Destructoid review: Hexothermic

10:00 PM on 12.26.2008   |   Jim Sterling

14 comments

There's something inherently satisfying about watching a chain reaction. From the ancient simplicity of Dominos to modern day videogame classics like Peggle, setting something in motion and watching the results is incredibly pleasant, despite the lack of interactivity.

Hexothermic is another in a line of games that focuses on the principal of the chain reaction. The question is this, however: Is Hexothermic worth 200 Points to capture the magic, or are you better served with a box of dominos? Read on to find out.

Hexothermic (Xbox 360 Community Games)
Developed by David Webb
Released on December 19, 2008
Costs 200 MS Points
Read more about our Community Games Review Challenge

Hexothermic charges you with clearing a screen of different colored atoms. Unlike real life, where atom smashing consists of millions upon millions of dollars of high tech equipment, this game merely asks you to click on the red ones until everything's gone.

The atoms change color depending on how close they are to exploding, with red being the final stage. Once a red atom is clicked, it sends six electrons out along each point of a hexagonal space, stopping once it hits an atom, which will change color. Of course, should an electron hit a red atom, that too will explode, sending out six more electrons. The goal is of course to trigger as many atoms as possible within a single click. You only have a limited number of clicks with which you can trigger a red atom of change the color of other ones, so you need to be as conservative as you can.

There are a number of different modes, such as Marathon, which recharges a few clicks per stage, or Survival, which gives you 99 Clicks and ends once you've used them all them. However, the game is essentially the same throughout. It's all about clicking and watching. If you've ever played a Flash game like Chaos Theory, you'll get the guiding principal. 

In fact, Hexothermic's biggest drawback is that there are many, many, many Flash Games to which you could compare, to the point where it's really hard to justify spending any sort of money.

Granted, a few things are in Hexothermic's favor. First of all, the game uses acoustic guitar sounds to represent the noise made by exploding or changing atoms, which can lead to some quite interesting music being made depending on how well your chain reaction goes. The game also recreates Achievements with its own set of Awards. 

Naturally, Hexothermic also has the High Definition edge, but sadly the game really isn't very pretty to look at, Hi-Def or not. What I am assuming is supposed to be a simple and clean style looks rather drab and even unpleasant. It is sad to say that those aforementioned Flash games tend to look better. 

Hexothermic isn't a terrible game. In fact, it's not even all that bad. It's just not really worth any sort of monetary transaction when there are Flash games out there that provide the cathartic chain reaction experience for no cost whatsoever. Despite a solid aural presentation, the visuals drag the production value down and the lack of anything truly outstanding means that Hexothermic will be highly unlikely to hold one's interest for more than ten minutes. 

By all means, give it a try, since it's worth that much. Whether it's worth more than that, however, is questionable.

Score: 5.5 -- Mediocre (5s are an exercise in apathy, neither Solid nor Liquid. Not exactly bad, but not very good either. Just a bit "meh," really.)