![]() That's a problem exacerbated by the game's permadeath. Superhot's always been a game best enjoyed in small doses, and having to plow through such long stretches of gameplay in the same grouping of stages every time feels like forced gluttony. The fewer there are to tackle at once, the less likely it is for a particular node to wear out its welcome, but by the time you reach the final grouping of nodes, you're doing runs of up to 15 stages at once, with no way to save progress if you fail or need to duck out. Each stage-represented as cursor nodes on an MS-DOS prompt screen-is typically between five and 10 of these levels, strung together. Unfortunately, that's exactly what ends up happening as the game goes on. There are vast, glorious opportunities for you to surprise your enemies, or vice versa, and it takes hours to get to a point where things start to wear thin. Suspension of disbelief in the sparseness of it all tends to vanish in the moment. The environments follow real world placements for everyday objects, which means using them to your advantage-using an open car door to evade a bullet, grabbing the handle off a slot machine to use as a weapon, or getting behind a DJ booth to take cover behind a speaker. Even despite the minimalist aesthetic, these are still impeccably designed, functional places that still evoke the tense feeling of getting into a shootout in a place clearly meant for public use. The environments are elaborate and full of tiny, devilish design elements for you to mount for a better vantage, mail slot-sized holes to shoot through, or daredevil jumps to make out of windows to stomp an enemy from above. There's more variety to be had than one might think in that randomization. And while the formula hasn't been ruined in the least, the effectiveness has been lessened a tiny bit.įor starters, the game's levels, which were once all unique, impeccably staged setpieces, are now relegated to around a dozen or so themed rooms-such as lab, disco, prison, or casino-with enemy/item placement and your own start point randomized each time. That winning formula is still very much in full effect here in Mind Control Delete, but a few new ingredients have been added to the concoction: rogue-lite elements. While gunplay is certainly your bread and butter in Superhot, there's a maniacal glee that comes with taking out a guy wielding a katana by throwing a typewriter at him in Superhot that makes it truly special. Even with a relatively limited moveset, the time mechanics at play turn what would be a breathless massacre at full speed into a sort of kinetic chess game, allowing you the ability to plot every maneuver down to the millisecond. If you don't have a knife, grab a book, a pen, or a teacup. So, when you don't have a gun, grab a sword. There are guns, but with very limited ammo. Your job is to John Wick your way out of whatever wild scenario you've been placed in, using objects in your environment to your advantage. It's still a first-person shooter that places you in sparse, stark white, and self-contained little killzones, against a small group of keen-to-kill goons made out of, seemingly, fragile red glass. Mind Control Delete is still fundamentally following the same mantra as the other two games: Time Moves When You Do. But it's also a few other things that aren't nearly as welcome. This is, definitely, a lot more Superhot. And to Superhot Team's credit, they deliver on their promises. Just more senseless shooting, and then it'll be over. No long-winded explanation of what happened in the last two games. ![]() ![]() Within minutes of starting Superhot: Mind Control Delete, you're told, in those now infamous subliminal text cards that pop up from time to time in the previous games, that yes, this game will give you more. A familiar reflection of what the base game managed it may be, a slew of new threats, devious twists and further reinforcing of smart tactics to compensate for such unpredictability result in MIND CONTROL DELETE ending up a great addition to the SUPERHOT experience.You gotta respect a game that tells you exactly what it is upfront. While it’s easy to pick out the over-reliance on repeated environments, as much the disappointing lack of committing to the subversive elements of previous, there are just as many - if not more - new additions brought into the fold, that ultimately, rightfully, claim most of the attention. MIND CONTROL DELETE may feel more like a continuation of a good run, rather than a full expanding upon the foundation, but that doesn’t mean that what new features it does offer up fail in helping to bolster what still remains a fun and ingenious interpretation of first-person shooting and puzzle-solving fused together. More than four years on, SUPERHOT remains as instantly recognizable and immensely appealing a gameplay concept as it ever was on day one. ![]()
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