Hovorun

Overview

"Hovorun" is a 3D online racing game similar to "Mario Kart”, allowing you to use in-game items to affect the outcome of the race.

Features

• Slight rubberband helps limit too substantial of leads… sometimes
• Colorful characters and environments
• The Hovos are speedy little vehicles
• Diverse weapon set

Review

During races each player can utilize three different weapons (four if a particular upgrade is purchased) by accumulating gold coins scattered around the tracks. In some cases, these weapons act as equalizers, preventing the more skilled from gaining a substantial lead and/or giving those in last asignificant boost. Most of the time, though, they mostly benefit the more experienced users who know the maps and place particular objects in the mostdevious of locations.

On repeated occasions, a few well-placed Ice Walls prevented me from landing a jump off a crucial ramp. Depending on the severity of the situation, I would either be knocked down into the ravine below, forced to gently navigate my wayback to the track without being bounced around by the punishing collision detection, or my vehicle would become flipped upside down, preventing me from taking any kind of action. The latter was obviously the worst, mostly because I couldn't finish the race and earn more experience points and Point,"Hovorun's" form of in-game currency.

Poing can be used in the shop to rent (you only get them for a limited time) items of varying or no effect on the general gameplay. Some vehicles offer a slight increase in acceleration, top speed, handling, and/or drift whileothers offer vastly improved stats in particular categories while suffering inothers. Scarves, hats, and new suits can enhance certain abilities, automatically generate gold coins, sometimes protect against attacks, etc. Athigh level competitive play, equipping your character to best utilize thetrack and combat enemies becomes a methodical process. But at the beginning, all players are stuck with just the clothes on their backs and the vehicle they rode in on.

This forces new players to deal with being at a severe disadvantage, only play against other low level racers, or by purchasing GO cash from the developer'swebsite. Since experience points are gained from winning races, it's possible for someone to pay for better items using real money while still racing in the beginner server that only allows players with under 21,000 experience. Essentially this gives players with more real-world money a competitive advantage over others who may or may not have more natural racing ability. Not cool, man. Not cool.

As usual with MMOs like this, the title becomes considerably more enjoyable after the initial "I don't have anything" phase. Although, once players create the characters they want, there doesn't seem to be much to do after. The item count is extremely limited, with only a handful of choices in each individual category, so instead of working towards procuring even better equipment, most players play to earn money to hold on to what they currently have. Until a significant amount of more content is made available, "Hovorun's" potentially unbalanced and punishing gameplay isn't worth trudging through to get to the modestly rewarding endgame.