For the past two years, SUPERHOT has been able to indelibly mark the independent stock market and take control of our gaming minds by capitalizing on an idea that is as essential as it is ingenious.
The Polish team of the same name tries to keep his creature constantly alive, now proposing a version for consoles of current generation, now a surprising edition in virtual reality.
Now the time has come to leave us “conditioned” by Mind Control Delete , an expansion currently under development and proposed in Early Access on Steam, which will be published in free form in the coming months, thus expanding the formula of the game base and to trap us again in the virtual world of SUPERHOT .
Reasoned action
The basic mechanics of SUPERHOT has always been of a “disarming” simplicity: the passage of time is linked to one’s movements, so to face a level, surviving the attacks of the opponents in red, it is necessary to carefully evaluate their moves: exploit the weapons present, dodging with good timing, calibrate well the pace of progress and be incredibly precise are basically the basic requirements to continue in this atypical shooter.
This approach has also been taken to the extreme by SUPERHOT VR : freedom of movement is practically nullified, in the face of waves of assailants who progressively approach our position and are stopped by any means possible.
back to get closer to the classic formula, but offering environments on average wider than those seen in the past, with the spawn points of the enemies often very distant from each other.
This is a change that seems apparently very minimal, but instead goes to impact strongly on the gameplay and on the way to face the different challenges: always keep under control the various ways of entry into the levels becomes in short an even more urgent need, and you will need to pay close attention to the appearance of some red flares that signal the presence of a new opponent.
The rooms, however, resume the classic style of SUPERHOT, and although not very large, are characterized by a more varied level design compared to those of the original title, thanks to the larger spaces.
Mind Control Delete then partly changes the narrative approach, as the challenges are grouped into sequences of five or ten stages, all of which must be dealt with in one go, without interruption.
To ensure a fairer difficulty, the concept of vital energy is also introduced, depicted by iconic hearts that disappear every time we are struck by a bullet or a white weapon blow.
From the point of view of the story, our companies are justified by a decryption screen showing the progress in a file full of hexadecimal symbols: each encrypted block represents a level, with some bonuses that allow you to choose between recovering your own energy or the addition of a heart, both elements that can make the difference in the most complex fights.
The progression therefore appears more organic, and the menu system that allows access to the various challenges recovers the ASCII style proposed by the basic game, enriched by deformation effects that make each entry into an area of the game an even more disquieting passage.
It remains to understand how the story will go to hook the already cryptic starting title: the only detail leaked so far sees as a protagonist a woman who would digitize their mind, so that they can continue its existence inside of a computer. It will be an action carried out in total freedom or conditioned by the malign influence of the exexe of SUPERHOT ?
