“Time is an illusion.”
Dreamt up during the infamous 7 Day FPS Challenge Superhot developers Superhot Team took to Kickstarter to secure enough funding to develop the title into a full blown release. And I for one am glad they did.
In the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris says “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” and that quote sums up Superhot in a nutshell. Superhot's hook revolves around the manipulation of time. When you move everything else moves but if you standstill time seems to stop around you. Time doesn't ever stop in Superhot but it moves at such a slow pace it's barely noticeable until you get hit.
Every movement or action you take has to have a purpose behind it. Weighing up what to do next has never felt so risky. Ammunition is sparse so every shot you take must count. There is a great mechanic that lets you steal weapons off your enemies and it makes for some truly balletic moments. Even stopping bullets becomes becomes something you can plan ahead for. Bullets leave a red line indicating their trajectory which allows you to take a chance and destroy the bullet by throwing something at it, shooting it down or even using a katana to slice the bullet in half. Superhot allows you to pull off the perfect combination of moves to finish each level off with style.
Superhot is so easy to pick up and play that it's amazing nobody else has ever thought to do something like this before. You'll enter a level and someone might come charging towards you with a gun. So you pick up a pool ball and throw it at him as it hits him he recoils and his gun falls out of his grip. You catch the gun in mid air blow that guy apart whilst spinning around to blow apart another enemy while dodging a steady stream of bullets that are streaking through the air towards you. You throw your gun towards the bullets and they shatter as they impact on it. This gives you enough time to throw a volley of punches at another enemy that is charging at you with a katana. You grab the sword from him and slice him in half. The entire level plays out in a mix of normal time and slow motion until its finished and once it's completed you get to watch the whole level in real time.
It's very, very rare for me to praise a game's menu but in Superhot it's praise that is well deserved. When you boot the game your taken back in time to a time when DOS ruled the world. There is so much to do and see here that I've spent a good chunk of time just sifting through the menus and their sub menu just to see what snippets of information I can find. There are folders paths which lead you to some .exe files which load up various little treats for you to play around with and they are well worth you're time.
When you first lay eyes on Superhot you'll be forgiven for thinking that this is just another FPS game. But as soon as you get the controller in hand and start playing it you'll realise that this is something very special.
Publisher: Superhot Developer
Developer: Superhot Developer
Modes: Single Player
Superhot is available now for £19.99
Review code supplied by XCN