This is the modern day Jet Set Radio.

Pros:
-Music by Hideaki Naganuma
-Fun gameplay
-Music by Hideaki Naganuma
-Fast paced arcade parkour action
-Music by Hideaki Naganuma
-Fun, colorful, and vivid graphics that bring the world to life
-Music by Hideaki Naganuma
-Basically the Jet Set Radio 3 that never came to be

Cons:
-Still in alpha
-Not enough music by Hideaki Naganuma (can't have an infinite amount of music)
-My potato laptop can barely run it, but it's my potato to blame

If you like running around at high speeds after finding random game consoles and helping a rabbit-person, this is for you.
In all seriousness, this is a VERY good game. The start of the game is moderately slow, but you quickly level up(This is excluding getting to level 10. God,the exp!) and start going very fast. Over time they have added an E-Cop Prison and even a resistance hideout, with goals and missions for each. Hell,I even have a gamegirl trail that gets a basic character to level 6+. That's 4 levels away from the cap.

This is in ALPHA still, so there's much more to be added.

reminds me alot of jet set radio, we need more people to play this wonderful game!

10/10

(As Hover is undergoing patches to bring the game closer to full release, I will post the occasional update reviewing changes that have been brought to the game. These can be found towards the bottom, with the main body of the post explaining my thoughts on the game generally.)

This is pretty much the game I've been waiting for since Mirror's Edge was released back in 2008. If you liked the idea of Mirror's Edge: Catalyst's open world but want to see it executed well with more fun, arcadey parkour and *proper* multiplayer then Hover is for you. While it is still only in alpha, I am having a tremendous amount of fun with it.

Hover is an open world parkour game (playable in single player or multiplayer) inspired by the Jet Set Radio series that allows you to race your friends and explore the reasonably large portion of the world that is currently available. When I first started playing the alpha (I backed the Kickstarter and started playing in February 2015), I wasn't a fan of Hover - the parkour felt a little awkward to use and it wasn't what I was expecting. However, after 30 minutes or so of running around the city and backflipping between grindable rails, it felt like second nature; it's fluid, fast and most importantly, fun. One of the coolest features is the fact that your camera rotates in first person if you do a front/back/side flip - not really anything that amazing, but it adds a nice bit of immersion to the first person aspect. You are also able to switch between 3 camera modes - first person, auto (movement is first person, tricks/flips are in 3rd person) and 3rd person.

One of my favourite things about the game is that there are actually different playstyles to use, something i've never really seen in a parkour game. As of the first alpha release, you can level your character to level 10 and increase your stats in 5 seperate attributes - speed, acceleration, jump, grind and hoverheat. While building your character in various ways is interesting and encourages different styles of play, the most interesting stat is "hoverheat", which allows your characters stats to temporarily increase by building up energy from grinding on rails and doing tricks in mid-air. The higher the amount of hoverheat you have, the more your overall stats will temporarily increase, meaning you could be faster than someone with max speed or jump higher than someone with max jump skill. It's a style I haven't tried out yet, but I plan to give it a go after I level up my 2nd chracter to level 10.

While there is a decent amount of content right now (Lots of hidden collectibles, a mission editor, multiple races/escaping from police and 32 player MP servers) Fusty Games are planning to add in more cities, more mission types, more parkour moves, a story mode that includes parkour and stealth based missions and a soundtrack written by Hideki Naganuma himself. Furthermore, the current online community is fantastic, which meant that I wanted to keep playing even with having completed most of the content. There's also a mission editor that allows you to create your own races to be completed around the city, something that adds a fair amount of longevity to the game.

If you've enjoyed the parkour in Titanfall or Mirror's Edge but fancy something more arcadey, you really can't go wrong with Hover. It's a fun game for a relatively low cost with a promising future (that doesn't look like it'll be dumped into release half finished) and I can't really recommend an early access game anymore than that.

Tl;dr Very fun game that plays like a mix of Mirror’s Edge and Jet Set Radio with an open world and multiplayer. Somewhat lacking in content/polish right now, but it’s still in alpha and I fully expect the issues to be ironed out.



***UPDATE 1***: So I said I'd upate this review which didn't happen for over a year, but there's been quite a few patches since then. Fusty has scrapped the first city and rebuilt it completely, as it was the original city that caused the framerate issues. Since then, I have been able to play the game at 60fps on my desktop (i5-4690k, GTX970, 8gb RAM) and haven't had any framerate issues.

Some new locations have been added too, including the E-cop prison, which gives you a taster of some of the stealth sections Fusty plan to implement. While the movement feels a little too fast to be a truly precise stealth game, it's still fun and a welcome addition to the game. The other area that's been added are the Sewers, which is a sprawling area full of tunnels and races to complete. There's also a nice parkour course spiralling towards the top of the sewers which allows you to see the inside of Resistance HQ. My only real problem with the sewers (After briefly playing the update since its release last night) is that they're quite difficult to find your way out of. The main city district redesign has made it quite vertical, meaning it's easy to learn the layout of the city. The second district of the City is currently being worked on now, so there'll be an even larger area to explore (hopefully) soon.

There have also been extra characters added, all of which are good at different things; Greendy is much faster than other characters whereas Watabax gets a much higher boost bonus from hoverheat,for example.

I'd say my main problem with Hover right now is that it can be fairly difficult to learn the layout of the city due to how vertical District A (The main area) is. A map wouldn't help in this situation either, as it's hard to properly map out the district while accounting for the differences in height between areas. This could be helped if - when in the sewers for example - there were more environmental clues on how to leave the area or signs that made it clear as to where you were heading.
The animation NPCs have when bumped into is still quite strange and something that I hope is changed to make it look less jerky.

On the whole though, I have very few complaints about Hover; it's an early access game so there are things that still clearly need to be worked on, but it's a game I continue to have a lot of fun with.

UPDATE 1 TL;DR: Each update to Hover has brought bug fixes, balance changes, more things to do and larger play areas. Each update has been positive and while progress is a bit slow, there's enough content here to justify picking the game up.

> Joined a server
> Finds a developer
> Stalks developer
> Developer asks what I'm doing
> I ask developer for free food
> Developer leads me to a giant cheeseburger
10/10 Would stalk again

Honestly though Hover is a pretty fun game, overall worth $20 in the state that it's in? I think so, just note that there is going to be a lack of content for now and there are going to be glitches, lots of glitches, and the performance could be better. But it is overall is a very fun game, especially if you like games like Jet Set Radio or Mirror's Edge.

Played Mirror's Edge? Enjoyed it? Played Crackdown? Enjoyed the Vibrant Art of it? Played Jet Set Radio? Enjoyed the Hip Vibe it produced? Ever rubbed your nipples with ice cubes until they turned into diamond laced weapons of lethal intent? THEN YOU WILL LIKE.....H-H-H-H-H-OVERRRRRR: REVOLT OOOOOFFFFFF GAMMMEEERRRRSSSSSAAAA!!!!! Play as a weird kid from the future who's face is hidden behind an extremely futuristic google glass, run at high speeds!, jump like alex Mofoing Mercer, Dunk "gamerballs" so hard Charles Barkley will be at your feet begging for your good judgement! BUY THIS GAME NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Story time!

So I bought this way back when it came out cause it looked awesome and it did but I had a MAC at the time.

Fast forward two-ish years and I have a good computer for gaming and I say to my friend Ryan hey lets play this together since we never did. We get in find eachother and a random guy asks if we are new.

Seeing no harm in this we answer "Yep we finally got around to playing it!" guys like "Cool would you like me to show you around?" ♥♥♥♥ yeah helpfull community right off the bat! So this Omnillo Sensei as I now called him shows us around for an hour and a bit teaching uis tricks how to play tag and a ball game in a stadium.

Super chill guy I hope to see him again because alas its time to stop, so we say our goodbyes to this once stranger I now call sensei and me and ryan close the game. I send to him over steam chat since ingames no longer. "Man I don't know who he was but hes super helpfull and chill I'm so glad he showed us around because that was ♥♥♥♥♥ons of fun!"

Jokingly I say "Hehe~ next time we see him well be top tier and he'll reveal himself as a designer of the game."

"..." Ryan pauses.

"Dude he is." then a pause. "I reckognize his name from the kickstarter."

Mind ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blown. 10/10

For taking your precious time in testing to show around two newbies and showing them a great time.

Thank you Sensei.

This is one of those games that I saw when it was announced like 2 years ago, and have been following it ever since the beginning. This was a dream game for me. I love parkour games like Mirrors Edge, and Jet Set Radio is probably my favorite franchises ever. So this mis match of those 2 games was a euphoric expierence.

At release this game had its fair share of issues. Bad performance, glitches out the wazoo, only 2 music tracks, little to no content, and other such things. But it was expected since it was an early access game, and it's still in Alpha too so thats a factor. I don't have a high end gaming PC, so my best performance was about 20 frames, and that was at very best. I sucked it up and played the game anyways, considering how hyped I was. I wasn't entirely disappointed. I still had fun even with all the flaws.

Months pass

Then the 3.0 update comes out

As of this update, the game has gotten significantly better. The frame rate as tripled from the old version to this one. The new city is much better than the older one. The two new songs sort of break up the monotony of the other songs, but there still isn't too much to the soundtrack so far. I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed Mirror's Edge or any other type of parkour game. It can only get better from this point.

Truly amazing game. I would recommend this to anyone. It's insanely fun, and a mixture of jet set radio and mirrors edge, witch are already awesome games. This game could have such a great future.

OUTDATED REVIEW!!!
Alright, let me get this out of the way, I am having a ton of fun with this game so far. It's a very colorful, very cool looking, and a very fun game to play. The game gives you freedom to platform and parkour all over (half) a city, with option to do missions (be it races or taking a thing and throwing it into a thing into another thing) to level up and increase the stats of what your character can do. The controls are pretty responsive (I'm playing on a Xbox One controller), it's a bit slippery, but it works because it gives the feeling of momentum, and tells you to slow down if you want to make a good turn or not fall off a building. This game is still in Early Access, and really there are way worse games out there that are in the same catagory, so this feels more complete than other games of its nature.

So it saddens me to say that I cannot really recomend people to pay $20 for the game just yet, or if you do, pay attention to what I have to say so you know what you're getting into. While you can attribute to the game being in Early Access (alpha state), then it's most important that I state these flaws now so the devs can improve on the game before it can be considered a full legit game. Also just because it's in early access doesn't mean I can't criticizes it. I payed $20 on this game, I can state the flaws of the product if I want to, plus I have 4+ hours in this game.

-No story: The game technically has a story, but it's pretty shallow and doesn't really move forward at all. You are a guy and you wake up in a... place. You are told by some other teens that games have been taken away by the government empire society yadayadayada. It's pretty meh, but it can be presented as fun or tounge in cheek, but it seems a bit half ♥♥♥♥♥. The 3 members of the revolution are cool looking characters themselves, and each have something of a personality, but it's all told through in game chat boxes with images of the characters. Then some other characters show up with no context and say things, and leave. Really, it seems like the story needs something, like to be there.

-Bad FPS: FPS being frames per second. The game has no FPS cap, but from my experience, it's highest is maybe 40. It could be my com♥♥♥♥r, but the Frame Rate drops considerdably down a lot, to as low as 15 or 10, and with this speedy game, that is a not good thing. Not good at all.

-Shallow parkour: The gameplay feels a bit shallow. And by bit I mean a lot. The game is pretty fluid, jumping from wall to wall is good, parkouring all around feels nice, BUT it's basic. And the game has a focus on parkouring, it's in the tag! Other then sliding and jumping for tricks, and super hopping after falling for 167 feet from the air and pressing jump, the game feels like it needs more before it gets pretty stale and repetitive. You can do tricks in the air, but that's just pressing a button, posing, and not much happening. I remember the KickStarter having points in the gameplay, which would have actually made the game feel more fun (like the style meter in the DMC games) but because it's not there, there doesn't seem to be any reward for doing cool stuff other than for the sake for it. And really, this game needs some fun tricks, like pole spinning, or car balancing, or something, anything.

-Repetitive missions: I said earlier that there are missions, and I only gave 2 examples. That's because that's the only type of missions of the game. Racing is racing, though there is 3 different types of it. V1 is racing by yourself agaisnt the clock. V2 is you against an AI opponent. V3 is you against someone online. Go through checkpoints, 3 laps, done. They are good in that you have to be clever in figuring out short cuts or how to get to the next point faster, but it's still just racing. The other type is taking an object called the gamerball, which looks like a fat gamecube, and tossing it into an X. You can't do tricks, and you can get lost by following the arrow because stuff can be in the way of the objective. There's also this flying droid that sometimes follows you and shocks you for you to drop the gamerball. It hinders the mission already because what else do I need in a mission where it's easy to get lost in, a droid that makes me drop the maguffin.

-Focus too much on online: The game is obvious to be making you go play online with other people and do stuff, which may explain why the game feels so MMO in it's story approch. You are generic guy, here is noob tube, you train, you out of tube, bye-bye! And honestly, being online feels pretty shallow. Usually people are doing their own thing since there is no real encouragement to go do stuff with other players other than... nothing. So because of this, there seems to be a lack of single player offline care.

-$20: It's too pricy right now honestly. For $20, I could of gotten a few games off Steam or GOG or PSN or Origin or Wii U or Xbox Live, go out to see a movie with snacks, buy a cool toy, save up for something special, get a magizine subcription, buy some books. Basically get something complete instead of something not even finished.

-Color pallet: If you love/hate orange and blue contrast, you'll love/hate this game. This game presents itself as a colorful throwback to the Sega Dreamcast days, where games were full of color and life. But this game does the cheap orange/blue contrast trick that movies and games trying to be movies do now-a-days. Jet Set Radio did not do the orange/blue trick, it used a nice pallet to give the player something nice and unique to look at. This game sadly does not look unique because of this orange/blue choice.

-Lifeless citizens: Holy heck these citizens barely do anything, other than walk. And call me a racist if you want, but they all look the same.

-No real threats: Remember the flying shock droid I mentioned earlier? Yeah, he's your only threat, other than cameras that make laser walls that not allow you to go through coridiors, even if you can and will find ways around them. I'm supposed to be part in a team of gaming freedom fighters, but never do I feel like I am one since I never fight anything, or at least GTFO myself away from baddies (like in Jet Set Radio, the game that influenced this game a lot, other than Mirriors Edge, which also had enimies).

-Not enough music: Even though this game got some help by the composer of Jet Set Radio, Hideki Naganuma, there is only 2 tunes in this game so far. Basic world music, and racing music. And honestly, it doesn't sound like his style of music. Compare the music in this game to JTS or Sonic Rush, it just sounds way different. Also the 2 tracks have already gotten repetitive. Maybe an ingame radio would be nice, to cycle through songs and stuff.

-Level cap too low: Just 10, and I have like 4 or 5 different types of areas I can upgrade, of which 3 points is the highest I can give to each. I'm gonna focus on certain aspects of the charcter growth over others, and be done with it quick, and regret my desicion later.

-World layout is forgetable: While it looks nice, the game doesn't really have too many places you can say is memorable, other than the rusty metal shack looking places that are next to each other attacheted to the walls and each other through stuff, and the slime waterfall. This is a huge issue for me, because you can get lost easy in this game, and look as if you're going circles everywhere. This game needs more visually more reconizable local, pinpoints that can make you go "oh, I remember that place, I know where I am!"

-Online issues: It could just be me, but after the most recent update, I can't seem to get online. My wi-fi has been acting not goot recenlty though, so it could just be me.

This game has great potential to be one of the most fun and unique parkour games out there to date (what few there are though), but it also can screw that up badly if it doesn't fix these issues ASAP.