SuperHot (2016)

Beat. I enjoyed the time slowing mechanic. It was like playing with super human speed, dodging bullets and doing crazy action moves like Neo in the Matrix. I mostly played as if it was a standard shooter; taking cover and camping in positions to minimize the chances of being flanked. There was a lot of spinning around to keep on eye on all directions, and fidgeting back and forth while waiting for the enemies to get close. Two things annoyed me though about the shooting. The first was the relatively slow travel speed of my bullets, which meant any enemy moving at all laterally would easily dodge my bullets unless I lead the shots. I thought I was supposed to be the only one with super perception. I did get plenty of sweet kills on moving targets but I found it was most often better to wait until they stood still. The other annoying thing was the lack of ammo counter. It seemed like the amount of bullets in the guns could be a little random. I also wished there was a crouch to go under bullets.

After beating the story I played around in endless mode for a while, which was about finding a good place to camp so I could be protected while killing at close range for easy looting. Then I did the challenges starting with speed run where I only beat the times on 3 levels. I could beat it with practice but I hate time limits so I will pass. I have to say the design of the challenge modes was excellent, with each mode preparing you for the later ones and further mastering the game. Katana only taught how to get by without shooting or losing the sword. Some levels were much easier while others were much harder. I really had to learn how to dodge each kind of gun enough to get into melee range. The first hot switch level threw me a bit until I realized I had to throw the katana through the window then take over the guy inside to pick it up. The most badass level was the train where I threw the katana at the 3 guys, baited shots, possessed 1, grabbed the katana and sliced them all down. Then I did the same for the next 2 and their bullets killed the last guy for me. The 2013 challenge was not difficult at all. Ghost was cool and showcased how to abuse hot switch for the most tricky enemies. Full stop was the best, with time actually completely stopping while not moving, and enemy bullets traveling faster. If not for my bullets not getting a speed boost and every gun only having 1 shot, I would say it was the most realistic. Even with the slowness from standing still in every mode outside fullstop I still got killed occasionally due to the imprecise aiming of using a controller. Shooters are simply better with mouse and keyboard. The lack of ammo encouraged more use of throwing and melee, which set up for the throwing only challenge. This was fun, especially for the bar levels where I had tons of bottles to throw, though it was very annoying when my thrown long guns hit a wall or when the enemy shot my thrown object. I learned to aim for their legs. The barehanded challenge was brutally difficult and not fun. I really had to master dodging bullets at close range and getting enemies to kill each other with friendly fire. The ballroom level with the assault rifle guy that spawned at the start was a doozey until I tried keeping 1 pistol guy alive while I ran up the stairs back to the start. Then the meeting room with the assault rifle guy in the corner took a few tries, and the elevator was a pain in the ass. After that I had hotswitch and could simply buy time to possess troublesome enemies. Hard mode was fun and easy compared to barehanded. Impossible mode was tough but still not as difficult as barehanded. The faster time and bullets of Hard and Impossible really changed the nature of the game. I had to be more careful, more mobile, and faster at aiming. I have no interest in playing no restart mode. The very last thing I did was look up the secret messages rather than collecting them myself, and did a little more endless mode but not long enough to unlock the last few maps.

This was an interesting and well made game, making excellent use of audio and visual cues to assist the gameplay. The click for when the guns finishing cycling to be fired again was especially noticeable and helpful. I liked the old dos style menu interface, even if most of the silly programs were boring. They helped set the personality of the game and people playing it though. At first I thought the game was about controlling real people performing real life assassinations, but after seeing the secrets it seems to just be a game that maybe takes over the minds of players. It was fun to imagine the scenario that was going on for each level and how they were connected, but I believe they are just video game levels. Despite how much fun the game was, it was not as innovative as it thinks it is and there are many better shooters that I would rather play. It would be cool to see this concept expanded for more extensive levels.

7.2/10

Boring, tiring, tedious. I think the worst FPS I've played in a long time. Try to be innovative, but the game is empty.

Totally cliché story, no innovations, tiring and slightly bugged game mechanics, absolutely boring. Its a short game with a no other purpose wich shows the "time-lapse gameplay", in my opinion. Perhaps in VR could be better, i really don't know.

I played the demo way back when, and thought [title]. I play the fully fleshed-out game, and my stance is the same. The game is more developed overall, but most of the changes were not for the better. The concept is that time advances when you move, i.e. if you stand still, time stops; if you move, time moves. This could be used make a neat puzzle-based, slower-gameplay shooter.

The game doesn't play well. The maps are all very small, and many are spattered with enemy spawners which aren't even remotely hidden, which means you can get an enemy spawn right next to you. Enemies spawn almost instantly, which means you can look at a spawner, turn to shoot, and in that time, have a guy spawn behind you and kill you. Now, the obvious solution to this is to not stand near enemy spawners, but some maps they're everywhere, and so an area you think is safe can becomes hostile almost instantaneously. Now, since the game should be a take-it-slow kind of deal (you have as much time as you want between actions), this should be fine, but 1) time moves while you look around, so you can't do it while confronting another enemy, and 2) being careful like that isn't fun in Superhot- there's ways to make a game challenging without having to resort to random enemy spawning. That said, not all levels have enemy spawners, and some actually have logical enemy spawning. Another issue with the game is that the gimmick is often unnecessary. You can dodge bullets, but you can also (and it's quicker) to just hide behind a wall, like in any other FPS - you need to wait for your gun to reload, anyway. The game does force you to use it by making your movement speed high, meaning there's no intermediate speed, so you can't move without having to tap a direction to make sure you don't get shot, which is just annoying.

The game makes a lot of bad decisions about how it presents itself. You start the game and it boots a DOS-inspired menu, which is completely out of place for what the actual game is. There's useless options which I guess are jokes? The game kicks you back to the menu at times to trap you into story bits because they couldn't fit them in the main game. They could have put them in text boxes in the game, but I'm glad they didn't, since their idea of a "text box" is to display huge text while flashing and warping the screen. They can only flash two words at a time, so to display even a mid-length phrase, the screen needs to flash several times. The game shows you text multiple times during a level, as well as whenever you get a headshot or whenever the game wants to, and it's as obtrusive as it sounds. At the end of each level (or when you die) you get the narrator repeating the game's title (annoying) while the screen pillarboxes to 4:3 for no reason (oh, they also put a pseudo-CRT bulge which warps the screen, really annoying). The one nice visual effect is that people and objects break into pieces when destroyed, but when this happens the framerate tanks, and that's unacceptable.

In the end, the most fun you'll have with Superhot is when you're actually playing the game (and not during a forced story bit) and are moving quickly, which means you're not actually using the game's mechanic. Maybe the concept is neat on paper only...