Some time ago, I played

SUPERHOT VR

at a friend’s house and it was a ton of fun.

SUPERHOT

is an FPS (first person shooter game) whose core gimmick is that time only moves when you move; stand still and bullets freeze. In this way, it feels as much like a strategy or puzzle game as it does a shooter. That experience in

SUPERHOT VR

was extremely immersive and fun, but I did not think about the game for a long time after. However, it went on sale a few weeks ago, and I figured it was time to cash in. It has an 82/100 on Metacritic and a 91% positive review score on Steam, which are respectable numbers, and I had enough knowledge of the game that I put together a pretty accurate picture of what it would be like. I almost did not write this article at all because I thought I would not have anything to say about the game given it was a known quantity already, but SUPERHOT surprised me in more ways than one.

The core gameplay is fantastic. The enemies, colloquially called “superhots” (do not try to verify that), appear in solid red and shatter into glass when hit with almost any weapon, but the same goes for you. Objects appear in black and can be thrown to stun the superhots, as can your weapons when you run out of ammo. Guns only have a handful of rounds before you need to reload; luckily, there is rarely a shortage of corpses to scavenge when you are dry. Despite seeming mechanically bare,

SUPERHOT

’s greatest strength is perhaps in its simplicity. The game affords the player a minimal number of systems to oversee, allowing them to focus on dodging incoming fire, maintaining situational awareness and, most importantly, mowing down as many superhots as possible. The gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying: blasting enemies in the chest point-blank with the shotgun or decapitating them with a katana feels awesome and makes you feel awesome while doing it. Watching the crystal fragments of your enemies rain down across

SUPERHOT

’s sterile concrete streets and depots is cathartic, and the sound design plays beautifully off of the almost poetically graceful disintegrations of superhot after superhot. You will feel like a time god playing through the campaign.

There was a cool story that I did not know about beforehand, having only played the VR release. It took a similar angle to

Inscryption

, and while it is not as good (nothing will ever out-

Inscryption Inscryption

) it lends an intriguing narrative element to an otherwise gameplay-focused experience. Some of the longer cutscenes could be a lot of reading, and I caught myself thinking “Come on… get back to killing superhots already!” but as you experience more of the story, that is kind of the point. In that way, the cohesion between gameplay and storytelling is bordering on brilliant.

The game’s major drawback is its lack of content. The campaign will keep you busy for a few hours but it is not terribly substantial. The game also includes challenges that riff on mechanics and remix the campaign in a new way each time and an endless mode where you can test your superhot-killing abilities in a freestyle environment or against the clock. Endless modes like this have never been especially appealing to me, and despite the good times to be had with the

SUPERHOT

experience I found the repetition quickly lost my interest. The challenges are all fun, varied and inventive but ultimately do not add a ton of replayability outside of some extra hours. While I would expect almost anyone to enjoy

SUPERHOT

due to its low skill floor, more experienced players may find a lack of long-term interest due to a relatively low skill ceiling; later waves in “endless mode” especially turn into a patience game more than anything.

Allegedly, the game’s successor

Mind Control Delete

adds a roguelike element that includes random generation, which, if done well, hopefully injects some well-appreciated replay value into slaying superhots. Overall,

SUPERHOT

is the most innovative shooter I have played in years.

Originally I was going to write a review of two short horror games two weeks ago for Halloween, but one was too expensive for what would have been very little return and the other had the sprinting speed of a geriatric nun. Instead, I took a week off of new games to fully finish

SUPERHOT

, as well as go back and complete the rest of

DUSK.

While

DUSK

continues to evolve in its level design as the third episode becomes more intricate and visually unique, very little new mechanical insight is brought to the table. Boss fights in particular see no improvement, mostly stagnating as easy-to-cheese bullet sponges. The penultimate boss in particular was such a pushover that I let him kill himself with his own explosives rather than actually bother dealing damage. Do not get me wrong, this was not efficient — it was an arduous ten minutes of running in circles — but the fact that it is possible is a little dumb. The game did step up the horror atmosphere, though: the fourth level in particular was very unsettling. I was glad to see the developer showing off his chops in his horror background and expanding his competency in the FPS genre, even if there is room for improvement. All things considered, both

DUSK

and

SUPERHOT

are worth checking out.

Game over, gamers. See you next time.