Wednesday, 4 April 2018

Superhot


This is the most innovative shooter I’ve ever played.



Indie games are a very big part of the gaming market, mostly they tend to keep a low profile on game stores as they don’t get as much funding behind them to really push the advertising. Every now and again they do bubble up to the top, as was the case with Super Meat Boy, Cave Story and probably the biggest of them all, Minecraft.

Superhot falls into the second half of those categories being a very indie game that caught the public’s eye very quickly. Resembling essentially a tech demo of a game, intentionally mind, Superhot is at its core a first-person shooter portrayed in a blocky, minimalist fashion, with the player character and enemies depicted in red and weapons and throwable objects in black. The unique selling point, or USP, of Superhot is in its combat. You shoot, slash and throw objects and various weapons at enemies, this may sound like fairly standard gameplay and you’re right well done have a star. The interesting part is that nothing moves until you do, this gives the player the option to have a look around and plan out their attack before the mayhem becomes to much and overwhelms you.

This is the most innovative shooter I’ve ever played.

As mechanics go Superhot’s is very distinctive. I’ve never experienced gameplay like it in a shooter, it’s more like a real time strategy kind of set up. Your survey your surroundings, work out the best plan of action and then immediately fuck it all up because you didn’t see a guy running around the pillars at the back of the room with a shotgun that’s not looking right at you and firing fifty bullets at once. To say nothing moves until you do isn’t strictly true, object and enemies will move incredibly slowly while you’re not moving so it isn’t safe to stay in one place like a lemon unless you want to have a few extra air holes.

This is the most innovative shooter I’ve ever played.

Despite Superhot being an indie game and only about 4 hours long it has a decent story to it. You play yourself - well not yourself but an in game version that probably has better people skills and is more attractive even though they’re just a polygonal red thing. Anyway, you’re a guy chatting to his friend via Dos prompt who has been introduced to a new game, superhot.exe, by a friend. The game glitches out so your friend send you a fixed version of the game, that’s when things get weird. At numerous moments during and after levels the player character receives prompts from an anonymous entity calling itself “The System” telling them to stop playing Superhot, followed by various threats. The System even goes as far as to make you quit the game, forcing you to restart, and altar any messages you sent to your friend over Dos prompt attempting to alert them to the weird going’s in the game, finally creating a rift between the two of you. There is even a point where you find your in-game self and punch them in the back of the head.

This is the most innovative shooter I’ve ever played.

As far as games go Superhot is pretty substantial, it will definitely play to the methodical part of a gamer the part that strives for maximum efficiency. I really like the colour contrast Superhot employs, with red and black on white and grey, it gives it a feel of an early 2000’s movie’s idea of VR right down to the crude figures. The ending isn’t brilliant but it does bring everything together is a neat package and when you’ve finished it unlocks a bunch of additional game modes to play through. The main game of Superhot holds some replay-ability mainly due to its short run time and great gameplay which is what I look for in an indie game, not just being so pretentious and up itself that if you tried to work a stick up its arse it would just push the one already up there out.

I like Superhot and I feel it has the potential to appeal to most gamers as it’s new and interesting mechanic, almost innovative in a way, offer something that I don’t think many FPS players have had much of before, time. Pick up Superhot if you are looking for something short and snacky to tide you over while taking a break from a much longer game, finally I’ll leave you with this...

This is the most innovative shooter I’ve ever played.

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