One might expect a new shooter like Hard Reset to go missing amongst the big names that are being released this time of the year. However, going through the demo of the game makes it pretty clear that this title cannot be pushed around.
For starters the team behind the game is legendary. Former members from People Can Fly (Painkiller), CD Projekt RED (The Witcher 2) and City Interactive (Sniper: Ghost Warrior) need no introductions.
Your character, Major Fletcher stands against a horde of robots that have taken over the world. It’s your duty to get rid of them and protect the only surviving human city.
The Beautiful City Lights
The total gameplay time for the demo is hardly 15 minutes but it’s packed with action. As soon as the game starts you’ll notice the achingly beautiful city that the developers have created. The textures, lighting and environments are mind blowing. Considering that I had everything maxed at 1920 x 1080, my FPS never went below 55.
Around 15 enemies in your screen at a time, exploding barrels, cars and environments, weapon, enemies and environmental effects; and your FPS never goes down. It’s as smooth as it gets. I actually thought this was the unreal engine at work but I got to know that Hard Reset has it’s own custom engine.
Interacting with the environment is kept simple through clicking. You can seamlessly click to shut off valves, disable security grids and upgrade your weaponry. The weapon upgrade shop takes on a new visual design which I can only guess would be a pain to use on a controller. That aside the amount of upgrades is large with some being useless in my opinion. The first upgrade I got enabled me to zoom in a bit by right-clicking. However, the zoom comes without a scope or cross-hair and just moves the screen a bit. It felt like a waste of upgrade.
The Plasma Rifle At Work
The demo gives you two weapons from the start: a standard assault rifle and a plasma gun. The gun models are extremely epic and as are the visual effects when firing. Ammo is not going to be a problem in this game and the enemies are not going down unless you punch them full of holes. So combine both aspects and what do you get? Glue your finger to the left button of your mouse and start jumping around the map, shooting anything that moves, breathes or seems destroyable. Somehow it reminded me of Quake…
Environments can be interacted with to destroy enemy AI or find hidden rooms. Explode barrels by shooting at them to reveal hidden rooms containing rewards or killing AI in the proximity. You can also shoot at electrical panels on the walls to make them go haywire and shoot out an electrical surge; frying anything in the area. There will always be more than one way to kill a world-dominating robot.
Eat Electricity Bitch
The demo consisted of only two kinds of enemies (Small mousers and Large ones) but a lot more is to be expected. Flying Wild Hog have promised large scale bosses of epic proportions.
Hard Reset seems to be a refined shooter and deserves to be on your buying list. Go ahead and play the demo if you need more convincing. The demo is available right now on Steam.
Hard Reset will release later this month, on September 13th exclusively for the PC.
