Previous Next

One glance at the screenshots will tell you half the story. Yes, Hurrican is rather heavily indebted to Turrican and not just for the traditional 'rhyming name' approach to homebrew homage development. If you liked Turrican then this is probably worthy of your attention, go ahead and click the link in the bottom right and install it now, there's probably little more that I can tell you about this one. As they used to say in AP, if you like that sort of thing then you'll like this; 73%, right let's all go down the pub.

With those guys out of here I'm guessing I'm left with three groups of people. Those who've never played Turrican, those who didn't like Turrican and people wondering when I'm going to get to the cross stitch patterns. For that last group I'm afraid you're reading the wrong publication, the rest of you, stick around.

You see, I'm with you; I'm not by any means a fan of Turrican. It's fussy; it's overly crowded and never quite knows whether it wants to be a platformer or just an outright shoot 'em up game.

Hurrican is a little different, whilst played at the hard levels it very much resembles Turrican in that respect, but if you're crap like me and turn it down you get considerably more time to think. It does share some of Turrican's eccentricities though; most notably, the entirely worthless artificial time limits, something I hate in all 'progress' games are still present and merely act as a deterrent to go exploring.

Which is a shame really since the level design is awesome, there are plenty of sidetracks to take, and even entirely separate routes, all of which offer bonuses to make it worthwhile for you. It'd just be nice to have time to take advantage of this. Other than that, I like. It doesn't so much remind me of Turrican itself as of the awesome Jazz Jackrabbit. It's a fast paced platformer shooter with multiple weapons just like that game was and it's all the better for it.

Graphically, it's stunning (...although I'd prefer 'proper' pixel art over the new-school 3D rendered sprites Hurrican uses - JM). Multi layer parallax, beautifully drawn recreations of old and new enemies, superb effects from the weapons and wonderfully smooth animation all grab you instantly and don't let go. It's not heavy on a modern PC. My laptop has an onboard Geforce 6100 and is running Vista, a combination which should be gaming kryptonite, yet it took me quite considerable effort to even make the game slow down. In that respect it's absolutely everything a Turrican remake should be.

So the pieces are certainly there, this is one of those rare remakes with universal appeal. Fans of the original will love every second, especially as with new level designs it's virtually a sequel. People who were never convinced by Turrican will love that the rough edges have been smoothed and the three people other than me who remember Jazz Jackrabbit will have had a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia.

There's plenty of homebrew that, while free in money terms, is not worth your time. Every second you play ('Marbie Treehouse Sadventures' - JM) is a second you're not playing Hurrican and that would be a shame. In fact, I'm going to chop this review to 500 words so you have even more time to do so. You'll thank me later.