jmtd → log → SUPERHOT

Continuing a series of blog posts about casual Nintendo Switch games, next in the series is SUPERHOT. Normally £19.99, I picked it up for £13.99 in a sale. That's a little bit more than I would usually pay for a casual game. SUPERHOT first came on my radar because someone I know from a baby group worked on their VR port in some capacity.

Slow-motion buckshot

A first-person shooter, SUPERHOT's USP is that time only progresses when you move—well, nearly. Time is slowed to a complete crawl when you are not moving. The game's visual style is very distinctive: Almost everything is a washed out grey or white colour and porcelean-like texture, except weapons and objects you can interact with, which are a matt black, and enemies, which are a bright red. It reminds me a lot of the 1992 Amiga game Robocop 3.

Robocop 3

The play-style is very reminiscent of the "Bullet Time" sequences in The Matrix—seemingly impossibly overwhelming odds deftly manoeuvred through thanks to superhuman reaction times.

The game has a relatively short campaign of little vignettes, linked together by a cyberpunk narrative. The game is sometimes criticised for the short campaign, but for me that's ideal. And the vignettes being short and quite standalone suits my play requirements very well.

Amiga easter-egg

The narrative interspersed between the play scenarios is a little bit over-long, and you can spend an unreasonable amount of time bashing buttons to get through it. Despite that it's a moderately interesting story. Once you've beaten the campaign, you can go back and play any of the scenarios again, or try the newly unlocked endless mode. I haven't tried that yet.

The original prototype for the game is a free-to-play in-browser demo, available here. On Windows PC, there's a sequel-of-sorts in the works called MIND CONTROL DELETE with a lot of new features to add replay value.