This review contains spoilers
So, this was quite the interesting experience. I did not expect all the twists and turns this game would put me through (one of the rare cases I go through a popular game completely unspoiled) and they were intriguing indeed.
SUPERHOT's gameplay is definitely the main appeal of the game and for good reason. The idea of having time move only when you move (it isn't entirely true since time does still move its just incredibly slow when you're standing still) really sort of flips the way an FPS is usually played on its head. I have never played an FPS game where moving slowly is optimal and trying to move fast is punished, but that's exactly what SUPERHOT does. You are encouraged to move slowly so that you can properly deal with enemies, otherwise you will likely either get shot by very fast bullets or you will get ganged up on to the point where you might as well just restart. Admittedly it could get very frustrating - I died countless times to the last section of the final level - but the concept is intriguing and it felt satisfying once I got it right. The levels are basically short gauntlets where you need to defeat every enemy to progress to the next level. Enemies can be hiding anywhere in the map, so it can get pretty tricky in the bigger areas. You either use your fists, throwable items like bottles or garbage bags, full fledged weapons like baseball bats or swords, and guns (which you will always want to use over anything else). There's three kinds of guns: pistols, shotguns, and rifles. The pistol is the most straightforward one and is probably the best in my opinion. I found that the rifle's rapid fire is awkward in SUPERHOT's whole gimmick of time being incredibly slow when you're not moving, but there were some levels I got good use out of it in. The shotgun is your standard FPS shotgun in that its usually only all that good in close combat; the spread is large but concentrated, so its harder to hit enemies from far away. Overall I think this was great.
The story...if it weren't for the gameplay being so great, I'd think this was intended to be the real meat and potatoes of the game. That's not to imply its some masterpiece, but it was genuinely compelling in my opinion. Essentially, you have received access to a VR game called...well, SUPERHOT. The game's main menu mimics a PC menu (but a very simple and retro feeling one) to show how the player logs into superhot.exe and that sort of thing, it has a meta aspect in that way. You play the game as normal, but, as you keep playing, a glitch happens claiming you have unauthorized access and the game (in the story not the actual game) kicks you out. You get messages from an unknown friend of the player who seems to have sent the game to you in the first place and he informs you that there's a new version of the game that fixes the glitches. Again, the game plays as normal for a while, but that same error message eventually pops up again. The friend tells you there's a new set of levels but they're password-protected. Thankfully you don't have to find or memorize a password anywhere since the automatic typing sections of SUPERHOT do it for you. Another session of levels later and you get met with an ominous screen detecting a breach location, where the game then claims it knows where you live, showing a depiction of the player with a VR headset on. The game glitches and kicks you out again. Basically, to not overexplain the story, things get more and more strange from here as you continue to play levels. The gist of this, as I understood it, is that the game is made by some sort of malicious AI program that wants to suck people into it. Near the end of the game its implied that the program gave the player a concussion (there's a level where you have to attack the game's depiction of the player with a VR headset on and there's a text section where the program talks to you and says you're suffering from brain trauma). It constantly warns to leave while you still can but the player continues playing, and eventually the player's brain gets downloaded into the program where you essentially become a slave to it. This is also when the infamous meme spammed everywhere about this game happens: the program tells you to get other people into the game by saying "Superhot is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!" I'm usually not a huge fan of the whole sentient game concept - I really don't care for how Doki Doki Literature Club did it for example - but it wasn't done in a pretentious way here and it was pretty unexpected. I like the game's story.
I'll take this last paragraph before the conclusion to briefly shout out how much I like the art style of SUPERHOT. I don't know what they call this style but I really love how vibrant and polygonal it is, its simple but pleasing to the eye and very cool looking in my opinion. The enemies and the player especially just look so nice here. The PC sections also have an interesting style that almost reminds me of the Five Nights at Freddy's games for some reason.
SUPERHOT isn't going to completely blow your mind in my opinion and I don't really think its super replayable (then again not many games are in my opinion), but I think it was a great experience overall. I would recommend it, gets a solid 4 stars out of me.
SUPERHOT's gameplay is definitely the main appeal of the game and for good reason. The idea of having time move only when you move (it isn't entirely true since time does still move its just incredibly slow when you're standing still) really sort of flips the way an FPS is usually played on its head. I have never played an FPS game where moving slowly is optimal and trying to move fast is punished, but that's exactly what SUPERHOT does. You are encouraged to move slowly so that you can properly deal with enemies, otherwise you will likely either get shot by very fast bullets or you will get ganged up on to the point where you might as well just restart. Admittedly it could get very frustrating - I died countless times to the last section of the final level - but the concept is intriguing and it felt satisfying once I got it right. The levels are basically short gauntlets where you need to defeat every enemy to progress to the next level. Enemies can be hiding anywhere in the map, so it can get pretty tricky in the bigger areas. You either use your fists, throwable items like bottles or garbage bags, full fledged weapons like baseball bats or swords, and guns (which you will always want to use over anything else). There's three kinds of guns: pistols, shotguns, and rifles. The pistol is the most straightforward one and is probably the best in my opinion. I found that the rifle's rapid fire is awkward in SUPERHOT's whole gimmick of time being incredibly slow when you're not moving, but there were some levels I got good use out of it in. The shotgun is your standard FPS shotgun in that its usually only all that good in close combat; the spread is large but concentrated, so its harder to hit enemies from far away. Overall I think this was great.
The story...if it weren't for the gameplay being so great, I'd think this was intended to be the real meat and potatoes of the game. That's not to imply its some masterpiece, but it was genuinely compelling in my opinion. Essentially, you have received access to a VR game called...well, SUPERHOT. The game's main menu mimics a PC menu (but a very simple and retro feeling one) to show how the player logs into superhot.exe and that sort of thing, it has a meta aspect in that way. You play the game as normal, but, as you keep playing, a glitch happens claiming you have unauthorized access and the game (in the story not the actual game) kicks you out. You get messages from an unknown friend of the player who seems to have sent the game to you in the first place and he informs you that there's a new version of the game that fixes the glitches. Again, the game plays as normal for a while, but that same error message eventually pops up again. The friend tells you there's a new set of levels but they're password-protected. Thankfully you don't have to find or memorize a password anywhere since the automatic typing sections of SUPERHOT do it for you. Another session of levels later and you get met with an ominous screen detecting a breach location, where the game then claims it knows where you live, showing a depiction of the player with a VR headset on. The game glitches and kicks you out again. Basically, to not overexplain the story, things get more and more strange from here as you continue to play levels. The gist of this, as I understood it, is that the game is made by some sort of malicious AI program that wants to suck people into it. Near the end of the game its implied that the program gave the player a concussion (there's a level where you have to attack the game's depiction of the player with a VR headset on and there's a text section where the program talks to you and says you're suffering from brain trauma). It constantly warns to leave while you still can but the player continues playing, and eventually the player's brain gets downloaded into the program where you essentially become a slave to it. This is also when the infamous meme spammed everywhere about this game happens: the program tells you to get other people into the game by saying "Superhot is the most innovative shooter I've played in years!" I'm usually not a huge fan of the whole sentient game concept - I really don't care for how Doki Doki Literature Club did it for example - but it wasn't done in a pretentious way here and it was pretty unexpected. I like the game's story.
I'll take this last paragraph before the conclusion to briefly shout out how much I like the art style of SUPERHOT. I don't know what they call this style but I really love how vibrant and polygonal it is, its simple but pleasing to the eye and very cool looking in my opinion. The enemies and the player especially just look so nice here. The PC sections also have an interesting style that almost reminds me of the Five Nights at Freddy's games for some reason.
SUPERHOT isn't going to completely blow your mind in my opinion and I don't really think its super replayable (then again not many games are in my opinion), but I think it was a great experience overall. I would recommend it, gets a solid 4 stars out of me.