SuperHot || Review || Still Fun, but Save Your Money for the Sequel
SuperHot is excellent but is also superseded in just about every way through its successor, Mind Control Delete (MCD). I might even go as…
SuperHot is excellent but is also superseded in just about every way through its successor, Mind Control Delete (MCD). I might even go as far as to say that Superhot is the demo version of MCD. SuperHot’s campaign takes a few hours, and the rest is arcadey blitzes… through the same campaign levels. MCD has a set of levels, sure, but they’re augmented by extraordinarily different gameplay elements that make each pass through them wholly unique. If you’re interested in SuperHot at all, I would 500% recommend that you just spend the extra money for MCD. It’s leaps and bounds ahead of SuperHot by so many metrics it practically renders SuperHot just a relic of its time as a game that held one of the craziest sweeps of public interest for an indie PC game. For that reason I do NOT recommend it, however, that does not mean SuperHot is a bad game.
All that said, and removing MCD out of the picture so we can get some thoughts in:
SuperHot is still excellent all these years later. Plays smooth as butter and feels exceptionally cool to control. The game believes it’s one of the most innovative shooters in years and I believe it. Being in complete control of your actions regardless of how long you take to make them is an absolute power trip. In a sense, it creates the feeling that you’re not necessarily playing a shooter, but a turn-based FPS. You are as flashy as you dare to be. You are as lethal as you can imagine. It’s an experience unlike any other game, and just when you feel the thrill of it, it’s over.
Let’s talk about that for a second. The main narrative in SuperHot takes about 2.5 hours to get to the credits. After that, they essentially challenge you to beat the game four or five more times, just using one weapon type at a time. I think it’s great that there are essentially more ways (and thus reasons) to play the game, but for all intents and purposes, credits roll for most at hour 2.5 and that’s where they lose a lot of players. You can tell by the rarity of the achievements in Steam, marking where players would complete these challenges. These days, the value proposition for SuperHot is redeemable when the game is marked on sale for about $5–7 bucks, then it’s just like the price of going to a movie. I can’t say that I would be satisfied with this at full price. Even with the “more” that exists post-credits, you’re left feeling like the game’s ideas haven’t been explored enough… ( cough play MCD cough)
But maybe you’re just looking for a little palate-cleanser-type game to play in between two other, larger gaming commitments… this could be an excellent way to spend that kind of time.
My last note here is the game has an exceptionally great atmosphere. For me, it felt like a horror game at times. The game hardly has a soundtrack, and the sounds that are used, convey a sense that you as the player are in a void, and not quite alone. I was jump-scared several times during my playthrough because enemies don’t create noise as they hunt you down. Unsettling, is the best word for it all, and this is especially emphasized as you follow the small narrative that gives a modicum of meaning to your quest through the stages in the game. In skimming a few reviews before posting this, some did not like the narrative at all, but I thought it was excellent.
Overall, SuperHot is a great game, but again, to circle back to my very first paragraph, if you’re interested at all in SuperHot, there is so much more value in Mind Control Delete, that it makes almost no sense to purchase SuperHot, and therefore makes it so I can’t in good faith recommend it. There’s more game, mechanics, and so much more replayability in MCD. It’s just a better overall bang for your buck. But hey, maybe you’re not about that, maybe you’re a “play the first before the sequel” kind of person, or maybe you’re just interested… well… Wait for a bit of a deeper sale and grab it for cheap. You’ll still have a blast.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.