Most people share the fear of drowning. It's not an unreasonable fear; out of all the ways to die, suffocation and asphyxiation by water is a nasty way to go. Dark Energy Digital's Hydrophobia is a game that tests your mental resilience under these kinds of life-threatening scenarios. It also does its best to include a unique setting and storyline. However, it's undercut by a number of gameplay shortcomings that prevent the game from reaching its true potential. In the end, Hydrophobia is an interesting downloadable title that neither sinks nor swims. At least it's closer to the surface than it is to the floor.

Hydrophobia isn't a one-trick pony, but it only does one thing really well: water physics. The HydroEngine, created specifically for this game, attempts to simulate water behavior under, shall we say, unique circumstances. We all know that water can be a terrifying substance under the wrong circumstances, and Hydrophobia does a good job of prodding at those hidden fears primarily because of how good the water physics look. When a seemingly-stable wall gives way under the pressure of thousands upon thousands of gallons of water, you're going to freak out, even though you're only controlling protagonist Kate Wilson with your Xbox 360 controller. Apart from the HydroEngine effects, Hydrophobia looks nearly next-gen. The framerate is never locked down, and the environments never change enough to remain interesting. The Malthusian terrorist organization appears to be populated by masked, bald, dark-eyed, scowling clones.

If someone blindfolded me and asked me what Hydrophobia's soundtrack sounded like, I would be able to answer "Inferno Pool" within ten seconds. (For those who don't know, that was Dark Energy's last downloadable game.) It really starts to get uninteresting as you progress through the game's three short acts, but the game is over before it becomes too bothersome. The voicework is mediocre; Kate sounds like any other European heroine, but her Scottish buddy Scoot gets really annoying really fast. Not because of his accent, but because of his poorly-conceived and poorly-delivered one-liners. Malthusians sound even worse; they might as well run around screaming things like "I'm evil because my voice is DEEEEEEP!" Sound effects aren't great either; explosions sound canned, weapons sound like muffled toy guns, and not enough is done with the water.

Thomas Malthus was a scholar with some very bad tidings for the human race. According to him, we reproduce too quickly and produce resources too slowly. Malthus believed that the rapidly-growing population would eventually become unsustainable. Hydrophobia takes Malthus' warnings and embodies them in the heart of a terrorist organization who has hijacked the Queen of the World, a luxury liner. Their agenda? Kill off a sizable chunk of the population so that others can survive. On paper, it sounds like a Watchmen-esque moral gray area. It even takes a page from other "good ideas gone bad" games by using propaganda messages like "Save the World. Kill Yourself." But in Hydrophobia, the self-identifying "Malthusians" are nothing more than simple jerkasses who take pleasure in their grim work. As engineer Kate Wilson, your job is not only to survive, but to unravel the plot and ultimately break it up. The story is poorly-told and ends with the most obnoxious cliffhanger ending since the one in Halo 2. By the end, I wasn't invested in the events that transpired on-board the Queen of the World, so I find myself indifferent towards the likely prospect of a sequel.

Hydrophobia leaves a strong first impression; at first, it feels like Deus Ex meets BioShock. A winning combination, to be sure. However, the game takes that first impression and runs with it all the way to the "To Be Continued" card. You do the same activities over and over and over until you reach the credits. Running around in third person (swimming when you need to) to find a waypoint, killing Malthusians by any means possible, looting Frequency Keys, locating Ciphers, decrypting locked doors and moving on to the next area is all there is to Hydrophobia's campaign.

Hydrophobia is neither difficult nor long. Experienced gamers can blow through it in under five hours, though I suspect most won't have the patience to do it all in one sitting. The cover system is unreliable, making even the easiest firefights tougher than they need to be. The same goes for the platforming; sometimes it's difficult to tell exactly how to get somewhere, and sometimes you'll have to wrestle with the controls a little bit to get poor Kate to do exactly what you want her to do. If this is Dark Energy's attempt at making you feel like an overwhelmed heroine fighting against all the odds, this approach certainly works. But at what cost?

Outside of combat and platforming, the game is quite forgiving. Objective displays always lets you know exactly where you need to go next (even if getting there is a different story), and the map system is a big help in that regard as well. The other activities are not nearly as difficult as the combat, provided you're not struggling with a steadily-rising water level.

Hydrophobia's controls take a little getting used to, as Kate Wilson isn't particularly agile or quick on her feet. Luckily, she's a great swimmer. She's not particularly experienced with a gun, and she gets more than a little hands-on time in the game. Unfortunately, the gunplay is stiff, uninteresting, and very unsatisfying -- even taking into account the environmental battle applications at your fingertips.

Kate may not have the weapons know-how to take down a terror cell, but she can certainly make use of her engineering skills to get her (and others) out of sticky situations. When Kate's in a fix, the chances are high that her MAVI (Mobile Automated Visual Interface) device can get her out of it. This all-purpose tech tool looks like a transparent iPad that filters the entire environment into colored lines and waves. By aiming at a compatible device (such as a console or camera), Kate can hack, access, and use it to the benefit of herself and her allies. Hacking is performed through a mini-game in which Kate must match frequencies and wavelengths through subtle manipulation of both the Left Analog Stick and Right Analog Stick. The MAVI is also used to deal with encrypted locks. In each area, a Malthusian carries a Frequency Key. These keys allow the MAVI to display yellow arrows that point to the required cipher. Once Kate finds and scans the cipher, she can unlock the area's encrypted door.

Outside the main campaign, you can aim for leaderboard positions in the Challenge Room. This arena-style mode pits Kate against wave after wave of attacking Malthusians in a room full of water. In a bizarre twist, Kate's main weapon is an ability termed Hydro Kinetics. This basically gives her telekinetic powers over anything that happens to be in the water. By pressing a button, she can raise a spire of water and hurl the contents at a Malthusian. I'm assuming that Hydro Kinetics will play a major role in the second episode of Hydrophobia, but if they do, the inclusion of this mode flat out spoils whatever surprise it could have been. Still, it's an additional mode that does a decent job of padding out the experience.

Hydrophobia wears out its welcome within the first hour of play. Try the demo and multiply the length by about ten. If you think that's $15 well spent, go for it. It's a decent start, but it just doesn't go anywhere. We'll keep our fingers crossed for the next installment, though.