SUPERHOT IS THE MOST INNOVATIVE SHOOTER I’VE PLAYED IN YEARS!
All you wanted to do was play a game and you find yourself in a world of trouble. A friend is upset with you because you won’t let them play, and the game itself has a bit of a temper. The game is alive, but you may not be if you can’t control your impulse to incessantly return to each new level.
For the unfamiliar, SUPERHOT is a first person shooter… but not really. It’s also a puzzle game… but not really. The gist? When you move, so does time around you. Stand still for long enough, and time slows down to a tiny fraction of reality. Shoot your gun, thrown an object, or duck behind a pillar and time speeds up – often times with a hoard of red dudes coming your way.
SUPERHOT is about precision, timing, and follow-through. You shouldn’t be exercising any reflex skills while you’re entrenched (and you will be entrenched) but instead, your thought process will involve quite a bit of “If that guy is moving that fast, he’ll be over there by the time my bullet gets to him.” The beautiful thing about SUPERHOT is that it allows and even forces you to think that way, taking much of the luck we’re accustomed to out of the equation.
At the outset of each level, an enemy is either not at all near you, or about to shoot you in the face. In a normal shooter, this latter scenario would induce rage in even the calmest of players. In SUPERHOT, you have the opportunity to observe, plan, and go into action before you’re dead, which is a welcome mechanic.
There’s no reloading. You have as many rounds as your gun can hold and then a message the size of your screen pops up to tell you that you’re out. At this point, you can either throw your weapon at the enemy or drop it and come up with a new plan. This plan could include picking up the nearest ash tray and chucking it, finding a new firearm, or just beating the bad guy into oblivion with your fists. If an object is black, you can pick it up and use it against them.
The story mode in SUPERHOT is acceptable and fun, but not really the point. Gameplay is much more important. Fortunately, after the main story, there are an incredible number of bonus modes including speed runs, challenges (katana-only, one bullet per gun, faster bullets), and even horde-style (Endless Mode) levels. We found that even after playing the entire story in one sitting, there were still plenty of new twists and turns in the bonus gameplay to keep our attention for several more hours – and the replay value for these modes is through the roof.
The most satisfying part of any level is the end. This is especially true in SUPERHOT and it’s not solely because you’ve likely played through this terrain 15 times before you beat it. Instead, it’s satisfying because the end of the level shows you a recap of exactly what you looked like while playing through it – but in real time. Sometimes this makes for really cool looking footage, and other times it just looks like your character zigzagged through a hallway… because you did. At any rate, with enough playthroughs of the level, you’ll end up having a pretty cool looking recap.
Recommendation: We would 100% recommend picking up SUPERHOT if you are at all a fan of both puzzle games and shooters.
For coverage of SUPERHOT PSVR, check out this review.
*Full Disclosure – We were given a copy of SUPERHOT PS4 by the PR company for the game. This did not influence the reviewer’s comments or opinions in any way.*
