There has been a lot of games out recently that mess with my mind outside of the game in weird ways. First came The Witness, which caused me to see lines and circles everywhere and now there’s SUPERHOT. Just for the record, yes the title is in all capital letters, a fact which I adore.
SUPERHOT is a new first person shooter. The developers have not made any other games before but I honestly couldn’t tell as I played through the campaign. SUPERHOT works on one major design gimmick: When you stop, time stops. As an example, you could sprint down a corridor as a guy with a shotgun shoots at you, you can slow down, or stop and dodge slowly around the bullets.
If there is one thing this game has, it’s style. The game has this beautiful minimalist design where everything is stark, crystalline white, except for the enemies who are a bright red. The game is visually striking in a way that few recent FPS’s are.
The gameplay is astoundingly fun and unique. To my knowledge, few if any FPSs have played with time quite the same way that SUPERHOT does. And what it does it does well. There are few things that are more satisfying than punching a guy, grabbing his flying gun, and shooting him in his face. The gameplay is fascinating and mesmerizing in a way that means each play-through will be intensely
unique. The one point where the game fails is it’s lack of content.
There is a campaign with over 30 levels, there is an endless mode where you have to survive as long as possible from an endless horde of enemies and then there are challenges. The challenges are just remixed versions of the campaign levels. they are fun but more levels would have been better.
The writing is unfortunately dull, there isn’t much of a story and you can tell that it wasn’t a priority going in to the development. I have to say though, the story is not a reason to play this game. You should want to play this game because of the crazy and unique design.
Oh there is one more thing I have to say and, to be honest I would regret not saying it so: SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT
Ok, now that I have that out of my system I do think you should play this game. It is crazy and impressive and fun. That being said, I couldn’t blame you if you wanted to wait for the free DLC that is coming at some point.
This writer can be reached via Twitter: @EthanNathe26.
For more from this blog, read Checkpoint: Firewatch review.
