Hard Reset Demo

So the demo for this game came out today, so as I'm looking forward to it. I gave it a little download. Haven't finished the demo but played for an hour maybe, this is my first thoughts on the game.

First off the in game menu is pretty cool. It has robot arm type things, the kind you see on say car manufactor lines. They sit and assemble the menu, then when you click on whichever option it disassemble the menu and assemble the next/previous menu.

Controls seem to be your basic wasd setup as per damn near every PC game. You can't crouch though which is a little weird for a shooter but isn't really necessary even though I do keep hitting Ctrl purely out of habit. You have two weapons which can be easily accessed through 'q' and 'e' keys. It does have very simple controls qweasd, shift and mouse is all you need. 'Shift' is sprint, which is quite annoying as you HUD goes blurry while running and you can't shoot while doing so either. Also there doesn't seem to be a quick save or regular save option and it relies on checkpoints, which is disappointing as I like to be able to save when I want to save and not when the game wants to.

Onto the game itself, after the opening cut scene you get your first glimpse of the Hard Reset world, graphically it looks pretty amazing and this is on default graphic settings. It doesn't take you long after you set off to come across you first enemies which happen to be speedy little robot (dog?) type things with buzz saws for heads. They are easily taken care of though blowing up enviromentals around them such as gas canisters and power generators which seem to be everywhere. Due to me blowing up barrel and such it lead me to find secrets hidden behind walls. The first couple secret walls are frankly quite blatant, Essentially making sure you know there are secret walls you can blow up. Shortly after? (I think it was may of been before the first secret wall I really can't remember) you come across what seems like a mini boss (you go encounter more of them later, so I think it's just a pain in the ass normal enemy), they seem to jump out at you can charge at you and if you don't dodge it or just cornered you will die very quickly. The enemies I have encountered do seem to be very annoying and no doubt they will only get worse as the game progresses.

The two weapons you get are the CLN firearm which is a machine gun type gun, and the N.R.G weapon which has got a plasma rifle type thing going on, which looks pretty awesome. Which you can upgrade, along with armour and health and such. The cool thing is the upgrades aren't just your normal have some more ammo, have faster fire rate, while these are an option, you can actually upgrade your guns to have more guns them, this is frankly a great idea and I don't believe it has been done before, or at least not that I can remember anyway. With the CLN you can add a Shotgun, a Grenade Launcher, an RPG and Proximity Mines, then you can upgrade your upgrades, I haven't tried this out yet as I went for secondary fire for both of my guns, which adds a zoom element to the CLN and a charged energy burst attack for the N.R.G. With the N.R.G I noticed it recharges ammo upto 50 which is a nice touch. The charge shot on the N.R.G is also very helpful against the little robot dog things (I still have no idea what these are) so I would suggest getting this upgrade first chance you can. Also there is absolutely no reloading with is something I loved about old school shooters.

One last thing to mention is you actually get a health and armour bar on a little corner hud which bobs along when you shoot/move/do anything really. The armour regenerates in time but the health doesn't. I really do hate the whole 'I'm your standard off the shelf marine ready for war, but what's this I somehow have magical super human regeneration powers, all I have to do is hide in this dumpster from the world and suck on my thumb for ten seconds then I somehow am not crippled and bleeding to death. It's a miracle.' No it's not a mirable, it's bullshit. The amount of time it takes to create a video game you would of thought they could create a HUD telling you how much health you have. Games in the fricking 80's had them so I don't see why this isn't possible now. Fair play if you have a story explaining why this is possible, eg your part robot and the technology inside you can slowly regenerate injured parts of you or something to that effect, that would make sense. But no we will just go with magical army folk. Anyway before I get deeper into my tangent I'll stop.

It does seem like a pretty fun yet quite hectic shoot um up game which I reckon you will get better as the game progresses which all your weapon/health/armour upgrades. It is definately worth a look into and I for one will be getting this.