Hard Reset: Redux (2016)

About halfway into the campaign of Hard Reset Redux, I stepped out to an open area. The space was large, and there were a number of ammo & health pickups lying about. I found myself grinning in anticipation of the fight - of the absolute storm of chaos that I was about to unleash in the next minute.

Hard Reset Redux takes its inspirations from classic shooters such as Quake and Unreal Tournament. Each fight is an exercise in using the right weapon, dashing around the arena, and managing pickups. You have two modifiable weapons - one conventional and one energy-based. Both can be upgraded to add new modes, such as a shotgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher etc.

There is a fair bit of enemy variety. The earliest enemies are small and skittish, but larger enemies are introduced later on. Regadless of size, all enemies are relentlessly aggressive. They'll chase you around the map or keep up an onslaught of ranged attacks. The only approach to combat is to charge into each firefight head-on.

Outside of the core combat, Hard Reset Redux has a narrative involving a man vs. machine war. It's somewhat dense, throwing all sorts of jargon around, and is not presented very well. After completing the game, I had to go back and re-watch the cutscenes to make sense of the overall story. This doesn't really affect the immediate objectives, as they usually make enough sense within each level.

Hard Reset Redux only has a singleplayer campaign. It took me about seven hours to complete it. Each mission is scored based on a number of aspects, which encourages replay to some extent. There is no multiplayer component, which may turn away some players. This is a bit unfortunate, because the combat system might have made for an enjoyable multiplayer experience.

To wrap things up, I would say that Hard Reset Redux is a good game. It does have problems that hold it back from being a great game. But in the heat of a firefight, when all of its combat mechanics come together, it feels brilliant.

Recently added a lot of games that I hadn't redeemed, this was one of those games.

The game is fairly short, it only took me just over 5 hours to complete the story. The game is similar to Doom and Wolfenstein in how it plays. I really didn't like the way the camera swayed back and forth in this game. Made it difficult to concentrate and I couldn't find a setting to turn that off.

Graphics were okay. Not terrible, but not great.

Gameplay was pretty repetitive. Some of the guns are fun, and the katana you get can be fun to slice through weaker enemies, but there aren't a ton of areas where it works well to use it. You can upgrade the guns, but none of the upgrades do a whole lot to make the weapons better.

The story was a little confusing, although I did kind of like the comic style it was told in. Nothing notable that really sucked me in to keep playing. The game ends fairly abruptly, but if there was a sequel I wouldn't go out of my way to get it.

Definitely a 'meh' game.