Another indie title this time around, makes me wonder if I’ll just be doing indies, not that it’s a bad thing, but it’s a thing.

 

Hard Reset is an action packed FPS from Flying Wild Hog, and it’s currently selling on Steam for about $30.

As far as FPS’s go, it’s pretty typical. You have a gun, you run around shooting things, and those things go boom.  But if I didn’t already know that this was an indie title, I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me. The graphics are gorgeous, and it really sets the mood and tone of the game. It’s very dark and run down, what you would expect from a cyberpunk theme. And the overall interface is really well done. In the game you can run around and collect credits, which you can then use to upgrade your two guns(but really more than two) or your combat enhancements. That upgrade interface is something that I want for my computer now! Unlike most games where you have to click an action key to start using things, in Hard Reset you just have to get close enough and your gun disappears and the interface pops up. Then it pretty much surrounds you with options, and reminds me a lot of the Minority Report interface. But cooler.

It’s too bad the official site doesn’t have a screen shot of it, I don’t think my description is going it justice. But the game is more than just a couple of pretty interfaces.

The overall plot is that the city you occupy is the last hold out for humanity, and the machines want to take over. So all the enemies(at least in the demo) are robotic in nature. This drives another cool part of the game where there are ‘energy’ kiosks that you can destroy to injure the bots. These kiosks are all over the place, and it’s a good thing because these bots tend to swarm on you. Also, most things have a tendency to blow up, and that also works to your advantage. I don’t know why you would plan a city with so many explody bits, but whatever, it works

As mentioned before, the upgrade system let’s you upgrade one of two weapons; your machine gun or plasma gun. But they are really a ton of guns rolled into one…two. The machine gun will also house a rocket launcher, combat shotgun, grenade launcher and have other upgrades. The plasma will also do a grenade thing, an EMP burst, area effect shock cannon and other upgrades. You switch back and forth with the Q and E button, and then get more detailed with the 1-5 keys(or mouse wheel). It takes a little while to get used to but is pretty effective as you only have two kinds of ammo to worry about. The personal interface is in the bottom left and it shows the usual, including your rechargeable shields.

Blue ammo is Plasma, red is bullets. They have these little symbols that tell you the kind of gun/version you’re using, but I didn’t find that nearly as helpful as the actual title of the gun/version.

The demo is pretty fast paced and ends with a nice swarm attack that took me a couple of tries to get through. It has an autosave feature, but I didn’t notice a proper save feature(maybe not in the demo).

 

So would I buy it?

If I had the extra cash, I would. No problems there. As I don’t have the extra cash, and it’s $30, I might even save up my pennies for a later purchase, or wait for a sale on Steam.

But the demo, as always, is free, and if you have the time, I would grab it and go

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Filed under: Games - @ December 6, 2011 12:30 pm