Every so often you see an idea or concept in a game that everyone is convinced will
completely shift the industry in a certain direction that almost always end up failing
to make such an impact.
Take Shadow of Mordor for instance; back in 2014 everyone was talking about how revolutionary
the nemesis system was and how this was the feature you’d see in every game going forward.
Five years later, and we have a disappointing sequel and what feels like a totally inconsequential
iteration of the concept in the latest Assassin’s Creed, and that’s it—safe to say the system
didn’t shake things up the way many thought it would.
Similarly, I believe Superhot should have changed a lot of things, but outside of what
you could loosely term its franchise, the innovations 2016’s release brought to the
genres of first person shooters, action titles, puzzlers have gone largely unexplored by other
games, which is a real shame because the things that Superhot ends up doing, the lessons it
potentially has to teach in terms of design, go far beyond what you see on the surface
level.
See, Superhot’s identity is defined by one delightfully simple gimmick but is also illustrative
of the ripple effect such a change can have on every minute element of a genre framework.
If you were to speed Superhot up to a more regular tempo, in terms of its systems or
rulesets there isn’t much outside of its look to set it apart from other shooters—you
might say that it was slightly more challenging given that you go down in one hit, but the
core principles are largely the same—you shoot enemies while avoiding getting shot
yourself, you pick up enemy weapons, etc.
But by slowing things down, you begin to notice something interesting; a threat that would
otherwise come and go in an instant – a bullet, a hail of automatic gunfire – now
sees that threat linger; compounding on itself the more bullets appear.
A burst of rounds isn’t merely something to take cover from – a singular event to
wait out until the enemy has to reload - it’s now a flurry of individual enemies unto themselves,
each one requiring careful consideration to avoid as more bullets means less screen space
for you to work with and more time spent thinking rather than doing means more bullets.
It’s not outwith the realms of possibility that you could successfully dodge a projectile,
only to find yourself right back in that same path once more.
Suddenly, what other games might consider a necessary but insignificant by-product of
a genre focused on guns serves an entirely different purpose here and arguably poses
a much greater threat.
And with that in mind, despite its reduced speed relative to other shooters, to call
Superhot a slow game feels inaccurate; if anything, you’re having to worry about far
more at once, it’s infinitely more frenetic than many of its contemporaries.
But thankfully, you’re given an immensely broad range of options with which to navigate
each level and they are cool as hell.
The game’s slow motion means you don’t need to look too hard to see the influence
of gun fu cinema on full show; you can block bullets with your own bullets, cut them in
half, bombard your enemy with thrown objects, dive out from behind a corner and pop every
enemy as if you were in Hard Boiled, almost anything you can think of.
It’s all bolstered by ingenious aesthetic design that’s as utilitarian as it is uniquely
stylish; with its striking colour palette and lack of potentially distracting UI giving
you all the visual information on enemies you’d need, while also requiring you to
intuit things like ammo count—forcing you to quickly react when you hear that ominous
click from your empty gun.
Thanks to each weapon’s limited ammo count, you’re encouraged to move into the fray
as opposed to cowering away from it, so that you might more easily grab an enemy’s weapon
to continue your rampage.
The game wants to wring as much intensity and excitement out of every slight movement
that it possibly can and uses every tool at its disposal to do so.
There’s no scoring meter a la Bulletstorm or even Devil May Cry; a good deal of my choices
to do cool stuff in Superhot (as well as others judging by what I’ve seen of the game’s
VR component) come down purely to the fact that it looks cool.
As a result of the mechanical flexibility you’re afforded every encounter plays out
differently, and if you’re anything like me you’ll likely find yourself saving a
whole lot of the end of level replays because each one represents its own little narrative
entirely driven by your moment-to-moment decisions.
Superhot takes you from passive audience member watching set pieces unfold around you, and
places you firmly in the role of director/stunt guy.
Of course, your actions do serve multiple purposes besides just looking cool; for example
the act of lining up a shot then turning away and trusting you’ll hit your mark typifies
that Hollywood action hero nonchalance as someone will casually walk away from an explosion,
for example, but this faith in your own abilities is also a requirement in a lot of cases.
As enemies swarm from all directions and your screen is awash with bullet trails, you always
have to be thinking one move ahead; weighing up the risks of spray-and-praying vs the time
you’ll spend waiting to ensure that bullet connected with your target.
Other techniques, like the aforementioned slicing bullets in half, were things I found
myself doing just to toy with enemies more than I did for any kind of tactical advantage.
That said, the fact that the game doesn’t overtly tell you that you can do this makes
the process of noticing that little glow as the bullet whizzes by you and figuring out
the extent of your abilities, or the times where you turn around and instinctually save
yourself from an onslaught of lead, all the more satisfying.
The end result of the game’s slow motion is that it allows Superhot to straddle the
best of all worlds.
Here tense, tactical play isn’t any less visceral or action-focused; it still involves
brutally tearing through your enemies—it’s just that Superhot gives you the chance to
luxuriate in the resulting shards.
The one thing I would say the game fails to follow through on is the story meant to join
it all together; taking the amusing totalitarian Max Headroom vibe they established in the
short-but-sweet 2013 prototype and attempting to expand on it seemingly without knowing
where to go; setting up a charming DOS look for its menus but using it to push a half-baked
metanarrative that plays directly against the strengths of its design for seemingly
no reason.
Where the gameplay so effectively allows you to craft and control your own wild combat
stories through mechanics that encourage experimentation, the story repeatedly halts the flow of its
levels dead in order to lock you in a room and remind you that you aren’t in control,
I guess.
It’s a reminder that just because your story draws attention to the way it’s delivered,
doesn’t make it inherently smart.
It’s entirely at odds with your interactions, which is disappointing for just how cohesively
every other element of Superhot comes together.
It was a similar deal in the aforementioned Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and how it tried
to imitate the Nemesis system.
The component pieces were present—it was just that you had Bounty Hunters serving one
purpose, and recruits serving an entirely different purpose, where in Mordor they were
one in the same; allowing you to control the Orc hierarchy with your recruits.
It meant that Odyssey failed to capture the distinctly Machiavellian mischief Mordor allowed
you to carry out.
It wasn’t just the mechanics or the gimmick; it was the complimentary nature of every element
in totality that made that system as innovative as it was.
Likewise, the point I’m making in this video isn’t that more shooters should arbitrarily
be in slow motion; it’s that, as further evidenced by Superhot’s bonus modes that
change one or two rules and subsequently feel like playing entirely different games, one
simple tweak to the formula acts as a jumping off point for Superhot to pull apart every
little aspect we’ve come to know from its genre; making for more mechanically and visually
gratifying moments than its more passive, quote-unquote cinematic peers.
If Superhot can make us view something as seemingly insignificant as bullets in a totally
new and exciting light, imagine what a similarly interrogative mindset could do for wheels
in racing games or blood in survival horror for example.
Superhot shows us that real innovation is often in the details staring us directly in
the face and that, in order to find that innovation, sometimes the best approach is to take a step
back and slow down a little.
So I hope you enjoyed my piece on Superhot.
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thank you enough for your generosity.
Special thanks go to Mark B Writing, Rob, Nico Bleackley, Sivaas, Artjom Vitsjuk, Mlemonides
the Unwise, Dallas Kean, Spencer (iruleatgames) Geller, William Fielder, Ali Almuhanna, Timothy
Jones, Spike Jones, TheNamlessGuy, Chris Wright, Ham Migas, Zach Casserly, Samuel Pickens,
Tom Nash, Shardfire, Ana Pimentel, Jessie Rine, Brandon Robinson, Justins Holderness,
Mathie u Nachury, Nicolas Ross and Charlie Yang.
And with that, this has been another episode of Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I will see you next time.