Shaun Munro reviews Superhot VR…
Pretty much anyone who’s ever seen The Matrix has surely fantasised about pulling a Neo and bending backwards in slow-motion while performing a gravity-defying bullet dodge, right? Well, that dream has finally become a reality with Superhot VR, which mostly makes good on bringing last year’s original 2D version of the game to PSVR, even if some nagging tracking issues prevent it from currently realising its full potential.
Superhot is as much a puzzle game as it is a shooter. The plot is so thin it’s almost non-existent, creating only the most perfunctory excuse for the player to enter the body of a black, crystalline lifeform who must empty various “kill rooms” of red, similarly crystalline, gun-totting adversaries by any means necessary.
The game’s central gimmick is that the action unfolds in slow-mo, and time only moves when you do, allowing the player to toy with the economy of time and give themselves precious extra seconds to consider their strategy before grabbing the nearest uzi and letting loose on their assailants.
The big difference from the 2D and VR versions on PC is that the PSVR port has no locomotion options beyond stepping and ducking within a few feet. Rather, you’re tasked with using weapons in your immediate vicinity while dodging any incoming bullets, and once the room is cleared of enemies, you’ll be teleported to the next one to repeat the process with a typically more complex set-up, greater number of enemies and, yes, tastier arsenal of weapons.
To that end, let’s get the obvious out of the way; this is absolutely inferior to the Rift and Vive versions of Superhot VR, but to the same token, it is a very solid attempt to bring the same thrilling gameplay to a more constricted medium. What’s perhaps most impressive and surprising about the game is just how physical an experience it is, even with PSVR’s limitations. After even just 10-15 minutes of play, all my ducking and weaving left me sodden with sweat, to the point that I found myself taking frequent breaks in order to rest up and re-hydrate.
Immersion-breaking? Perhaps, but the game’s levels are so brief and compartmentalised that they basically encourage small slivers of play anyway. Dick Wilde might be the only other PSVR game that commands this much movement from the player, and the result essentially qualifies as a pretty moderate workout, though your innate ability to control the game’s speed does at least allow you a few moments of respite if things are getting too intense.
As for the story, it’s gossamer-thin as mentioned, and though it does employ some welcome divergences into the meta, with some very David Cronenberg-esque dark humour, for the majority it’s just a means to an end. A slight word of warning; the surreal asides in-between missions may unsettle and disorientate some, particularly one sequence where you suddenly fall off a ledge, which provokes quite the unpleasant falling sensation. If you’re especially wary of vertigo, you may want to brace yourself or just close your eyes for a moment.
The minute-to-minute gameplay is meanwhile a lot of fun, and it’s tremendously rewarding when you finally crack a tough sequence, using your muscle memory to pull off an insane chain of awesome ducks, throws and shots in order to evade enemy fire and reach level’s end. However, there is one persistent issue that holds the game back from being truly great; the incredibly hit-and-miss controller tracking.
Setting this game up is honestly a bit of a pain; calibrating the PlayStation Camera to work in concert with the Move controllers was an extremely finicky process in my time with the game, as it was tough to locate the angular sweet spot where I could reach down to pick up weapons on the floor and also lift my hands up high. Typically I’d either be unable to do one or the other, and in the heat of battle this frequently resulted in my own death, which as you can imagine was quite infuriating.
It’s also worth mentioning that Superhot VR requires a lot of room to play, which is certainly great in theory, though if you struggled to make the likes of Job Simulator and Holoball work in your gaming space, you may want to give this one a second thought.
When the Move controllers actually work as intended, though, they’re pretty damn tactile and immersive in terms of making you feel like you’re actually blasting away goons inside a Matrix-esque cyber-space. It’s just a shame you’ll probably have to contend with your hands occasionally launching out of range at a pivotal moment.
The deaths that the wonky tracking sometimes causes perhaps wouldn’t be quite so frustrating if the game didn’t insist on each of the levels throwing you all the way back to the beginning upon dying. Sure, most levels only contain five sub-segments and last 2-3 minutes each, but when you’ve failed the final hurdle for the tenth time, it can become rather annoying. This is especially true in the game’s absolutely maddening final room, which has about a dozen enemies to take down coming from all angles.
There are also frustrating moments where new mechanics are introduced but explained extremely poorly to the player, such as the Mindwave power that the player is gifted late in the game, complete with a vague visual instruction which may leave players awkwardly fumbling around for an indecent, even embarrassing amount of time.
The core campaign only offers up around two hours of gameplay depending on how long you’re left stumped by the final level, but completing it does unlock a litany of challenge modes, including Headshots Only, two Speedrun modes, Don’t Die (where one death triggers a game over), and a survival-esque Endless mode. Though you’re practically asking to become infuriated trying to beat the game without dying given the uneven tracking, these modes do nevertheless add a ton of replay value to the game and certainly make its price seem much more appealing.
Visually, Superhot on PSVR certainly looks nowhere near as flashy as its PC counterpart, but it still makes solid use of its unassuming style, even if the edges of objects are a little more jagged than you might have hoped for. Also, I managed to somehow glitch outside the bounds of the game’s main menu through no apparent fault of my own on one occasion, and many players out in the wild have reported similar issues on launch day.
Aurally, it’s a fairly piecemeal platter, though the various gunshot and shattering sound effects do sound agreeably crisp, and of course, the “SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT.” narration between each level is an undeniable earworm.
The PSVR version of Superhot could certainly use a patch to clean up the tracking, and introducing a difficulty setting which allows more forgiving continues wouldn’t go amiss, but when you’re in the zone and laying brutal waste to a level full of anonymous digital thugs, there’s a very special brand of wish fulfillment at work here. It’s pretty far from perfect, but as one of the platform’s most physical, intense and clever shooters, it is a largely compelling package.
Pros:
+ Jaw-dropping, extremely satisfying slow-motion action
+ Immersive, minimalist sound and visuals
+ A solid amount of post-game content
Cons:
– Tracking could be much better
– Core campaign is very short
– Repetition can be frustrating
Rating: 7.5/10
Reviewed for PS4 (also available for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive).
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more video game rambling.
