Hydrophobia Dev's try something different with patching...game gets a price drop too!

Hydrophobia developer Dark Energy Digital has announced plans to release a completely overhauled version of the downloadable title on Xbox Live tomorrow.

The dev says the title update, dubbed Hydrophobia Pure, "is built from detailed analysis of critical and customer feedback and is a root and branch rework of all the major systems in the game".

The highly anticipated XBLA release launched in September for 1200 MS Points, but received a kicking from certain sections of the press, with our pals at Edge awarding it just 3/10.

The full list of updates to Hydrophobia includes "new button mapping, massively improved controls, combat, cover and camera systems, much clearer damage feedback and objectives, enhanced climbing, better graphics, and much more", according to Dark Energy Digital.

Alongside the title update, the game's price will drop to 800 MS Points from tomorrow.

Joint creative director Pete Jones said: "Thanks to the bespoke procedural technology and data driven architecture of the InfiniteWorlds TM engine, we've been able to cram a huge amount into a tiny patch - to be honest we didn't think it was possible to make as many changes as we have.

"The camera and control changes alone makes it play so differently; it's a whole new experience. We have listened to what the community liked and disliked about the game; we know we didn't get everything right first time around but we have taken this time to refine the experience."

I applaud this, not many dev's admit to making mistakes let alone attempt to rework the whole game to make it better.

Too little too late, the demo was utter cack - not only were the controls shite but the demo gave no hint on how combat played and the cynic in me felt that they were deliberately hiding that part of the game away and not just to tantalise.

They could drop this to 400 and it still wouldnt tempt me tbh.

So do the people that stumped up 1200 points for this pig get a partial refund.........

Tom, whilst I agree that the devs deserve some praise for being willing to completely rework the game, the fact that they have had to do so much to this suggests it was fundamentally crippled and it should have been thoroughly tested behind closed doors before launch.

I think the devs got so excited about the (admittedly impressive) water effects in this, they actually forgot they were making something they needed to sell and neglected development of the core gameplay

you been playing black ops this morning chris, you seem a a tad angry haha

I wish mate, I am stuck at work so prob a little angrier than usual