Really Big Sky

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, psychedelic shmup with dual-stick controls
- "Planet drill" mechanic is fun and unique
- Persistent upgrades, unlocks, and abilities keep you playing
- Dynamic and fast paced action ensures no two games are the same
- Loads of game modes
- Sweet electric/techno music
- Supports the Xbox 360 controller

Cons
- Can get a bit overwhelming with stuff on the screen
- At it's core it doesn't do much different from other shmups
- Once you have unlocked everything, the draw kind of fades

Shooting stuff in space. Er, sky. 

The Long

Something indie games do aside from making dual-stick shooters is making side-scrolling shmups. These "bullet-hell" games (like Jamestown) are another common indie trend, though not as common as zombies or duel-stick shooters (or the abominable hybrid of both). Really Big Sky mixes both dual-stick shooting with side-scrolling shmup action, with an abstract art style and bright visuals that seem to permeate indie games. At first glance, this is just "another indie game," following the current trends and not really going out of its way to impress.

At least, that's what I thought until I started playing it. Now I think it's awesome.

This game has a lot of modes. And yes, my Classic score sucks, shut up. 

Really Big Sky has two core mechanics. You have the usual side-scrolling, dual-stick shooting for points thing. But then you have a "drill" ability. Throughout the world you'll ram into planets, where you have to quickly switch to drill and burrow through. Later stray asteroids and other rocks will come towards you amongst the enemies, requiring you to quickly switch modes on the fly. While drilling you can't shoot, and shooting does nothing against drill-able rocks, so you have to be quick.

It also has a few other tricks up its sleeve. As you start purchasing from the massive amounts of upgrades, you gain some unique abilities. Like an orbiting shield that circles around you to block shots. Or the chance to randomly shoot out a mine. Or summon a massive, multi-gun oblivion ball to follow behind for a while like a demented Option before going away. Again, this is pretty standard stuff, but all mixed together it works quite well, especially considering the game gets very exciting, very fast. No slow burn here.

There's a hefty amount of upgrades available. 

You gain points from killing enemies, and gain upgrade chips by picking them up after enemies drop them on death. Upgrades are all over the place, though Magnetcoil is the one you should buy first (makes you suck up chips from a wider range, getting you more money faster). Since each run can net you a decent amount of cash, and it lets you spend your points between replays, it can be hard to stop. Upgrades come fast but not too fast, with the costs dramatically increasing the more powerful they get. It's a strong system, though I could see that once you've maxed everything the draw would disappear.

Bosses are also fun, and several actually use the drilling mechanic well. To be honest, most reminded me a lot of Ikaruga's, with a similar spinning one and traditional bullet-hell shooter bullet patterns. Still, if it isn't broke don't fix it, and the fact that they essentially spawn randomly on classic mode ensures things are never the same every time you play.

It saves all your stats, which is cool, but no Steam Achievements. 

But the real meat comes in other modes. You can't earn points to upgrade your ship in them, but they all provide unique and cool experiences. My favorite, by far, is "Retro" mode. It axes multi-directional dual-stick shooting and instead is just a traditional, forward shooting game. The catch is that it plays kind of like a reverse Space Invaders: Infinity Gene, where you start in the 1990s and work your way back to older and older systems, with the graphics getting worse and more washed out as you go along. It's a visual treat, and the sound effects match the era you are in, which makes it a fun diversion.

Retro mode is awesome, though I have no idea what is going on. 

Graphically, it looks good enough. Heavy emphasis is played on tons of effects, all the time, so it can become very overwhelming until you get used to it. Early on I had issues telling black objects in the background from stuff I actually had to drill through, which was really obnoxious. After each level you go to "WARP SPEED" and then you really can't see what is going on. However, it works, and they make sure the obnoxious purple shielding ones (which deflect all your shots, but not enemy shots, annoying!) are obvious colored over everything else since they are the worse.

Soundtrack is solid, too, and you can unlock more songs and change them in the options menu. As a super-bonus, it has integrated Xbox360 controller support, which is by far the best way to play the game. It also maps "take screenshot" to the left bumper, which is a handy bonus for reviews.

KABOOM.

Really Big Sky doesn't break any ground necessarily, but it does so well with all the things it steals I have to recommend it. If you like these kinds of games you are getting a very hefty amount of content here with technically unlimited replayability, especially if you like competing for high scores with friends. The asking price for $10 is reasonably fair, but it tends to pop up in indie bundles if that is more your style (that's how I got it). 

Still, a very solid dual-stick shmup that manages to overcome it's genre setbacks and stand well enough on its own. And that will be enough.

Three out of five stars. 

But yeah...that sky is really big. I'll give it that. 

Dead Horde

The Short

Pros

- Has zombies in it

- You can shoot them for points and money

Cons

- Framerate and animations are horrible

- Graphics look bland and uninspired

- Lighting is poor

- Game isn't fun whatsoever

- Upgrade system is lame

- $10? Are you kidding me?

Don't play this game. 

The Long

Bloody hell indie developers, it's time to get away from two things: Dual-stick shooters and zombies. Ok, three things: add tower defense games to that list. Unless you are clever like the Unstoppable Gorg guys. But seriously...no more zombies, no more dual-stick shooters. It's like all anybody ever makes these days.

If you need an example of one that is redundant but still enjoyable, Zombie Shooter is worth your time. If you want to scrape the very bottom of the barrel in terms of useless garbage, we have Dead Horde here that requires your attention. 

The loading screens are absurdly long. 

Everything about Dead Horde is a misstep, with somethings not just misstepping but straight up falling over. The first thing you'll notice is that it plays in a window, at 1080x720. Which is fine, as I usually prefer these types of games in windows, but your mouse cursor is moving...slowly? Then you get into the game and...is the framerate really chugging? Or are the animations this bad?

In an attempt to decipher this mystery, I dropped it to the lowest resolution and full screened it (which takes less resources) just to see if it was true. My conclusion? Even on my Mac Mini with 8 GB ram (yes, I game on a dual-booted Mac, hush) the animations were bad AND the framerate couldn't stay consistent. Brilliant. 

This is the worst game I've played in a long while. 

The second thing you'll notice is how ugly it is. It's a bland, generic, gray n' brown affair, with the ruins of civilization all set in a constant darkness with nothing interesting to break it up. The zombies look as boring as they come, with all of them in the first level looking exactly the same, but luckily in stage two they get one new variant! Don't overwork yourselves, guys, you might need to save your pallet-swapped enemies for later levels!

So after watching these awful abominations run towards you (yes, they run, not shuffle, so that's good I guess) you get to the real turd at the core of this game: the gameplay. It's a dual-stick shooter (as you probably guessed) where the mouse aims and keyboard moves. But shooting zombies is tedious. You have one unlimited machine gun (as your only weapon until you buy more), and no melee. So you essentially run backwards in circles holding your mouse down as he fires his (really small) clip into them, reloads, and keeps firing. More and more zombies pile on and you just keep backing up in circles, like doing some sort of weird dance. Eventually (after way too long) they all die and you move on. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you have this entire game. Not kidding.

It has an upgrade system. It also sucks. 

You can bump your guns up but the upgrades are expensive and don't do much difference after getting them. Buying new guns is also stupid. Say I bought that Shotgun for 15k. It comes with no ammo. So I buy ammo for $1500. Now I find out it's a two-clip gun. Two. Clip. With like 20 total. So you get two shots while running around backwards until you die. Bonus? It isn't even as good as the assault rifle. It's like this whole upgrade system is a joke.

The controls are also awful, even for something that has been done a trillion times. Because of the dodgy framerate, you can't really control your mouse adequately. In addition, since it uses the WASD keys to move, you can't move diagonally with any precision. And then the game requires you to move diagonally with precision on the first level. Which meant I fell off a stupid platform a lot.

It also doesn't tell you where to go, and loves putting foreground objects right in your view. I'll be fighting a zombie "horde" (read: like nine) and be circling around in my stupid little bullet shooting dance, and suddenly a tree will block my view and I'll be a snack. Awesome. 

That's some quality lighting. 

I could say more, but I feel it would be unnecessary. This game goes for the absolutely-not-worth-it price of $10 on Steam. I wouldn't pay anything for it. In fact, the fact I got it in an indie bundle and now it's permanently tied to my Steam account offends me. I want it off, forever. No, I didn't beat it; I only played it for 35 minutes. You should feel lucky I re-installed it after deleting it to get these awful screenshots, because it doesn't even deserve that.

Dead Horde is the cheapest of the cheap when it comes to indie games, and it can't even do the most basic things right. Don't encourage this kind of behavior. Avoid at all costs.

Zero out of five stars. 

And stay down!

Alien Shooter 2 - Reloaded

The Short


Pros
- Keeps the arcade style while implementing more weapons
- Aliens look a lot better than the first game
- Has a sort of a story, I guess
- Improved graphics and animation

Cons
- The new gun system (taken from Zombie Shooter 2) is fine but boring
- Graphical assets are taken from Zombie Shooter 2 in the most obvious ways
- Involves a lot of standing around, waiting for people to do stuff for you
- Still repetitive, like all these games
- Has the two new stupid stats introduced in Zombie Shooter 2 that shouldn't exist

Yep, still plenty of blood. 

The Long

Alien Shooter 2 is solid. Unlike Zombie Shooter 2, which was a huge mess and a step back, Alien Shooter 2 seemed to learn from the shortcoming and try to fix the new stuff they put in Zombie Shooter 2 while still retaining the same arcade feel. And, for the most part, they pulled it off.

So we'll do this in brief because all these games are exactly the same anyway: is Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded worth getting? Well, for $5, why not?

The graphics have improved both technically and artistically

Just a reminder: these games are still repetitive, relatively mindless shooters. You shoot loads and loads of aliens from the get-go, and it just keeps getting crazier with blood and guts and bitsies everywhere. However, for stress-relief games, they tend to work pretty well. There's something weirdly enjoyable about just blasting through hordes of aliens without a scratch, and Alien Shooter 2 realized this is why people play these games (not to play a stupid survival horror experience) and pulled out all the stops for this release.

This is essentially the same game as Alien Shooter or Zombie Shooter. You level up (and the two useless points from Zombie Shooter 2 are back, but the game gives you a lot more points per level so progression is faster and funner) after shooting a bunch of dudes or completing objectives. You can buy guns from a shop (which is the exact same shop sprite from Zombie Shooter 2. Way to be.) but these one actually can kill stuff and pack a punch, so it's a lot funner. Also, play the game on Easy. Even though it might be a little boring at first, it seems to play best on this difficulty. At least for me.

I still hate all aliens. 

The graphics are a lot better, too. It manages to look more "realistic" while still having that old vibrant, arcade look. And still looking like Fallout, but in the best way this time: this is easily the best looking out of the four "Shooter" games that I own. Blood n' guts has also improved, and the monster designs look less cartoony and stupid (like Alien Shooter) and more menacing. Actually, this game looks a crapton like Diablo II, now that I think about it. The enemy designs, the blood, the graphical style...it really has a Diablo II feel. and I loved Diablo II's art, so maybe that's why I like it so much.

Sound is also decent, though the voice acting for the "story" is stupid. Luckily they didn't make the story the main focus this time around; it's just sort of a thing that happens. So your main point is blasting stuff, secondary objective caring about the story. It also does a better job invoking a feeling of being part of a team that is overrun, which adds a bit of flavor to the experience.

Plus, you get to go outside. Hooray for new locations. 

Out of all the shooter games I played, this one and Zombie Shooter (1) are the two I enjoyed the most. They are also unique in many ways (though both play the same) so you can get both and have a somewhat unique experience despite the similarities. Alien Shooter 2 is a good step towards the future of these types of games, though I find it weird it took them so long to figure it out. I mean, seriously, these types of games have been around forever. I can't believe they'd really be this hard to standardize.

Regardless, there's like a billion more Alien Shooters after this one, but this is the most recent one I own and I like it so...there you go. For $5, why not. 

Two out of five stars. 

At least you can equip more weapons this time around. 

Zombie Shooter 2

The Short

Pros

- Improved animations and graphics over the original...sort of

- Actually tries to have a story with voice acting and plot developments

- Car sections are fun

- Wider arsenal of purchasable guns and upgrades

- More RPG elements

Cons

- Fails in execution of nearly every new thing they implement

- While animations are better, the color pallet is very bland, even with "grayscale" mode turned off

- Gun balance with the new arsenal feels nonexistant; guns can range from overpowered to totally useless

- Two new stats are useless, and weird translation makes me wonder what they actually do 

- Story is also poorly translated and voiced over

- Honestly, just play the first game and ignore this one

Time to shoot more zombies. 

The Long

So after Zombie Shooter was weirdly good, I guess Sigma decided to try and up the stakes with the second game. Touting some rather radical changes to the formula, a new engine, and a new aesthetic, Zombie Shooter 2 on paper looks leagues above the original. Is it?

Nope. It's way worse, actually.

That's some quality writing. 

There's so many missteps it's hard to know where to begin. I guess we can start at the beginning: same title song as Alien Shooter and Zombie Shooter. Which...whatever, I guess that's fine. But then you get to the character select screen, and things get stupid.

They have a ton of characters now, each with a wide range of stats. In addition, you have two new stats: Wisdom and Intelligence (or something like that). One gives you more experience and one..."helps you learn skills faster?" What? What is the difference here? Either this is a bad translation or I don't get it (maybe the other gives you more skill points on level up? But I never got more than one, even though I pumped points in that stat...), but both seem redundant. Spending my level up on points to help me level up faster? Why not just balance your game better? 

Then you get into the game, and stuff gets worse. I will say that at least this game had widescreen support (finally), so it doesn't look stretched out constantly, but that's the worst of this messes graphical missteps.

Does this look bland to you? Or is it just me?

The lighting is better and the animations are improved, but man...the graphics are boring. Look at the original: it was cartoony and bright and vibrant. This one is dull and ugly to look at. Which actually is sort of a cool idea; it defaults to a film grain and black-and-white filter overlaying everything so it looks kind of like the original Dawn of the Dead or something. And while I think that's cool, it execution Zombie Shooter 2 looks grainy and dull. Even with all the filter overlays off the game is still bland, so the problem is the underlying art, not the filters they put over it all.

So anyway you get past it being hideous and start playing, and realize something else: there are a lot more guns in this game, and you have to equip them to slots and have a grid-based bag like Diablo II. Which would work if the guns were interesting. Upgrading individual weapons is gone again (like they learned nothing from Alien Shooter) and instead we just have a lot of them to keep swapping out. Except they didn't bother to balance anything, so the zombies take forever to kill and, unless you buy some super-powered weapon, you'll be fire peashooters the whole game. What?

You also fight naked winged demon chicks, which last I checked are NOT ZOMBIES. 

Ammo is scarce unless you are playing on easy, which makes me think that (with that and the art style) they were going "survival horror" over arcade. But you can't just use an old system, slap a few survival-horror tropes on it and hope it works. As an arcade shooter it fails completely, and as a survival horror game it fails too. So a double dose of suck. 

Oh, there's a story this time, in case you cared, further pushing the "We are a serious game now!" idea. Well, it sucks. Translations are poor at best, voice actors obviously not speaking English as their native language, and it's just a boring "go here, go there, damn zombies!" experience. Not enjoyable.

Tons of options, all of them boring and useless. 

I'm kind of mad. I liked Zombie Shooter for its stupid, arcade action and just general disregard to caring if it was good or not. Zombie Shooter 2 obviously tries, but fails completely. Sorry, Sigma, you aren't cut out for survival horror or games with any sort of story. Just...go back to making generic, repetitive arcade shooters with light RPG elements. It'll work out better that way for everybody.

Also, this game is $10? Yuck.

One out of Five Stars. 

Um...sure. Yeah, you do that. 

Zombie Shooter

The Short


Pros
- There ARE zombies, and you get to shoot them
- Improves on Alien Shooter's mechanics by adding gun upgrades, which is appreciated
- Enemies disintegrate in messy bits as you blast at them, which is a nice, nasty touch
- Graphics still look like Fallout
- Has an actual difficulty slider (Easy/Medium/Hard) which Alien Shooter really needed
- Weirdly addicting, though I can't exactly figure out why

Cons
- Almost exactly the same as Alien Shooter
- Seriously, everything is the same except you are shooting zombies
- Still runs at a crappy resolution, still is mindless, and still is just corridor after corridor
- Only about 3-4 hours long
- Has weird pathing issues in its isomeric view that can result in you getting stuck on the scenery, to the point where you have to quit and start a mission over

Call me messed up, but I think shooting zombies is funner than shooting aliens

The Long

So let's get one thing straight: this game is almost a cookie-cutter pallet swap of Alien Shooter. Don't believe me? Well, let's run some stuff down:

- Same title screen music

- Same two characters with same sprites

- Many of the guns are the same

- Many background assets are directly lifted from Alien Shooter

- Entire UI, menu, and leveling system is the same

- IT'S THE SAME, OK?

So this SHOULD be a really simple review, right? It's the same, "One out of Five" and all that? Well...actually no. Because despite myself, I think...I think I like Zombie Shooter.

THE HORROR.

It isn't a video game if you don't start by killing rats. 

So, if you skipped the Alien Shooter review, here's the concept in brief: duel-stick shooter, light RPG mechanics, boatloads of enemies and levels, super repetitive. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, old graphics, same gray corridors for every level. So all that is exactly the same here in Zombie Shooter (though you do get a glimpse of the outside, and I think the graphics have seen a boost, but more on that later) but to my surprise it actually hits that "addicting" draw it was going for before. Not sure why, but let's break down why it's better than Alien Shooter, at least.

So first off the upgrade system has improved, if only slightly. Rather than having the only progression be leveling up and buying better guns, you can now upgrade your current guns. Which I appreciate, as it gives my money somewhere to go. Upgrading them significantly increases range, power, and lots more. It feels good to spend all your money fully upgrading a minigun and just breezing through a level blasting the undead.

Another improvement is there is a difficulty slider. Which may sound lame, but the original game kind of needed it. This is still a hard game - even "Easy" can get tricky - but at least now you can decide how badly you get stomped.

Wait, is that...actually a zombie? 

There's also a better sense of progression in this one vs Alien Shooter. In Alien Shooter, you cleared a room and just left. A prompt said "Press Space to Leave" and that was it. In this one, you have actual objectives and places to go to continue (though most are either "find a button to turn on the lights" or "get dynamite and blow a hole in this pre-determined wall") so it feels like you are going somewhere. It's a step in the right direction. 

But how I think this game works is that it succeeds at drawing you into its stupid, arcade, Smash TV style of just blasting tons and tons of zombies. Yeah, there's no depth here, and I still can often use the "stand in doorway shooting rockets into the room until everything stops moving" trick, but the game feels much more refined than Alien Shooter. Maybe it's having more upgrade options or the fact that I'm fighting zombies or something, I dunno. But I genuinely enjoyed my time spent with Zombie Shooter. It wasn't anything profound, but I'll probably play it again (and I didn't delete it from my HDD after quitting, like I did with Alien Shooter). 

The biggest problem I encountered, however, were the controls. I neglected to mention it in my Alien Shooter review, but playing with WSAD movement on an isomeric view isn't great, and it's exacerbated by the fact you can walk on stuff you aren't supposed to be able to, and then get stuck. Often it took some jiggling to get free, but once I was legitimately trapped and had to reload a level. That's garbage. 

How were there so many people in this underground facility?

Graphically, the game is similar but has a slightly better look than Alien Shooter. The environments are more colorful and dense and the blood n' guts looks much better. My favorite (if a bit gross) "feature" is the fact that after you shoot zombies for a bit pieces come off 'em, but they keep coming until you finish them off. Nice touch. You can also see your bullets/buckshot this time, which is appreciated in aiming.

Sound is also a bit better, though nothing spectacular. It recycles a bit from Alien Shooter but then adds some more of its own, so I'm fine with it.

How many of these guys are there?

I feel weird saying this, but I liked Zombie Shooter. Yeah, it's mindless, kind of shallow, and really repetitive, but it fits that "arcade shooter" itch that I have. While I'd have liked more upgrade options, having just four stats and gun upgrades has enough to keep me going without being overly complex. This is just some mindless fun, and the fact it's like 3-4 hours long makes it a good game to play in bursts and then pick up later. 

Yes, I'm actually recommending this game, though honestly I'd wait for it to pop up in an indie bundle (they tend to do that a lot; Indie Gala likes to re-sell it's old bundles with the current ones, if you are interested check them out). At $5 it might be a bit much (try a demo), but this formula works, so for cheap thrills you could do a lot worse.

Three out of Five Stars. 

Which means this game is as good as Final Fantasy VII, if you think all reviews scores mean the same thing. 

Alien Shooter

The Short


Pros
- True to its name, you do shoot a lot of aliens
- Retro-esque graphics remind me of the original Fallout games
- Plenty of blood n' guts and absolutely mind-boggling numbers of enemies
- Handful of weapons to purchase
- Long, so it's a good...value? At $5?

Cons
- Gets really boring, really quick
- Persistent leveling system is nice, but needed to be fleshed out
- Animations look poor and stiff, and it can be hard to see where you are shooting
- While I appreciate the retro look, the environments come off as bland and repetitive
- Highest resolution is 1080x720, with no windowed option. Great.
- Game was originally in Russian, so plenty of weird translation issues

If there's anything I hate, it's aliens

The Long


So indie games and dual-stick shooters seem to go hand in hand. I guess they are just easy to make or something, because I swear a good 80% of the indie side of my Steam library is just a bunch of dual-stick (or in this case, keyboard-moves mouse-aims) shooters. Now, I like dual-stick shooters a lot, so I'm actually pretty forgiving on this front. So I installed the four "Shooter" games I own and burned through all four. We'll start with Alien Shooter, the original "classic" from Sigma games.

And, to spoil the upcoming review, I'm going to say this: I'm not a huge fan.

Things start simple enough...

There's no story to speak of. You can pick either a dude or a woman with pre-determined stats (the guy has more health but does less shooting damage and isn't very agile, the woman is agile and does high firearms damage but has low health) and you are just dropped outside some facility. Once you are inside I really hope you like looking at similar gray corridors over and over, because you are gonna get a lot of that. 

After a surprisingly slow start you finally get to some aliens that you shoot. The initial batch isn't very intimidating and killing them is actually quite droll. Luckily the pace picks up quickly as you gather money to buy more weapons (you can carry an arsenal), level up and slowly raise stats, and encounter bigger and bigger hordes of enemies. If I can say one thing good about this game, it's that they make do on their promise: in the later areas, there are loads of aliens.

...but quickly you'll be going "HOLY CRAP!"

I'd say more but that's it. That's the game. Experience is basically dropped by enemies or boxes, so you have to shoot all of the many, many boxes around the world to both get ammo and level up. As you get more and more guns you get more powerful, making the old ones pretty much useless. It's a simple concept, perhaps too simple.

Alien Shooter's problem is that it is repetitive to the point of boring. While the above scene looks intense, you could easily beat it by equipping your best gun, standing just behind a doorway, and shooting through. I literally ate dinner while playing an intense firefight, holding my mouse button down in one spot while I ate with my other hand, and nothing came close to touching me. Aside from a minor amount of circle strafing (if you can't find a doorway to hide in), the strategy here is relatively low, at least early on.

Yes, you get to aliens that shoot back and require some dodging, but it's hardly strenuous. If anything they are more annoying and feel cheap; the rest of the little bastards never reached me, but those jerks never seem to miss. What a pain.

You have four stats to pump and nine guns to buy, but after that there's no real point to it all. 

Aside from getting bored easily, the graphics look...well, it's hard to say. They look old, which I guess is ok because this game came out in 2003, but they look like Fallout, which came out in 1997. And while I love this era of retro PC gaming (the isomeric, 256 colors just on the cusp of being able to render 3D graphics in game) it still feels clunky. Animations, especially, look bad, with both main characters being very uninteresting to look at in their bland, generic action-hero style.

Sound design is ok, with some decent music clips, but all the guns sound weak and as much as I love hearing the same alien death squeal over and over, it gets old.

But hey, at least battle aftermaths are nice and gory. 

As it stands, Alien Shooter is a relic of a not-so-ancient past. While it's sort of neat Sigma's design philosophy is to make simple, inexpensive games that provide lots of content in the form of time (and it's true; Alien Shooter is several hours long, think 2-3), it doesn't do me any good if I get bored if it in the first 30 minutes. Adding the fact that they've made like 10 of these things since this one, and you should probably just ignore the original Alien Shooter. I got it in an indie bundle so...whatever, but the $5 on Steam is still too high. It just really isn't worth your time when there are so many better versions of this available (and by the same developer).

Avoid.

One out of five stars. 

If anything, they deserved to die for being pallet-swapped. 

Hard Reset

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced throwback to vintage FPS mechanics
- Only two guns with dozens of upgrades streamline the system
- Massive numbers of robots to gun down
- Difficult but not unfair; even the "Easy" difficulty may prove a challenge
- Plenty of stuff to blow up constantly
- Excellent sound design and beautiful graphics

Cons
- Short; only two or three hours
- Actually quite linear
- Only a few enemy types that get recycled
- Story that is presented during load screens is boring and unimportant

If you hate robots, this is the game for you. 

The Long

Remember when shooters were just that: shooters? Where the point of the game was to grab a bunch of guns and just blast stuff without any semblance of story or reason for shooting them except they want you dead in return? The FPS genre has taken several steps away from that, first with Half-Life and next with games like Call of Duty 4 that replaced shooting with scripted events. A few games like Painkiller and Serious Sam have cropped up that took us back to our "roots," before our health magically recharged and we had to find cover constantly. Now we have Hard Reset, a homage to those older games, set to put you on a robot-blasting, high-octane thrillfest from start to end.

And guess what? It works almost perfectly. 

Plus you get to kill a jillion robots. 

Hard Reset is made by a group of guys that also worked on the previously mentioned Painkiller games. For those who've played those games, you know pretty much what you are getting into with Hard Reset. Painkiller was characterized by having massive numbers of enemies (like Serious Sam, but not quite as insane) that is threw at you, giving you tons of guns and weapons to deal with them and having you strafe, blast, and run backwards for a good chunk of the game. It was awesome and fast paced and no cover was required.

Hard Reset is essentially this with robots and about a thousand times more explosions. It also has some interesting upgrade-system elements as well as some streamlining of ammo that really does the game a lot of favors. 

Too many robots!

At it's core, this is what you do in Hard Reset: You shoot a crap-ton of robots. When you go to a new area, tons of robots start crawling out of the woodwork (and I mean tons) and it's up to you to blast them. Usually they'll keep coming for several intense, explosion-ridden minutes, until you finally clear the stage and head to the next area, where this battle arena repeats. If this sounds repetitive you would technically be right, but it never feels that way, mostly because of the excellent level design. Something Hard Reset does very well is fill the environment with things that blow up. Barrels that explode are placed liberally around the battlefield. Conduits and automated shops can be shot and emit a several-second long blast of electricity, frying any robots that run into it. Generators on walls can be rigged to blow, as can cars. Even some of the robots (the round little crawlers) blow up on death, which can cause huge chain reactions among their own ranks. Hard Reset is punctuated by explosions happening constantly with one of the challenges to not get caught in the aftershock. Because every area is unique and moves so incredibly fast you never get bored. Instead it's like one massive, jaw-dropping experience after another, and it's near perfect in its execution.

Your way is blocked by a few doors, but as a whole it doesn't keep you from shooting for very long. 

Another neat gameplay idea is the concept of only having two actual guns. You have your "lead shootin" gun and your "plasma" gun. Each uses one type of ammo ("Red" and "Blue," respectively) so it's simple with regards to what you have to pick up. However, thanks to a simple but still extensive upgrading system, your default weapons can be changed mid-battle into other types. Some are standard, like a shotgun or rocket launcher. Others are more unique, like a plasma gun that can fire an orb that time-slows any enemies trapped in it. All these guns can in turn be upgraded, so your shotgun will fire bouncing pellets that stun once it's powered up. All the while they still only use the two basic ammo types, so you don't have to go searching for shotgun shells or rockets; just use the same ammo. This also means you get to choose which gun you unlock when, so you can fully tailor it to your playstyle. Very cool idea. 

The cyberpunk robot dystopia of Hard Reset has a stunning art style, too.

Graphically, Hard Reset is gorgeous, especially considering it is technically an indie game. From the exquisitely clever and beautiful menus when you first launch the game to watching the rain drizzle across the sidewalks and buildings of a neon, flashy cyberpunk city, Hard Reset looks really, really good. I cranked it up to max everything and was shocked at how well everything animated, exploded, and just looked stationary (the guns especially animate and have very good looking effects to them). Unfortunately my computer couldn't handle it in high-octane situations (read: 90% of the game) so I had to turn the resolution down a bit, but even then it still looked very good, and when the framerate is staying consistent it's smooth as butter as well. If you have a killer rig this is a great game to show off, as it isn't technically all that taxing (though I don't know how they pulled it off) but has a killer art design and graphics regardless.

Sound is also excellent, with the exception being the voices. They are gravelly and bland as you'd expect from this type of game, but luckily they don't come up very often. Gunshots and robot noises sound excellent, however, and since the story only shows up during loading screens you can just ignore it completely (I did). 

Find upgrade points (cash?) around to buy new weapons and upgrades!

So what isn't good about Hard Reset? Well, it's short, clocking in at around 2-3 hours on the Easy difficulty. It's also worth noting it's called "Hard" Reset for a reason: this game can be very difficult, especially for those not used to the old-school FPS types of games. On Easy you could probably bludgeon your way through, but on the more intense difficulties it'll wipe the floor with you. Luckily it has an "EX" mode that lets you play again with your same weapons and upgrades, which makes things a little easier. So despite being short, at least it is very strongly encouraging you to go back for multiple playthroughs. 

Another problem is lack of enemy variety. You have the little crawly ones, the little crawly ones that explode, the charging big ones, and the big ones with guns. Expect to kill a trillion of these (with a few others mixed in, but not a lot) over the game's short single player. While that isn't bad as it just throws hordes at you at every possible instance, it wouldn't have hurt to have seen it mixed up a little. 

Lastly is that there is no multiplayer whatsoever. Which I suppose is fine seeing as I hate it when people tack multiplayer on to singleplayer focused games, but the gameplay in Hard Reset screams old-school team deathmatch to me. Oh well.

At least it lets me kill a trillion robots. 

As it stands, if you have any affection for old-school FPS shooters, you owe it to yourself to get Hard Reset. Like the Serious Sam games, it's a homage to an older era, but unlike the Serious Sam games it actually uses modern gameplay conventions to refine and perfect those old methods rather than simply giving it a pretty coat of paint. It's fast, fluid, and straight up fun. I honestly can't recall the last time I had this much fun in an FPS. At the incredibly low price of $20 standard on Steam, this is a game you really shouldn't miss out on. 

Four out of five stars.

Serious Blade Runner vibe, guys.