As usual I’m a few years behind the curve playing this extremely popular and meme-worthy game late. But that’s just fine for me and this truly is one of the genre-changing games that all gamers must get around to trying eventually. The main campaign, such as it is, takes less than three hours to complete. After that there are various challenges, secrets to find, and an Endless mode if you’re up for that kind of thing, which I’m usually not.
The conceit here is that you’re a gamer who has just received a cracked copy of a revolutionary new game from a friend. It turns out to an addictive shooter that looks simple but seems to suck hours of your time. However as you continue to play it feels as if the game is taking control of you. You find yourself typing messages to your friend that were not what you intended. Moreover it seems that the killing sprees you commit in-game are connected to events in the real world. As you connect to a community of other players online there are hints that everyone who plays the game is affected, all united in chanting the mysterious line SUPERHOT.
As you can tell, the game has very minimalistic graphics, a constraint imposed back when it was made in a hurry for a contest and subsequently retained as a stylistic choice. The models are simple, the levels tiny and there are only three colors: red for enemies, black for objects and white for the environment. Even the animations are crude but works well enough to let you know what the enemies are doing. Outside of combat, the game uses a simple text-based graphics for that retro feel with the beeps to match. Obviously this isn’t a pretty game but the style matches its gameplay so well that you wouldn’t want it any other way.
The key gameplay mechanic here is that time passes very, very slowly while the player does nothing. Think of it as permanent bullet-time and you’re free to pan the camera to look around and think carefully about what to do while in slowed-down mode. But any action you take causes time to flow normally for the duration of that action, which includes moving, shooting a gun, punching an enemy, grabbing an item and so on. At the same time, you’re instantly killed as soon as you take any damage at all, whether from a bullet or a fist. This means you are a superhuman who can literally dodge bullets, stepping through and past individual bullets, expertly headshot every enemy, and mow them in melee. Later you even gain the ability to possess the bodies of enemies. It can’t be any more clear that this is The Matrix.
This mechanic neatly turns what should be a first-person shooter into a puzzle game instead. Being surrounded by multiple enemies is still a death sentence, so you need to carefully think about which enemy to kill first to make space for yourself. The levels are often designed to teach you how to prioritize. Since guns take a moment to reload between shots, enemies who have yet to fire are more dangerous than those who have just fired but the trajectory of their shots aren’t going to hit you. Rather than waiting for your own gun to reload, it’s often better to just throw whatever you currently have in your hands to stun an enemy and get him to drop his weapon so you can grab a fresh one out of the air. So you end up seamlessly blending between guns, throwing objects and melee to beat the levels. It’s honestly like no other game I’ve played and that’s honestly very high praise in today’s crowded market.
Still it’s a good thing the main campaign is as short as it is because it does get too easy once you understand how things work and the ability to switch bodies makes you positively unstoppable. Once you’ve mastered the skills, the most important thing is memorizing where all the enemies are and where more will spawn and that’s just not a fun way to play. The story itself is entertaining but too deliberately edge-lordy to really impress. Of course if you really love the gameplay, there is the Endless mode and Challenges to spend your time on. Trying to beat all the levels using only your fists is quite a pain but doing the katana-only challenge is quite fun and not too difficult. Overall this is an easy recommendation. It’s just the right size not to overstay its welcome while making good use of its novel gameplay mechanic. It might be cool to see some of this integrated into other games but I don’t see how this could be possible as just about all shooter games these days need a multiplayer component.