In 2016 first person shooter games were due for a shake up. Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, which started the trend of battle royale games, wouldn't be out in Early Access for another year, and the lauded Doom (2016) was still months out, so it was up to indie developer Superhot Team to start breaking shit down. By this time, shooters had long since begun to wane in favor of more RPG and Open World type games as the popular choice for the medium. A decade of yearly Call of Duty and Battlefield games had taken its toll on the gaming public, and though games like Borderlands certainly tried to shake things up, simply pointing and shooting at shit with new guns and XP just wasn't cutting any innovative shapes from the fabric.
Superhot is probably best known for its comparison to the John Wick films, a fortuitous release just two years prior. In Superhot, time moves when you do, and (nearly) stands still when you don't. It was the bullet time mechanic from the mid-00s, but with control rather than a simple button toggle. Red, crystalline enemies would shoot, and all you had to do was stop moving to see where the bullet was traveling and then dodge out of the way. At least, it's as simple as that conceptually. With this new power also comes more challenge, as far more people can be shooting at you than in your average shooter. Dodging bullets is one thing, dodging a hail of bullets from every angle is quite another.
Controls are extremely simple, with the ability to punch, catch, throw, and shoot being your primary toolbox of carnage. A guy has a gun in your face? Punch him, watch that gun fly and pluck it from the air to give that guy some lead. Out of ammo with red guys running after you, guns drawn? Toss your gun at one of them, duck away from the bullets of the other, pluck the gun from the air (you will be doing that a lot) and let it rain. Superhot is about feeling like a badass, part visceral murder simulator (as all shooters are, let's be honest), part strategy game. Knowing where your enemies are is paramount to survival as turning your head to check your six also moves time. And don't forget your gun has kickback, and that kickback has to finish its animation in order to get off another shot. There are little mechanics sprinkled all over the place to give you a sort of breathing room between all of the killing, a strategic assessment time as you think over your next move. When every Red Guy has been taken out, the level will be replayed for you in real time so you can see just what it would have looked like if you had unreal reaction time. Superhot is an empowering game, more so than a lot of RPG type power hoarding mechanics can manage because you aren't just watching a number go up. You're watching your assessment of the situation play out with aplomb.
There is a plot to all of this senseless killing, but I can't say it's all that great. The game starts and you are on an old school computer, an ambiguous looking build you'd see in an old movie. Someone sends you a message about this cool new game you should try, and as you play this game and converse with your faceless friend, you begin to realize not all is what it seems. The plot develops in a predictable way, but I still don't want to spoil it. It does its job and that is really all I can ask for from a game like this, but it does feel like perhaps video games should lay off of this one trope once and for all.
If I had big criticism of Superhot, it would be that it was insanely short. The game is packed with roughly 30 levels, but you are likely to power through that in a couple of hours without too much trouble. Upon completing the game, you will unlock and endless mode and some challenge modes to keep you playing, and they are certainly worth dabbling in, but I couldn't help but hope for a really good chase scene while I was playing. I had it in my head that for one level of this game there would be a sequence out of Enter the Matrix, but, you know, not from a shitty game. Unfortunately, Superhot Team went the short challenges route toward level design, and I can hardly complain about the quality that is actually here. Superhot, obviously, didn't really change the FPS genre after release, but it stands out as a stellar and unique entry into a genre that often feels like it has nothing fresh to show us.
8.5
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