SUPERHOT.

What matters is what happens between these two words.

SUPERHOT.

It wants to peel back the layers of your skull.

SUPERHOT.

Feast on my flesh until nothing remains.

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3 thoughts on SUPER[SUPER]HOT.

Mind - Katana reveals all; the swift executions and parry-play are at the essence of what works within this new framework of roguelike repetition because it prevents the action from jerking-off in bullet-time. The staccato begins to act in service of rhythmic motions where physicality is no longer a disembodied affair of firearms and trajectories locating the feedback loop in the anonymity of manikins instead putting our ever-fragile avatar at the center of the violence in ways that renders the thrills of deletion by putting emphasis on the cut. Distances and deflections. How to bridge the gap between the two. Invoking. Channeling. SUPERHOT.

Control - Hacks.exe; they elevate the core systems without rendering the whole ugly. It’s impossible to escape the allure of the metagame. “Killheal.hack” and “Lightreflex.hack” are kings. And kings do not matter in sequences whose escalating difficulty so clearly correlates with the aesthetics of kinesthesia - strategies are established in style before substance, a perfect action-run framed in replays, so challenge is (and must remain) a modular canvas here. Strong back-half. Exhausting waves met with zen. Repress the urge to shatter - obsidian is thy weapon. Sliced rubies and broken ores. A mist of forms. I wish the experience went further. I wish I didn’t have so many choices. I wish I could look somewhere else than myself by being tied to the grazing of bullets and the compression of space. At its purest SUPERHOT triggers like a reversion of time itself; me, knowing the momentum of damage and enemies so completely that I can speedrun the game. Play it, actually, at a regular pace. Ain’t that something. A slow game, but present.

Delete - Self-vore; masturbartory reflexivity bores me. But SUPERHOT was so close. Its gradual subtraction of every expansions made to the original concept pushes past the cringe by committing to the bit. One by one actions and movement mechanics are taken away from the player, thrown into the blender. But at the end of each metatextual step of euthanasia, we’re given the option to give up. Press [E] to access the text - end the level before it's even started. The game should have left us to rot in there. Let the player figure out new ways to still assert dominance over its environment in the absence of tools to do so. The game’s not inventive enough - in both mechanics and level-design - to do that. A shame. All that’s left, then, is a language only dispensed by the screen - our usual one-way mirrors. Ten minutes of me pressing [E] to get the syllables drooling out of my mouth. Sweet nothingness lost in Amygdalatropolis. Yelling that same sentence into the void.

SUPER

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[Just a hollow sense of progression and power]

HOT.

I'm writing this as the unskippable 2.5 hours after-credits wait is still going, and I must start this review stating that this is the most horrendous way of finishing a game. That being said, the overall experience of SuperHot: Mind Control Delete was pretty great, I'd even say it's superior than the first entry (and it sure is better than VR by a mile). At a first glance it's pretty similar to the first SuperHot, and while some elements are brought back, the weapons, abilities and enemies, each one of these elements are massively expanded and improved upon.

The first thing that needs to be addressed is the difference between Mind Control Delete and the original SuperHot. The first SuperHot was a self-contained and linear game whose gameplay revolved around memorization, much like Hotline Miami. You'll be dropped onto a level and then do your best or die trying, and if you die you'll restart the same level and replay it until you eventually eliminate every enemy successfully, so it was more about trial and error, especially towards the final levels. Mind Control Delete is a game about improvisation. Sure, the levels repeat over and over, and some are brought back from the first game, and you'll eventually get used to their layout, but that's about it, everything else is randomized, even the player's spawnpoint. The levels are gathered in a randomized collection, so if you die on one level, the collection changes and it starts all over again. I know this sounds boring and frustrating as hell, but since everything is random it turns out different each time you play.

But it doesn't end there. In every collection of levels, after completing a certain amount that can vary, there will be an also randomized hack to choose from. Hacks are special abilities that the player can obtain by completing certain level collections. These hacks are then unlocked to be selectable during any set of levels. This adds a lot of replayability since if you die you'll start empty handed so the hacks you get to choose from are different for each collection of levels, and as you go on, there'll be more to select from. And whenever you get to select them, two random different hacks show up for you to select one of them. There will never be one that's clearly better than the other so you discard one of them entirely, your selection depends on your context. For example, if you're low on hearts (yeah, you can take a few hits before dying, which is a great addition), choosing a health regaining hack might be a better option than bullet ricochet, or maybe you're doing great and want to try otherwise. The options are almost limitless, it's about choosing wisely which ones to use, because some can be pretty helpful while others can be relatively useless. It turns out to be more strategic than the first game.

Another thing Mind Control Delete expands upon is the enemy variety. There are still your common red guys that work the same, but now there are these red guys with spikes that blow up releasing a lot of bullets into the air that can hit you, so maybe it's better to keep a distance with them. Another new type of enemy is the one that's entirely white except for one limb which remains red and this is the only weak spot they have, so for the rest of the body they're practically unkillable. Tho the biggest and most important enemy addition are the immortal enemies. There are a total of three of these and they appear at random in random levels so you never know when one's gonna show up, and this always keeps the player on edge if they do eventually show up, because they have a similar special ability the player also has (I forgot to mention it, but when you start a collection of levels there are four different permanent abilities to choose from that stay activated until the collection is finished, even if you die), so as everything is randomized, there's a pressure to kill all the enemies the level requires to be finished that gets even more tense when one of these three enemies do show up. This game works with tension better than any of the previous two entries, because this game is about mastering its mechanics instead of repeating a level until you find an optimal way of clearing the level, and it's a blast when you pull it off correctly. All of this game's elements work together masterfully turning the first SuperHot, what was essentially a gameplay experiment and barely anything more, into a more tenseful experience with more strategy and decision making.

[SOME SPOILERS HERE, JUMP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SPOIL THE ENDING]

Now for the narrative aspect, it's a certain improvement. Like, the first game had a story, kinda, it was some creepypasta-esque cryptic bs that ended up nowhere and was more of a hindering than anything else. Mind Control Delete is a meta-game on not having a story so it's less bs and, while cryptic, the story isn't much of an obstacle this time. I tried my best to understand it and all I ended up with was that it talks about isolation for damaged individuals (whether physically or mentally) on virtual violence and how it can absorb them entirely. Basically, a story about addiction to/escapism via virtual violence. Remember those immortal enemies? After what is basically a boss battle with each one of them you eliminate both their and your special ability resulting in what I assume is their physical termination, and this is done in segments where you'll see them static looking at you until you get rid of their own ability. It isn't explicitly said, but I think that, as with the original game, you're controlling someone irl killing them. For example, the dog one appears in a hospital room sitting on a wheelchair. Also, while on the menu you can read notes related to these characters which give away hints about how they really are. After this, the game concludes with what I think is game-ending yourself by uninstalling everything (?). I know all of this may sound overanalitical and nonsensical, and that's because it is. And that final 2.5 hours loading screen just to play the game again screams pretentiousness. If not this, all I can think of is that the game criticizes the player for enjoying mindless violence, which I hope isn't what they were going for. Either way there are some aspects of the story that I couldn't understand at all so that was the best I could've come up with. I think it's better to play the game's meta-game of not having a true meaning and just enjoy the experience.

[SPOILERS CONCLUDED]

Overall, this is a major improvement on the first SuperHot. After finishing the VR one I didn't want to play another SuperHot because of the bad impression it gave me, and boy did I miss something great. This game is the definitive SuperHot experience and I don't know why here it has a lower average rating than the previous games. Anyways, if you liked the original SuperHot or the VR one, this is better in every single way, so I ought you to check this one out. Sure the game's core differs a bit from the previous games, but it somehow works surprisingly great and rarely gets tiring with its randomized gameplay.

When I initially played SuperHot a while back, I totally adored it.
The story, the gameplay, the presentation were all superb.

So when I found out there was a sequel that expands on the gameplay of the original, I was ecstatic.
But god help me this game loses all of the charm the original had and the sheer length of it only backfires on it, making it lose its novelty really quickly.

I only really started loving this game when I started listening to Ryoji Ikeda and speedy acid trance while playing it.

Deceptively repetitious, in that it gradually shifted from a game of endless grinding into something of a hypnotic trance state in the form of a game play loop. The effect of fully learning the initial flow of the game really lent to the unease I felt when in its late stages, it all of the sudden starts introducing new alien elements and stages and visuals. There is a striking effect to playing the same handful of stages over and over again thinking you've seen what the game has to offer, and then suddenly finding yourself in an entirely unfamiliar setting.

Considering that one biggest strengths of the first games was it's tightly controlled level flow, you would think that a game entirely about generative randomization would kinda ruin what made that game work as well as it did. But, despite individual levels having less impact, there is something to be said about the cumulative effect of being forced to improvise and adapt on a level to level basis. It becomes less about the specific design of the levels and more about the textural experience the game creates over time. You won't remember any specific encounter as you might in the first game, but it leaves an undeniable abstract impression in its flow.

The special abilities feel a little underwhelming at first, until you've collected so many of them that you've power creeped your way into absurdly effective and satisfying combinations (getting the shot flow + ricochet powerups at the same time really did a lot to make this part of the game click to a borderline obsessive degree for me). The final stinger the game pulls makes this system all the more impactful. Genuinely unforgettable ending.

MCD is an odd game in that it kinda ditches a lot of what made the first game work at all in favor of doing a completely new thing that somehow works even better. It's no longer a game about acting out memorable action movie set pieces as carefully paced logic puzzles, it's now taking the emotional impression of these set pieces and deconstructing them into a repeated mantra of cycling improvised-yet-familiar puzzle tasks. It's more interested in creating an abstract emotional impression than any of the tightly recognizable beats of the original. It keeps the incredibly simple baseline movement and weapon system unchanged, but creates complexity in unexpected ways with it's new systems. It took the skeleton of the original game, and instead of saying "what if we did this, but more and better?" it finds a distinct new expressionist space to explore.


why the fuck do I die instantly when I bodyswap with a spawning enemy though that shit is so stupid nothing makes me rage quit faster than when that happens like wtf

Fun for a bit but it's too long for how repetitive it is. I got really close to the end but i got tired and the finals stages are just annoying. Fine if you want to play some superhot as an arcadey thing.

Edit: I had a "fuck you and i'll see you tomorrow" moment with this game yesterday. I uninstalled it after geting bored and reinstalled today to beat what was left. Right now i'm waiting for the stupid 2.5 hour timer to end, but leaving all the pretentious bullshit aside it's a fun game, but it would have a better score if the devs weren't so annoying with their garbage message/plot. I just want to have the game to pick up and play arcade style go away with your dumb shit.

A continuação de Super Hot implementa mecanicas novas, transformando o game quase que em um fps roguelike, com poderes aleatorios para se escolher e fases aleatorias a cada tentativa, apesar disso resultar em uma variedade maior do primeiro game, por causa da duração do game ele se torna enjoativo, me fazendo dropar o game, voltar e quase dropar novamente, so continuando por estar perto do fim, no mais, se curtiu super hot, jogue este jogo, mas talvez em pequenas doses para não ficar saturado, e tornar algo divertido em chatisse.

- Give Up -
Superhot es un juego que tiene una base sencilla de gameplay, muy raro en su forma de ser y con cierta dificultad.
Es muy bueno en lo que expresa, en especial con ese final.
Me encantó su final que no es nada complejo pero le da un cierto xD y profundidad.
Lo medio malo es lo poco que hay de armas y que fácilmente se te puede volver muy repetitivo, junto a sus mapas que siempre se repiten y son aburridos despues de un rato.