So I tried out the demo for Hard Reset, an upcoming PC-exclusive shooter from Flying Wild Hog (great name for a company, and the animated logo is also excellent).
This was developed with the idea of making an "old school" shooter, a la Doom, and I have to say, they pulled it off brilliantly.
In the demo, the objectives never get more complicated than pushing a button and shooting the hell out of anything that moves. There's no deep story here that I can see (although it does have a framing plot), and there's only two weapons; the typical machine gun, and a plasma-based weapon of some kind. Yes, two weapons.. bad games have been down this alley before. But each one can be upgraded with up to five different configurations. And when I say "configuration", I mean it.. the machine gun literally transforms to becomes a shotgun, or a grenade launcher. The overall look remains more or less the same, but all the little panels shift around and a new barrel will pop out the front. Oh, and each of those five configurations has two firing modes. So don't think for a second that "two weapons" is in any way limiting. In fact, it completely avoids the mess of weapon upgrades and finding the right kind of ammo, that often plagues shooters these days.
And so far, I'm loving it. It just feels right. It feels.. streamlined, I guess would be the word. It's not weighted down by secondary objectives, inventory management, or cover systems. And it even avoids some of the cliché of modern "violent" video games by fighting against robots and machines and not against humans. That's not to say the game isn't violent.. it is a shooter, after all, and full of things blowing up. But it's not particularly bloody, since your enemies just explode into bits of metal, flame, and sparks.
It's just so damned satisfying, not having to worry about all that other stuff. They've distilled the FPS down to its original core, and it feels great.
And let's not forget it's PC-exclusive. No lazy ports here.. this was made from the ground up for PC, and it shows. The in-game interface is entirely mouse-driven; when you walk up to a control panel, you lower your gun and your targeting reticule becomes a normal mouse cursor, that you use to push buttons on a screen, just like any modern operating system. This can be done using a pad, I'm sure, but I know it would be extremely clunky and take much longer to actually accomplish anything.
Control is also extremely tight. There's no mouse acceleration or auto-aim, it's just WASD and straight-up mouse input. And again, it feels great, oddly different from a lot of other shooters these days. I wish more games controlled like this. If you miss, it's your own damn fault, not the controls. Unless you're using a gamepad. Surprisingly, the game supports it, but I'm not sure why.. I wouldn't recommend it, the mouse just feels so damn good. And this is a PC shooter, dammit. Leave your gamepads in the living room.
And it runs great, too. My system isn't the greatest by a long shot (I'm eyeballing some upgrades, actually), and I can run it at Ultra settings at 1680x1050 at a perfectly playable, and very steady (with V-sync enabled) 30fps, even in the big fights. The game includes a built-in benchmark that stresses the card (by throwing more explosions and geometry at it than you'd normally see while playing) and allows you to fine-tune the settings to your hardware until you find a solution that works.
Oh, and how does it look? Well, it's a budget title, so it's not ground-breakingly amazing. Maybe a bit on the low-poly side. If I had to compare, I'd say it's very similar in appearance to the Unreal series of games from Epic, but with a different art style. That's not to say it looks bad, not at all. It's dark and gritty, for sure, but the real standout is the lighting. Firing off the plasma cannon into a group of robots and watching the entire environment light up like a Christmas tree.. that's good times. Lots of dynamic lighting and shading, it's certainly no slouch. Overall, the look has a very "Blade Runner" feel to it, with the glowing advertisements and even the flying zeppelins with screens on the sides. You can find videos and images all over the internet if you're curious.
My reaction? I'm buying it. It's being released on September 13th as a digital download (I'm not sure if they're even selling it in brick-and-mortar stores). You can pick it up on Steam for $30. They also have a demo, if you're on the fence. Go play it, and I'm sure you'll agree this is a keeper.
I'm out.
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