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juv3nal

SUPERHOT

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I've been a bit turned off this game after seeing this aggressive viral marketing the team has put into the game.

 

I was watching a few minutes of it on twitch and at the end of the game

they set up a sort of mind control scenario in which the player has been taken over.  The commands they then give you is to go out and recruit your friends to also become infected using the phrase "It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years".

 

So of course people are going around using the phrase "It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years" as a badge of  honor.  To them it's an inside joke that proves they've beaten the game, but to me it feels gross.  People are even using that phrase in their review titles.

 

They also use the in-game chat lines to try to attack criticisms of the game.  Which feels a bit more like they're trying to urge people to give it a chance beyond finishing the campaign and try out the other modes like endless and speedrun, but the entire structure of the game feels so manipulative.  It tries to put the player on edge and feel like they're being manipulated, that mixing in messages that urge you the game you are playing is good, and that you should go spread the word feels wrong.

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I thought it was a cool joke, if a bit manipulative.

Wonderful game. One of the best things I've kickstarted.

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I get why you think it's gross, but I also think that line holds true. Whether you approve or not it's still great marketing, gotta give them credit for that.

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I don't see that the game being about mind control or whatever makes it any more gross than, for instance, them just having that as a bullet point on the description on their steam page. It's a claim which ultimately nobody sensible is going to parrot unless they already feel positively about their experience.

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SUPER HOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years.


Actual Content Edit:

I played 4 hours of this game today. It's fantastic. When the game first came out as prototype I would post SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. etc to my friends in chatrooms and I'm glad that is apparently canon behavior. 

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I loved the story but I'm a sucker for that meta, postmodern, johnny mnemonic-esque story.

 

I generally like meta-narrative stuff too, but the whole

"you are a player in a video game doing what you are told, therefore is free will a thing?"

idea feels pretty played out to me. Like I said, the presentation was stylish and well done overall, but I just feel like the idea is something a certain kind of game has done to death in the last 5 years or so.

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Played out? Yes

Done to death? Yes

I wholly agree with you but I'm still a sucker for it and I apparently don't get tired of it.

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I figured out a really good hotswitching trick tonight. Normally when you hotswitch, you lose the weapon the person you switched to was holding. But if you stun that person right before switching into them they'll drop their weapon, and once you've switched it'll be floating directly in front of them and you can grab it.

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I figured out a really good hotswitching trick tonight. Normally when you hotswitch, you lose the weapon the person you switched to was holding. But if you stun that person right before switching into them they'll drop their weapon, and once you've switched it'll be floating directly in front of them and you can grab it.

A trick I learned in the katana-only run is that if you throw your current weapon AT the dude you're about to hotswap into you can swap and grab it out of the air as soon as you gain control. It feels so good.

As for the meta-narrative, I didn't really read it as being fully about freewill. It was more about becoming obsessed and consumed by a game. I loved the meta-narrative stuff, I don't expect it to hold up to a ton of analysis but I don't really think it needs to. Bummer the FMV never made it into the game, although there is an ascii version of it in the directories.

 

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Yeah, I totally agree. It was short and sweet and the story was by no means the focus. I think I could have even done without the story existing at all and still have been happy. Have you guys tried any of the speedrun challenges? It kind of feels like how I wanted to play the game initially and I'm now glad I didn't because I wouldn't have gotten any rewards for it

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A trick I learned in the katana-only run is that if you throw your current weapon AT the dude you're about to hotswap into you can swap and grab it out of the air as soon as you gain control. It feels so good.

As for the meta-narrative, I didn't really read it as being fully about freewill. It was more about becoming obsessed and consumed by a game. I loved the meta-narrative stuff, I don't expect it to hold up to a ton of analysis but I don't really think it needs to. Bummer the FMV never made it into the game, although there is an ascii version of it in the directories.

 

 

The hotswapping stuff is really cool. I kind of wrote it off when it was first introduced as a gimmick to try and keep the game fresh, but in challenges or endless mode it's really useful to keep you going and let's you pull off some really awesome tricks.

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Sorry I haven't read all others posted here, so it might echo someone. I just started playing yesterday and it's fun and innovative, but...

 

Man I find this game frustrating. And not the main gameplay so much as the structure. This ASCII faux-nostalgia BBS/Norton Commander stuff just goes too far. What the hell were the designers thinking when they made quitting to the main menu part of gameplay. And not just that, at one point you have to QUIT THE GAME to continue. This is idiocy way beyond even any of the modern-world animus bullshit in Assassin's Creed (which I might even secretly liked a bit). This is not innovation, it's simple bullshit.

 

And yes, the main gameplay also. First, it's fricking unclear when a bullet is just about to pass you, where your boundaries are. Is it going to hit you or not? Secondly, there should be some way to gain a glimpse around you without spending time. You can die without even knowing what happened - usually a guy just teleported behind you and killed you. This is not a fun part of the gameplay. Generally I think it would be much improved with a short, limited rewind capability. It's really annoying to repeat some sections especially when there is slight randomization involved.

 

But on the whole it's still definitely worth playing, I think I will try to finish it.

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I didn't find it to be very hard. And it turns out when I wrote my previous post I was just a couple of kills from beating it. I might give a try to endless mode, but I did find the story to be frustrating and I agree that putting a call to viral marketing into the story is super gross. I do not have much respect for these developers, even though they had a cool idea and did an ok implementation of it.

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The internet: where people play games that are really good, and unique and thoughtful, but if you have some metahumor a poster doesn't like, they somehow lose almost all respect for you. 

 

The VR version of Superhot was so much more fun for me. Mostly because it felt much more like a puzzle. The original game was a pretty even combination between shooter and puzzler, but the VR implementation is so much more brainy, and less about your reaction times. Great stuff. 

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From what I've tried I think indeed the VR game is better. And BTW, I wouldn't say that there is just some tiny bit of metahumor, there is a lot of this shit if you count it all, and also consider that the game is rather short so altogether it makes up a considerable portion of the game. And I don't think it's worth spoilering it. According to Steam, I beat it in 2 hours (maybe rounded down a bit?).

 

During these 2 hours, the game (made me):

* quit to the main menu to continue (twice)

* quit the game to the desktop to continue

* stand still and read nonsensical rambling until it progresses (numerous times)

* mash random keys while the game writes a predetermined chat message on screen and press Enter to continue (numerous times)

* shoot myself in the head to continue, but wait, NO NO NO shoot head, now it worked

* told me that I should become a viral marketer for the game after I beat it

 

All this in 2 hours and involved loading times, does not indicate that the developers respect their players and thus prompts my response that I don't respect this bullshit structure they've built around a good game idea. If they learn from this, though, and it seems they have with the VR version, they will keep this away from future games and win back my respect perhaps.

 

Also I don't get the point of the various demo-like things in the main menu. I didn't try them all, but it seems like something they just put there that doesn't really improve the game in any way.

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I liked all of that stuff, and love the gameplay.

 

I agree that a clearer indication of whether a bullet will hit you would be good.

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Yeah I really liked both the VR and non-VR versions of the game. Didn't have any trouble telling if a bullet was gonna hit me. My only complaint is that the story is pretty generic.

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On 1/17/2018 at 1:55 AM, osmosisch said:

I liked all of that stuff, and love the gameplay.

 

I agree that a clearer indication of whether a bullet will hit you would be good.

 

Yeah, I enjoyed all of the terminal non-sense in this game. 

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