There are few genres that have been as overcrowded as first person shooters, and the genre plods forward year-by-year with innovation happening at a snail’s pace. But, the Superhot team decided to thrust the genre forward with its debut title of the same name.
While Superhot was first a creation out of a game created from a 2013 7 Day FPS Challenge and later turned into a browser based game, its successful Kickstarter and subsequent release blasted the unique experience into the forefront of the first person shooter genre.
Superhot.exe… the game is played as a very intense metalayer that features more layers to pull back each and everyday. As of this posting, a Reddit user is hacking the game within the game to find a secret within the actual game, phew. Mimicking oldschool dos-esque prompts, you can navigate your way through the various files and folders and discover new easter eggs daily. From mini games to seemingly random assets, I stress the word seemingly since it appears that Superhot has a specific reason for everything within it. There is still a lot to cover in the game within the game… within the game? It would be easy to explain Superhot as a Matrix-esque type of scenario, but it’s so much deeper once you get past the surface.
Superhot is comprised of 20ish levels of full-on badassery. Do you remember seeing Neo dodging bullets in The Matrix? Imagine doing that in bite-sized chunks, with only the sounds of your enemies getting shot, punched or Katana-skewered, dying after a single hit and time only moving forward when you do. Seriously… straight up bad ass. Want to chop a bullet in half, or shoot a bullet out of the air with another bullet? Myth busters need not apply because that’s perfectly suitable in Superhot.
The idea that when you move time does as well seems quite obvious, except for the fact that we’ve been programmed to go as fast as possible in nearly every FPS that’s out. But the beautiful chorus (which is funny since the game is devoid of a soundtrack) of standing in an elevator with three red enemies standing in front of you, dodging behind the one on the right which forces the two to shoot and kill him, snagging that dropped gun and jump shotting the one adjacent from you, and subsequently catching that firearm and blasting the next guy in the face is something magical. Seriously, check out the gif below. It’s really the simplistic nature of the game that provides the depth of the experience.
You move. Time moves. But overcoming that urge to speed through a level allows for some terrific moments throughout. The first couple levels provide a nice tutorial of sorts that teach you the mechanics of the title. Through progression, more enemies are added in, and it perfectly forces you to build upon what you’ve learned in subsequent levels. First pistols are introduced, which fire bullet-by-bullet; you then contend with a shotgun, which of course scatters as the distance increases. Then you upgrade to an automatic rifle and, my favorite, the Katana. The combination of these different weapons in a given level, adding in the ability to teleport and control an enemy character just adds to the intensity.
The Campaign lasted me approximately 2 and ½ hours. Oh the humanity, another short campaign in an FPS?! Yes and no. The game’s bite-sized levels allows for vast amounts of replayability. From trying different techniques to perfecting your replay, which is uploadable to their social sharing site Killstagram, certainly lengthens the campaign.
There are secret consoles hidden across each level that also extend the need to replay those levels. Once the console is found, it allows you to “ask one question,†and the ominous being on the other side of the chat log answers your questions which, as Superhot would have it, forces you to have even more questions. The real shame in this fact is that some of the more thought provoking questions are within the secret consoles, and they are quite difficult to find. There are also challenges and an endless mode. Such challenges as Katana only and timed challenges are unique ways to twist these solid mechanics in various ways. Endless mode allows you to connect that endorphin drip right into your veins and make the art of death look oh so beautiful.
*A review key was provided by the devs for this review
