I finally fired up my desktop PC this week to play Hard Reset, a shooter I’ve had in the shrink wrap for almost a year now. It offers crisp graphics and audio, plus insanely fast-paced gameplay.
The presentation is nice. It’s a great game to look at and listen to, but that doesn’t make or break a title. The gameplay is fun but shallow. It’s even less compelling than Doom, a title which Hard Reset boldly claims to emulate. You don’t run around a maze-like Mars base searching for keys. Instead you run around an awesome, dystopic, cyberpunk city shooting robots. It’s unfortunately linear and decidedly un-maze-like. There are no puzzles to solve, here. Just go from obvious switch to obvious switch opening doors and periodically fighting clumps of enemies.
That said, the shooting is fun and your character’s equipment is customizable. You can upgrade shields, health, and weapons in a variety of ways. There’s no way to upgrade everything in a single playthrough, so you are forced to make some choices that make a major impact on how you play the game. Are you a straight-up gunner or do you prefer to utilize the (admittedly dangerous) explosive-filled environment? Will you focus on lobbing explosive grenades, or tactically disrupting enemy movements to force them into your traps? This is how it’s done, folks - look here for a decent example of emergent gameplay! It’s not overly deep, but at least it’s something.
Unfortunately, the story is noise in the background of an insultingly short game. It ends abruptly after about three and a half hours of gameplay. Again, I sigh.
Speaking of Doom, this week marks the game's 20th birthday. Holy crap. And you can play it in a web browser, now.
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