Developer: Superhot Team
Publisher: Superhot Team
Rrp: £17.99 (Steam)
Released: 25th February 2016
Available on: Steam
Bullet time, it isn’t anything new, its been around for quite some time, the earliest use (that I can think of) being in the original Max Payne. The implementation of the mechanic hasn’t always gone smoothly, in fact I can think of several games that would have been better without it. It’s always been something of a novelty feature, never a main focus of a game… until now.
In Superhot the game only moves when you do, meaning that the player can plan their actions and even dodge or bullets if they’re careful, hell a skillful (or lucky) player can actually shoot bullets out of the air.
Because everything, including you, dies in one shot (note that I said shot and not hit, it takes three punches to take out one of the enemy) the game has a
frenetic energy to it despite being in bullet time. Death has little consequence though, in fact it might even be a good thing as each time you replay through a level you become more efficient. This is aided by the enemies always spawning at the same points regardless of how many times you restart a level.
Something that is quite cool is that once you complete a level your actions are replayed back in real time. On top of that you can edit the replay to show specific portions of it, once done the replay can be uploaded to an external site (that you have to create an account for) and shown to anyone you care to.
The storyline of the game is quite short but once complete challenge and endless modes become available for you to play. Now it has to be said that often when a game unlocks a challenge mode that the challenges are usually not all that difficult (at least I find that). However in Superhot that most certainly isn’t the case. I spent hours trying to beat as many as I could and by the end of my playtime I had only managed to do four out of the twenty or so that were there.
