Review: Hover (Nintendo Switch)

Welcome to the futuristic and alien world of Hover City, where leisure is banned and oppression is rampant. Sounds like an ordinary dystopian city doesn’t it? You’re right! But let’s take a closer look at this ambitious not-so-little game.

You wouldn’t get this impression by the opening tutorial, but this game has a large open world for you to jump around in. Throughout the areas, you will come to unlock are missions for you to complete. Whether they progress the story or not, you receive rewards. The rewards are usually hexagon shaped tiles you add to your character’s profile to increase their skills, but if you complete a set of missions given by a main character you receive their DNA Kit for use as a model for a new character. Most missions involve playing a game similar to basketball called “GameBall”, racing another character through checkpoints, doing a set of tricks worth a certain amount of points and much more.

Other than the missions, you have a lot of little things you can do to earn points towards upgrading your character like collecting “GameGirls”, spraying graffiti over anti-leisure propaganda posters, and capturing spies. You will not run out of things to do or accomplish. Even after playing 30+ hours, I still haven’t finished the main story of the game! There were many points I thought it would end but it didn’t and I definitely plan on continuing playing after this review. Another thing I didn’t get to try out was the optional online mode, which I think could work really well with this type of game.

I really like how you can use the characters in-game as a model for your character. You can re-color and, when you create new characters for your team, they all share the same save file. Speaking of characters, the designs of the characters are really creative and colorful. I had a lot of fun just flying through the air after jumping at the right time of landing to shoot back up into the sky.

Despite really enjoying the game, I do have a few issues with it. In one area precision and accuracy is key, but it’s hard to accomplish when you pair that level with the generally floaty controls. There were a few grammar errors in the dialogue as well. Also, although the characters are interesting to look at, I can’t say they are interesting in personality, and the same goes with the story. The characters could have been more diverse in personality or fleshed out, rather than feel similar to each other and the story could be more interesting than a typical ‘overthrow the evil government’ plot. Again, I still haven’t finished the game so I can’t say it doesn’t get better.

Overall, Hover is an enjoyable game that gives the player a lot to do. I would recommend it, and say it is worth its current price of $24.99. If nothing so far about the game seems to interest you enough to spend that much, I would wait for a sale before giving it a go.