Hypership Out of Control is a vertical scrolling dodge-em-up. Sure, you do have a gun that helps you take out small obstacles (and big obstacles when you have the super gun powerup), but that’s not the point. See, your brakes are out, your ship is accelerating to crazy speeds, and it’s up to you to stay alive as long as possible, while trying to wrack up a fantastic score by collecting coins, bombs, and power-ups.
The 10 levels are well designed, the animation is smooth (60 fps, baby!), up to 4 player support, and deeper gameplay than it seems at first – featuring a nice mixture of strategy, trial & error, and reflexes – however the game doesn’t stop there. Besides Normal mode, Practice mode, and Hardcore mode (1 life), there’s Super Speed mode (no speed limit), and Coin Down (unlimited lives, but your coin total counts down constantly and you lose if it reaches 0). 20 “awardments” give you a variety of goals to strive for beyond just high scores. However, high score chasing is plenty rewarding since Hypership Out of Control includes online score sharing for the 4 main modes if you have a Live Gold account.
With its authentic retro graphics and music, dirt cheap price tag (80 MS points, i.e. $1 USD), and addicting “Just one more try” gameplay, Hypership Out of Control is one of the finest XBLIGs to be released to date. If you like old-school high score chasing arcade games, you need this game ASAP.
