This game has been a very rocky ride for me and as a result I have put myself into a position where I find it difficult to review this game but here’s what happened. So I picked up the game on a sale for £11.00 and gave it a shot sometime just after it was released. I was excited to play this game as it was developed by people who were involved in the development of the legendary Painkiller and since People Can Fly don’t seem to want to make FPS games that aren’t published by EA anymore, I decided to give Hard Reset Redux a shot to see if I could get a taste of what Painkiller gave me.
Now for starters, I want to make it clear that I did not have any lofty expectations for this game, I expected something simple and straightforward and that is almost what I got, almost. I started with the original Hard Reset which came packaged in with the redux. About an hour into the game, I saw warning signs. Hard Reset is what I like to call a horde swarming game in the sense that every single enemy in the game seems to move twice as fast as you and is impossible to outrun.
As a result, I knew where this game was going and quickly refunded it. Later on, I saw the game priced at around £4.00, so I decided that I owe the game another chance simple because I forgot to try out the redux version. Do I regret my purchase? Well considering the fact that I got the game for dirt cheap, I can’t say that I regret giving this game another try as I got my money’s worth with this game, at least as far as content is concerned.
Hard Reset feels like a low budget version of Painkiller. It takes the fundamentals of Painkiller and doesn’t even give you half the level of enjoyment in almost all facets of the game. Heck it doesn’t even feel like Painkiller for the most part, it feels more like Serious Sam and I really dislike Serious Sam for having tonnes of HP sponge enemies who spawn in battalions and move twice as fast as you, leaving you with no choice but to keep backpedaling with the rocket launcher and pray you don’t backpedal into a wall.
Call me crazy but I really don’t enjoy the gameplay Serious Sam offers (at least the first game). Call me a noob if you want but honestly, if the game wasn’t so lazily put together, I would have probably had a much more enjoyable experience with it. Thankfully one thing that Hard Reset Redux does right is that it actually creates a pretty stunning looking world. Whether or not Hard Reset is better looking than Painkiller is subjective, I prefer Painkiller for its aesthetic style but damn, Hard Reset puts games like Deus-Ex Human revolution to shame with its visuals and they are set in the same type of universe which makes them the perfect comparisons.
Everything from billboards, vending machine advertisements, all the way to the virtual screens that pop up as you approach objects. Everything feels seamless as you interact with terminals. It is undoubtedly pretty cool and really pulls you into its cyberpunk world. You can tell that the developers put quite a lot of effort into the level design in this game, particularly from an aesthetic standpoint.
What they didn’t put effort into however is the gameplay. Now I will say that the redux improves the gameplay drastically compared to the original with the addition of the new dash feature. This allows the player to essentially double their mobility. You can almost move as fast as Painkiller… almost. This makes for a more fast paced experience than that of the original Hard Reset and it really adds a lot to the fun factor of the game since you feel as if you have more control of battles. With the ability to dodge attacks effectively and avoid melee enemies easier instead of having to constantly backpedal away from them. You still have to keep your distance though as enemies still move rather quickly and their attack animations are very fast, some of which have pretty wide AOE’s.
Now here’s where the problems start to appear. The weapons in Hard Reset Redux are interesting but the cool idea of having upgradable weapons doesn’t make up for the ridiculous control layout. I mapped the change weapon button to Q and E simply because it was near the WASD keys but couldn’t they simply make it possible to cycle through every weapon with the mouse wheel rather than having to press keys all the time?
Now I get that people like to hotkey specific weapons to the number keys and you can still do that… but why do we only get to swap weapon modes with the mouse wheel? Why can’t we swap the actual weapons with the mouse wheel? This is just one example of Hard Reset trying to be more complicated than it needs to be. Painkiller didn’t need to have two weapons with different modes, it just had lots of swappable weapons.
“Hard Reset is what I like to call a horde swarming game in the sense that every single enemy in the game seems to move twice as fast as you and is impossible to outrun”
The only explanation I can think of is that they are trying to be realistic. In this case then why not have a single gun instead of two guns and have that gun use both energy and kinetic firepower? Then we can cycle through every single upgrade a lot easier. To make matters worse, the redux adds the katana to the mix which is a near-useless weapon and you have to cycle through it every single time you want to swap to your kinetic weapon.
Weapon swapping aside, Hard Reset has all of the problems that Serious Sam has but worse (aside from having better aesthetics). The enemies have insane amounts of health. Some enemies have literally 400+ hit points and you can tell by using the smart gun. Every shot you do deals roughly 5-20 damage unless it is an explosive shot and it can take ages for the machine/plasma rifle to kill some of the tougher enemies in the game.
One of these enemies in particular you will encounter right at the start of the game and these enemies will charge at you and were basically unavoidable in the original but thanks to the new dash function, you can dodge them easier but they are still a little annoying, even when you get the more advanced weapons, they are a pain in the ass to deal with since they have ridiculously large amounts of health and are easily the most annoying enemies in the game.
Now I do get where this game is going, I really do. The weapons are still pretty cool and can be fun to use and you really have to think about what weapon you are using. Some weapons are better than others however and two in particular are completely useless. These are the shotgun and the katana. When I play a videogame, I expect a shotgun to instantly kill any enemy at close range unless it is a really powerful one. In this game, even the smallest of enemies require 2-4 hits to kill with the shotgun even up close. This is inexcusable when you consider the fact that Painkiller’s shotgun 1 shots enemies with a close ranged shot of the shotgun and has a much faster fire rate.
The katana is an impractical weapon… but you can’t help but use it because it is so cool!
In fact I’d say with the exception of the Shotgun from Serious Sam (the first one), this may well be the worst shotgun I have ever used in a videogame and I feel sorry for anyone who is naive enough to pick the shotgun upgrade first like I did because it is completely and utterly useless for the most part, especially since you will rarely want to get up close and personal with enemies in this game since they all move twice as fast as you and have very high attack speed.
The poor balancing of the weapons can make the gameplay feel a bit sterile at some points. Yeah sure there is enough variety to give it a pass but weapons like the electric mortar, while not completely useless were simply outclassed by weapons like the shock blaster which is the ultimate CQC weapon and you get the grenade launcher which is really handy at long range and is has a reasonable fire rate. the RPG is pretty good too even if it is slower as is the smart gun which is a homing weapon which shows the enemy health gauge.
I regrettably never got around to trying out the railgun, and the mine layer gun (forgot its name) and this is because I could never afford to pick them up since the game was over before I even had the chance to give them a try. Sure I could have gone back to replay the game but I really didn’t want to go through it again. I get that the game wanted to reward players for finding secrets and trying to implement growth but it really does limit a casual player’s experience with the game as a whole and those impatient will probably want to move on.
In addition, these weapons are all acquired through the upgrade terminal, this element of choice can make for a very mixed experience for the player depending on which weapons they choose to start with. If they pick the grenade launcher and the shock blaster early, they are more likely to have a much easier time than if they picked the shotgun first. While I do appreciate that the developers were trying to implement some level of growth in the game, weapon modes were not the way to go I’m afraid… now upgrading those weapons is a whole different story. There are also combat gear upgrades which affect things like shields, radar and ammo capacity, some are more useful than others.
Bosses are a mixed bag. Then again, Painkiller wasn’t much better in this department. The second boss of the game is an absolute pain in the ass to defeat simply because its attacks are completely unavoidable for the most part (even with dash) and the final phase is needlessly complicated as the boss doesn’t have a conventional health bar and if you didn’t get the smart gun early, you will be shooting for ages wondering when it will ever drop.
I will say though that later bosses were a lot less irritating… if a tad bit chaotic. I did like how you got tonnes of trash enemies to kill alongside the bosses though, it really made the boss fights more interesting than just shooting at them. The game focuses on destroying weak points and while the later boss weak points are destroyed quicker, the earlier bosses weak points take forever to destroy and it can get pretty ridiculous at times. I do think that this is partially because you have a limited arsenal and if you didn’t pick the best weapon modes first, you will have a much harder time.
What is this?
The music in Hard Reset is pretty dull techno for the most part with a bit of metal here and there but to me it is lifeless and barely noticeable. It does its job but it just isn’t enough to really pump me up, nor is it enough to make up for the gameplay being sub-par.
Exploration in Hard Reset is decent and can be quite rewarding as there are lots of stuff to find and pick up including currency so it is a good idea to explore levels. There are plenty of interactive objects in levels such as explosive barrels and stuff and while it can be cool at times, I find that they throw in way too many environmental hazards which can really get in your way at times and cause more hassle for you than the enemy since they often detonate/discharge with a chain reaction which can deal very high damage to you.
How do I get behind that fence? Shoot it? Nah, that would be too easy…
The story, while obviously not being the main focus of the game, doesn’t exactly go anywhere and by the time it starts going somewhere, the game is over. You learn about a lot of things but you never really get a big reveal at the end, instead the game just ends in an anti-climactic fashion as if there wasn’t a purpose to the game by the end of it. I feel like there should be more… but at the same time I’m thankful that the game ended before it overstayed its welcome. The story is presented in a similar comic book style fashion to Painkiller Resurrection which is amusing.
To be honest, I am kinda conflicted with this game. I don’t exactly want to hate Hard Reset or the Redux, I am just a tad disappointed I really couldn’t get as much juice out of it as I anticipated. What I will say is that Hard Reset Redux is certainly a playable game and a vast improvement over the original but whether or not that makes it a good/bad game depends on how much patience the player has. I believe to truly enjoy this game you will need to play through it twice since new game + carries over all of the weapons. I will say though that it is not even in the same league as Painkiller and I shall continue my search to find a worthy match-up to it. Until then, Hard Reset Redux is going on the finished pile.
Story/Plot: Mediocre
Visuals: Great
Gameplay: Mediocre
Music: Forgettable
Lifespan: Quite Short
Difficulty: Hard
Would You Replay? Personally, no but if you do manage to enjoy the game then it has a new game+ so maybe.
Overall: Mediocre
Value: £5.00
Such a great shame really. I wanted to score this game a “Satisfactory” at least.
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