Mind Control Delete is a bloated mess, and it's my fault for asking for more.
The original SUPERHOT was a unique and innovative shooter, as much as the writing desperately tried to turn you off from saying that out loud. It was a game that encouraged a lot of fun, stylish gun and swordplay; fire a magazine into someone until it clicks, lob the empty pistol at another guy's head, pull a katana off the wall to slice up an incoming bullet, and watch another foe's face explode into shards of red polygonal glass as they get hit by friendly fire. It was incredible, dumb action. The narrative of "wow video game addiction sure is a problem, huh" was so incongruous with the actual gameplay that it was impossible to take seriously. It's like if Arnold turned to camera during the final scene of Commando to ask the kids at home what they thought of American foreign policy.
Mind Control Delete looks at everything that SUPERHOT did right (the gameplay) and what it did wrong (the writing) and then decides to amplify the bad and dampen the good. There are maybe ten levels that constantly get reused over and over thanks to the new rogue-lite gameplay loop, forcing you through dozens of same-y combat encounters before stating that you finished the node and unceremoniously kicking you back to the level select. There's no sense of climax or payoff for endlessly going through these motions; your reward for beating fifteen boring fights with multiple level repeats is another fifteen boring fights with multiple level repeats. Once you've played ten minutes of Mind Control Delete, you've played the remaining seven or eight hours. The scant few characters you can unlock are just fragmented versions of the player character from the original SUPERHOT, with all of the abilities that you had in that game being split up amongst them. What you're left with are fewer tools to engage with the same combat on more repetitive maps with less intent behind their designs.
This is to say nothing of the writing, which is embarrassing. I hate, hate, hate using the word "pretentious" to describe a piece of media, because a work is a static, unfeeling thing. The game is not pretentious, because it cannot be. This does not stop it from trying. Asking your players to sit through an eight-hour long "recovering data" sequence before they're allowed to play the game again is silly. Backing down and compromising by shortening the length to two hours betrays all remaining artistic integrity. It screams of a creator who desires nothing more than praise, even if it means taking back whatever statement they tried to make; if all it takes for you to renege on something so blatantly intended to be a waste of player time are complaints on the Steam forums, then you shouldn't have even bothered including it in the first place. Have the spine to inconvenience your players, or don't try to inconvenience them. Flip-flopping between the two in the pursuit of some ethereal, happy middle ground is — and I don't state this lightly — pathetic.
The bones of SUPERHOT are still here, but Mind Control Delete is just a worse version of a game that already came out. Worse gameplay, worse writing, same price. Don't bother.
The original SUPERHOT was a unique and innovative shooter, as much as the writing desperately tried to turn you off from saying that out loud. It was a game that encouraged a lot of fun, stylish gun and swordplay; fire a magazine into someone until it clicks, lob the empty pistol at another guy's head, pull a katana off the wall to slice up an incoming bullet, and watch another foe's face explode into shards of red polygonal glass as they get hit by friendly fire. It was incredible, dumb action. The narrative of "wow video game addiction sure is a problem, huh" was so incongruous with the actual gameplay that it was impossible to take seriously. It's like if Arnold turned to camera during the final scene of Commando to ask the kids at home what they thought of American foreign policy.
Mind Control Delete looks at everything that SUPERHOT did right (the gameplay) and what it did wrong (the writing) and then decides to amplify the bad and dampen the good. There are maybe ten levels that constantly get reused over and over thanks to the new rogue-lite gameplay loop, forcing you through dozens of same-y combat encounters before stating that you finished the node and unceremoniously kicking you back to the level select. There's no sense of climax or payoff for endlessly going through these motions; your reward for beating fifteen boring fights with multiple level repeats is another fifteen boring fights with multiple level repeats. Once you've played ten minutes of Mind Control Delete, you've played the remaining seven or eight hours. The scant few characters you can unlock are just fragmented versions of the player character from the original SUPERHOT, with all of the abilities that you had in that game being split up amongst them. What you're left with are fewer tools to engage with the same combat on more repetitive maps with less intent behind their designs.
This is to say nothing of the writing, which is embarrassing. I hate, hate, hate using the word "pretentious" to describe a piece of media, because a work is a static, unfeeling thing. The game is not pretentious, because it cannot be. This does not stop it from trying. Asking your players to sit through an eight-hour long "recovering data" sequence before they're allowed to play the game again is silly. Backing down and compromising by shortening the length to two hours betrays all remaining artistic integrity. It screams of a creator who desires nothing more than praise, even if it means taking back whatever statement they tried to make; if all it takes for you to renege on something so blatantly intended to be a waste of player time are complaints on the Steam forums, then you shouldn't have even bothered including it in the first place. Have the spine to inconvenience your players, or don't try to inconvenience them. Flip-flopping between the two in the pursuit of some ethereal, happy middle ground is — and I don't state this lightly — pathetic.
The bones of SUPERHOT are still here, but Mind Control Delete is just a worse version of a game that already came out. Worse gameplay, worse writing, same price. Don't bother.