Videogame review: SUPERHOT

Okay, is everybody insane? So Superhot has had many reviewers, magazines, web sites and players call it “the most innovative FPS in the last couple of years”. Innovative… yes, FPS… not in my opinion even though it is first person. I would put the game in puzzle genre or possibly FPWS (first person wannabe shooter). Mainly if you are wandering whether the game justifies all this hype and even more it’s cost. Short answer is NO. Superhot is perhaps the biggest playable fraud in the last couple of years, but it is also an excellent marketing move by its developers. I mean they did manage to sell the game without any textures (white and orange 3d models) and a 2 hours playtime to a bunch of people for 25 € and all under the marketing trick of matrix in the first person, while the only thing they did was make time move only when you press a key. So you are not any kind of Neo who can avoid bullets, you are simply a character who can do little to assess the situation and decide where to shoot, which cover to choose etc - there it is, this puzzle element I was talking about, because the enemies are placed in such a way that you really need to be careful in planning your next move. In most levels, you will be killed a few times and then try out a new tactic to get past the level. Levels are usually some kind of smaller arenas made up of a couple of rooms, all in all the size of a larger apartment where, when you kill all the enemies, you go to the next "apartment". What is irritating is that after the first wave of enemies, another wave is created instantly and in some random places, and you will often find that there is someone behind you, even though he was not there 2 seconds ago, you have hit the jackpot: instant death. Basically you have to repeat the level because through time you learn where enemies are, since everything is happening the same every time. Let take a glimpse of the main mechanics, and that's the time moves when you're moving. The idea is good, but I would say the performance is bad. The thing is, when you are moving time goes at normal speed, which means you will not be able to avoid the bullet that goes right in you because it's just too fast. This slow time will mostly be used to place yourself better in the level or to choose whether to shoot someone or hit him by throwing a pistol. Yeah, you'd rather throw a pistol at someone than shoot him because it's faster, and also you'll get him to throw his weapon, after which you can pick it up which is important as each weapon has only a few bullets. Mostly all of the gameplay works something like this: shoot the enemy, hit another one with the gun, take the gun, kill him, turn around, shoot the enemy across the street, an enemy spawns behind of you, hit him with a gun, take his shotgun, destroy him ... and so after 2- 3 reps you go to the next level. Follow the same pattern through a certain number of levels and the game is over. Okay, we have a game that seems cool, but it simply isn’t. Since it has an interesting mechanics you could expect the story to be interesting. Well it isn’t, it does start interesting, but turns into something terrible. You are actually a character who texts in "DOS" with his friend who sends him SUPERHOT.exe. You execute it and start playing the game. Without too much spoil, it all comes down to the fact that your character(s) can not stop playing because it is the "best game in the world" and then you get the assignment to recommend this genius game to all of your friends (as your friend recommended to you) it is a bit deeper than that, but you understand the point. If we take into account that after each level the game must repeat the words "SUPER ... HOT, SUPER ... HOT" like 10 000 times, we can come to the conclusion that this game is actually a big advertisement for itself, packed in some tech demo for some prototype game. It's my recommendation to look at youtube videos of the game to see what it looks like because it's all you'll get from it, and if you have extra cash laying around the house that you can throw down the wind… you can support developers in this ingenious marketing campaign.