4/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of SUPERHOT.

Platform: PS4 (played on PS5) Time Played: 24.4 hours Status: Completed I’ve always been interested in Superhot. A first-person shooter where time slows to a crawl whenever you stop moving allowing you to to take your time at aiming to shoot or attack the shockingly fast enemies seems super interesting, especially with the sequel Superhot VR being touted as one of the greatest VR experiences that there is. The series bundle recently went on sale for PlayStation so I decided to scoop the trilogy up and finally check it out, and although the campaign itself was short, being only about two and a half hours long, and the replay value coming from playing through numerous variations on the campaign with different handicaps placed on the player; I still had a ton of fun mastering the time mechanic, going from taking my sweet ass time during the normal campaign to just absolutely fucking up the red guys in later challenges. I think the overall setup of this game being a .exe file that’s spread around by this all-knowing computer system that tries to hook in players to keep playing until they too become one with the system is really interesting. There’s this hidden groups application where you can read this chat log for about 15 minutes of this guy simply named MOD helping people who play “superhot.exe” and your reward for 100% completion or just finding all of the terminals hidden in each level is that “the system’s” messages to MOD are also added to that application, so you can see how people are recruited into the system like you were during the main campaign. The main menu UI literally being that of an old ass computer’s UI, and some extra games like that tree one being thrown in there are all really nice touches that just add to everything. I played on console, and I really appreciated the touch that the two buttons you use to “type” into the chat log are the DualShock’s bumpers, which when clicked in quick succession sound like a keyboard being typed on. Just provides this really great analog feel that only serves to enhance the narrative they’re trying to tell. Now I’m not going to act like this plot is groundbreaking or riveting or anything like that. But its just a really cool setup to pair alongside these well designed FPS levels that have this really geometrically simple aesthetic. One thing I would’ve liked a little more improvement on would be the previously mentioned terminals as it is absolutely insane how out of reach they are, bordering on out-of-bounds, and your reward for finding each is a question to ask The System, but the answer you get is always so vague, and that’s the case for every question you ask, so its almost like what’s the point of finding them all if you’re just as clueless as to what’s going on. But to move onto the gameplay, everything feels just so incredibly intuitive. Moving around, utilizing the analog movement of the control sticks to slow time down to how you want it, shooting enemies, using your reticle to shoot where you enemy is about to be, throwing weapons or objects at enemies, using the katana to slice them in two or pierce them to afar, then going back to pick it up later. All of it feels so fucking fun and smooth to play. I love how you can turn sideways and move backwards to literally dodge the bullets flying at you. Although the one caveat is that there were so, so many times when visually it looked like a bullet would clearly fly past my head only to die just a second after is passed by the camera. That shit was annoying as hell. I also feel like whenever a Red Dude would throw a punch that hit box was a little too big, like the punch wouldn’t look like it hit my body yet but I was dead anyway. I wish they had introduced the hotswitch mechanic sooner, allowing you to swap bodies with any enemy on screen at the consequence of them immediately throwing and destroying their weapon AND all surrounding enemies immediately have their weapons pointed at you. That meant I was usually only using it when there were no other enemies around the one I was swapping with or if it was the last enemy in a given level. But still, slowly panning the camera to an enemy, chucking an empty gun at then, catching their gun, shooting them, and turning around to shoot someone else for instance feels fucking fantastic. The more you play, the more comfortable you get, and that’s helped by the challenges you unlock after the main campaign, like ones where you only have access to katanas, or enemy bullets travel faster, throwing weapons is the only thing that kills, hot switch from the beginning, etc, etc. The more you play through these challenges the more you master everything, so by the time you get to the No Death challenge, you’re breezing through that fucker like its nobody’s business. And your end reward is a… challenge where everyone’s head is big, punches and throws kill, and all of the text is reminiscent of that stupid dumb ass doge meme from 2016. Well at least there’s the pumpkin challenge that’s available in October where all enemies are shrunk and turned into pumpkins. Either way, its no wonder to me why Superhot absolutely blew up when it released, because not only is it incredibly original but its also addicting as hell. That’s only helped with the Endless mode that just provides a literal endless amount of Red Dudes for you to kill. I can’t recommend this game enough. I’ve heard Superhot VR only serves to improve upon the concept by translating it to a literal VR space, one in which the in-universe superhot.exe exists in as that’s also a VR game. So I hope the praise on that turns out to be true.