball. Races, as you might expect, are Hover’s strongest suit and task you with beating another character in lapped circuits. With giant pink markers to leap through, these competitions make full use of the game’s mechanics and level design and you’ll soon find yourself chaining together every trick you’ve learned while exploring areas of ECP17 you may not have found otherwise. You can even take part in these races with other players, should they choose to join the same contest. There are also stealth, hacking and other mission types, but these two are by far the most common.
Gameball feels far less natural, mainly because it’s trying to mix basketball, rugby and a love of TRON all into the same volatile melting pot. It’s a simple premise - grab the titular ball and either throw it or leap into the opposing team’s wall-mounted box. You can grab the ball by running into another player, but the frame rate always takes a kicking in these matches when multiple players converge on the same point at speed, so winning is usually a case of luck. You can, of course, create a build geared towards Gameball, but it doesn’t make this persistent mission type any more enjoyable.
While inconsistent in the quality of its missions and the trite ‘Gamer’ angle of its story - cool kids rebelling against authority via vandalism and sick tricks, blah blah bah - Hover’s performance on Switch is admirable. Running at 30fps for the most part, this is a fully explorable open-world full of other players that only occasionally finds itself struggling to maintain that framerate. The developers could have made a little more effort to help other players integrate by joining the same missions, but it’s a nonetheless a successful litmus test for MMORPGs running on Switch.
Conclusion
No one on God’s green Earth loves Jet Set Radio as much as the developers of Hover, and it shows in every strand of its DNA. The fast, trick-focused movement model is pure Dreamcast, and with spray-painting, challenging races and an anti-authoritarian attitude, this is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a full franchise revival. The problem is the elements it brings to the mix - such as its shared online world, the variety of its mission types and the crux of its story - never manage to live up to the legacy of an 18-year-old game.
Comments 23
Considering the Sega Ages poll results announced recently, hopefully this isn't the closest we'll get to the real Jet Set Radio.
@ilikeike I was going to say much the same thing. Going by the poll and by how much JSR came out on top I'd say it's just a matter of time until the real thing arrives.
I like what ive played so far, but the frame rate while playing online is awful. It runs great offline but I hope they fix it, would be fun to play with friends.
This is probably the highest review i've seen of this game yet. I was interested in it but pretty much everyone says it's awful.
I feel this is an admiral take on the genre. This is an indie studio after with a much smaller budget than SEGA would have. Nintendo should be the publishers on it's sequel and make it open world, maybe include cameos from some of our favorite "squid kids."
This review's heading couldn't have been timed much worse.
Thank you for mentioning the frame rate, and that it drops below it's target of 30. I hope Sega releases Jet Set Radio Future, and keeps it at its original frame rate of 60. I'm also curious to try this game. Wish there was a demo.
@RickD
True , NL gives higher scores
I bought it because I wanted something to zoom around in. The port from PC is insulting (navigate menus with a mouse cursor?!?!), the neon everywhere is disorienting, the movement takes a long time to get used to and "Game Ball" is incomprehensible game design. But the more I play it, the more I'm able to get into the flow. Once you reach a high point and you're moving around at speed, leaping down instead of scrambling up, everything starts to click. I'd say if the concept interests you and you have the patience to push through a bad first impression, get it.
Rather just fire Up Jet Set radio on Vita (or $8 for the HD PC version) 🙄
So if a publisher rips off a Nintendo iP it is "stealing"... but when a garbage Indie does it to SEGA it is encouraged as "The closest you get to Jet Set Radio on Switch" and gets a 7/10
@ilikeike We need a new Jet Set Radio though.
Everybody who loves JSR played it at least on 2 different platforms (Dreamcast, HD version and possibly even the mobile one). It's time for something new.
And while it's still an amazing game, the gameplay mechanics are kinda awkward and sometimes downright frustrating
I was interested in this, but i'll give it a miss.
I don't know Jet Set Radio but this is the Closest you'll get to Hover on the Switch.
Why so negative?
Looks ok, but I'll pass. I have Jet Set Radio on X1. It's ok I guess. Didn't play much.
But I'll give it another try on Switch when it comes to Sega AGES. Don't really care enough about it to fire up the Xbox, and my Vita hasn't been turned on in about 2 years. It's basically no longer in use for me. If it ain't on Switch I really can't be bothered to play it so, I'll give it another go with the Ages line.
You guys forgot to mention that it has cross play. Switch/X1/PC or PS4/PC.
I own this on PC, an I love the movement of it to death. It was really fun playing it with a friend but the framerate concerns are real. Even on my stupidly powerful PC, I was getting some pretty hefty framerate dips. Some areas would just drop me more than 20 frames under my constant an sometimes even to the 50s. (I have a 144hz monitor.) So its not so much as a hardware's scale in power issue, but a code issue.
@Rohanrocks88 Being inspired by a game in a "genre" is completely different from making a thinly veiled copy of it.
Most of the Switch library are publishers making money off of re-re-re-releases... If that is the case I should be entitled to clone half the WiiU library at this point. 🤔
@Galenmereth This says a lot about our society.
I never regret reading review comments. Either the score is too high or two, but this site you all choose to go to is always wrong and needs to work harder. I'm surprised someone has yet to harass the author about how many hours they played the game to be honest.
@Galenmereth oh now how dare he comment on the plot using cliches to push it's narrative. It's now politically bias to comment on tropes. gasp
I bought it, will play later today. Looks interesting.
This game is awesome. Been playing it for the past 3 hours and it's a blast. The framerate is its only draw back, seems to hit 15-20 fps whenever anything is going on. It's still worth it though, cause the gameplay is unique and lots of fun.
@Galenmereth you seem to think I care you commented. I don't. Im pointing that the review is saying the story is a cliche and that's all there is to it. It's not that hard to understand what it means. The blah blah blah is meant to convey that the story doesn't matter to the game at all.
I mean if you want a plot summary for a plot light game maybe you should read a synopsis and not a review?
@Galenmereth because I enjoy conversation? I know that's an uphill battle on this site as most people just shut down the minute you say anything to them but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.
Listing off the cliches and explaining it's trite says a lot about the plot. It's trite because it's cliche predictable and, to quote, blah blah blah. I just find it funny that you claimed it was politically bias to be honest, which is a massive stretch.
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