Hard Reset

In our Hard Reset preview a few weeks back, it showed itself to be a competent, satisfying and high octane piece of shooting fun. Eschewing all the conventions of other modern shooters, it aims to rejuvenate the shooter genre, taking it back to its roots while still remaining up to scratch with its contemporaries. We loved the ‘unashamedly burly balls-to-the-wall action’ offered throughout the short two level preview build.

So does the full version remain a rigid pillar of enjoyment for its entirety, or does it fall limp under the weight of its own hot air?

Hard Reset places you in the shoes of CLN Agent Fletcher, who gets caught up in a violent robotic uprising taking place amidst a dystopia plagued by impoverishment. With the aid of his buddies, who are snug-as-a-bug holed in command headquarters, it’s up to Fletcher to find out who’s behind the mechanical uprising and put an end to it.

Or something like that, anyway. Hard Reset doesn’t actually offer a lot of plot. Outside of the expository loading screens, rendered in beautiful artwork reminiscent of graphic novels—speech bubbles included—there’s not a great deal of story to complement the action. Yes, you have objectives such as ‘get to this place’ and ‘follow that man’, but they’re mainly there to keep the player on track. It’s a shame, because the city in which the game takes places is a marvellous location: containing ramshackle backstreet ghettoes, bright neon signs and billboards and a skyline cluttered with flying cars, all overladen by a gentle cyan hue. The city emanates a broken beauty that would be a joy to explore in greater detail.

As it stands, however, you’re ferried along a linear path, shooting all the while, but by God, how fun that shooting is. You start off with two guns: the C.L.N. Firearm and the N.R.G. Weapon. The former is your bog-standard ballistic machine gun while the latter is your typical sci-fi plasma rifle. With these two armaments, you gun down a host of robots set out to destroy you.

These are the only two guns you’ll pick up during the course of the game, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get bored of them. Using the in-game currency ‘nano’, you can upgrade them into miniature weapons of mass destruction. You’ll end up slapping on tonnes of different upgrades: shotguns, plasma mine launchers, electricity cannons, meaning that if and when you get bored of using one variation, you can simply switch to another. As such, the shooting remains invigorating throughout, whether you’re blasting away with a rocket launcher or shooting  shiny balls of pain.

The action is made that much sweeter by the fact that everything has been stripped back to basics: there’s no reloading, no regenerating health, no cover behind objects. It might sound counterintuitive, but this simplicity makes you appreciate just how ferocious the shooting can be. When you see an enemy charge towards you, you aim, pull the trigger and just don’t let go until it’s dead. It’s a refreshing change from the constant ammo checking you find in the CODs and such of today.

It’s also a good laugh to see how much destruction you can cause. In every arena, there are environmental hazards—explosive generators, electric vending machines, volatile vehicles—that you can detonate to aid in destroying your foes. With each blast, debris goes flying everywhere; it’s an impressive display of the cogent physics engine integrated into Hard Reset.

Not so fun is the way your enemies can utterly destroy you in the blink of an eye. Enemies appear in large clusters, often behind you as well as in front, meaning you’ll often take damage from your robotic foes no matter where you run or how much you sidestep (you can’t crouch, for some reason). Their tendency to zerg rush you and explode upon impact means that you’ll frequently die instantly before you even have any time to react to what’s going on. You’ll more than likely have to repeat the same sections multiple times, a source of major frustration.

Hard Reset also falls down on its lack of narrative. Yes, the cutscenes are gorgeous and there is a deliberate focus on gameplay over story here, but it’s hard not to mourn the loss of exploration that could have been offered in such a sublime setting.  What could have ended up as an intriguing, seedy underworld writhing with crime and filth instead feels like an empty ghost city inhabited entirely by robots.