Game Over - SUPERHOT

There isn’t really much I can say about SUPERHOT if you don’t already know about it. It’s more of an experience than a game -- but also a game that’s really fun. It’s an action puzzle, I think is the best way to describe it. It’s quite hard to figure out where it fits into the world, as the technology you see is anachronistic, yet you see people wearing VR headsets.

When you start the game, you’re introduced to a bunch of unconnected levels. Eventually you start chatting to a friend who sent you SUPERHOT.exe, which is what you’ve been playing. It’s addictive, but the lack of a storyline is a bummer, you say.

But because it’s addictive you keep playing. You enter a level and using your hands, weapons, artwork, phones or bin bags you dispatch all of the red enemies. It’s one-hit kill city up in here, because you can die from one hit too. Your only advantage is that everything stops moving when you do.

I say stops, but it actually slows down to about 1/1000th speed. Bullets can still be seen barreling towards you, but slow enough to dodge if you choose your next movement wisely. Unless it’s too close, then you’re screwed.

The weapons I mentioned are quite varied. You have handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, bats and swords, but you can pick up and throw things like bottles, phones and the aforementioned bin bags. The act of picking something up returns time to normal flow for a hundredth of a second, and looking around also moves time ever so slightly, so literally everything you do can wind up getting you killed.

The main game only takes about two hours to finish, but it’s certainly a fun two hours. I’m quite annoyed that it took me from February until now to get around to playing, but once I had it was difficult to stop.

If you play it like a first person shooter you’re not going to have fun, but as a puzzle game it has a ton of ways to complete each level. You can punch that guy to grab his gun, then shoot that guy -- or if you can avoid their bullets you could run behind that corner to grab the sword and throw it through them both!

SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I’ve seen in years.