Lots of games have an interesting gimmick. And plenty of them wring an hour or two of enjoyable gameplay out of that gimmick, only to falter when it comes to delivering a full experience. The recently released “Superhot,’’ a first-person shooter for PC, Mac, Linux, and XBox ONE developed by a Polish studio of the same name, is a prime example of a game that does deliver on its gimmicky promise — knocking it out of the park, in fact. (The title is styled “SUPERHOT,’’ but I’m not going to wear out my shift key.)
The gimmick here, as the developers put it, is that “time only moves when you do.’’ Unlike in other first-person shooters, where enemies and their projectiles are constantly whizzing around or at you, in “Superhot’’ they are stationary until you make a move. If you take a step forward, your enemy’s bullets will fly toward you, and enemies with melee weapons will take a couple steps in your direction. If you play the game like a normal FPS, you’ll die right away. Instead, you need to carefully watch where the bullets are coming from, figure out how to dodge them, and so on.
This game takes a lot of cues from Japanese cinema. The guns have very little ammo, so you’re constantly hurling them at enemies, causing those enemies to drop their own weapons, which you can pluck out of midair. There’s a lot of bullet-ballet here, dancing between projectiles, disarming enemies, and taking out several at once — all with that disorienting-at-first time effect.
There’s a stripped-down aspect to “Superhot’’ I really appreciated. The game’s conceit is that you are sitting at some sort of command-line computer interface, and a friend sends you what he says is an interesting new game. That game quickly starts to not only take over your life, but to intrude upon it (I’d say more but that would be giving away some genuinely interesting twists and some pretty gonzo writing). Each level is short and self-contained and action-packed; while the plot is developed between levels at that weird computer screen, there’s a no-wasted-motion feel to the action itself.
The palette is super minimalist — with a few exceptions, everything is white, light gray, or light blue, except for enemies and bullet trails, which are rendered in bright red. This high-contrast color scheme emphasizes the extent to which success and failure in “Superhot’’ are dictated by knowing where enemies and projectiles are at all times, given that you’ll need to start over if you’re hit once.
“Superhot’’ is a really impressive game. The main story line takes only two or three hours to get through, but the developer jammed the title with extras — with levels you have to get through in a certain amount of time, for example. (The concept of a speedrun is definitely made more interesting in a setting where the clock runs only when you are moving.) The whole title, in fact, exudes the love and care the developers put into it. This isn’t a one-gimmick pony.
Jesse Singal can be reached at jesse.r.singal@gmail.com.
