Hard Reset

I got my hands on Hard Reset about a year ago in the Indie Royale "St. Patrick's Day Bundle" and didn't think much of it. At some point, I tried to play it and found my computer's graphics card not up to the job. So I gave up.

But when I got my new computer, I remembered it. And I remembered the trailer, which looked Actually Pretty Awesome.



Anyway, I went ahead and tried it out. It's good. I think I like it.

Hard Reset is an action game. There are robots. You have guns. You shoot the robots. Kaboom. I'm not the biggest fan of first-person shooters, personally, but if I'm going to play a FPS, this is the kind I'm looking for: fast-paced and action-packed with lots of bad guys running at you all at once. (The Serious Sam series does something similar, and I enjoyed those as well.)

There's elements of exploration and character progression. Secrets are scattered around every level to reward you with health, ammo, and currency if you can find them. Currency—or maybe it's xp, but they're basically the same thing in this game—can be spent on upgrades to unlock new weapons/abilities or buff the weapons you already have. For example, you can get a radar that points you towards secrets or a hormone injection that increases your combat abilities when you're at low health. Or maybe you want to increase the fire rate on your rifle, or unlock a charged shot for your plasma gun. No matter what you choose, the character gets better as you advance through missions, but you have a good amount of say in which direction to go.

There are ten different weapons, and it's definitely relevant to switch between them, since different enemies require different tactics to defeat effectively. It's also important to make use of the environmental hazards—there's lots of them, and they can do lots of damage to lots of enemies very quickly if you can set it up correctly. They're very easy to identify because they're labeled with brightly-colored warnings.

Speaking of which, the visuals are kinda neat. It's a classic cyberpunk style; it works nicely. The settings have a dark, dingy feel to them, but it's never difficult to see because all the important elements—the enemies, the item pickups, environmental hazards, control panels, etc.—have glowy lights or bright colors.

All in all, I've given it a good hour and a half, and I'm pleased with what I've seen so far. If you're into this sort of game, then you could do worse.