Publisher: Flying Wild Hog
Developer: Flying Wild Hog
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.5 GHz Pentium IV/Athlon 64 CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce 8800GS/Radeon HD 3870 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, DirectX-compatible audio solution, 4 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Not rated at press time
Release date: September 13, 2011

Remember the good old days of PC shooters? When it was just you, a bunch of absurdly overpowered weapons and a seemingly endless horde of enemies? I do, and apparently so do the folks at new development house Flying Wild Hog. The Polish developer’s first game, Hard Reset, gives you everything you want from an FPS, dressed up with some strikingly gorgeous visuals.

Hard Reset takes place in the 25th century in Bezoar City, home of The Sanctuary, an electronic repository of billions of human personalities. The Sanctuary is under siege by renegade robots, which have reached the theoretical limit of their AI progress and want to use the stored human traits to further evolve. You play Fletcher, soldier of The Corporation, who’s ordered into the breach created by the machines and soon discovers that all is not necessarily what it seems.

You start the game with two primary weapons: a rifle and a plasma cannon. As you move through the environment, you find glowing yellow nanoboxes that contain the currency you use to upgrade your weapons and shields. There are dozens of upgrades available, some of which are essential (make sure to buy either of the homing weapons; you’ll thank me when you get to the final boss). In fact, there are so many weapon upgrades that you almost run out of convenient buttons to use them all. You change between the rifle and plasma gun with separate button presses, then cycle through the upgrades with the mouse wheel. The story is advanced through cutscenes made up of animated comic-book panels, and it’s in these cinematics that you see other human beings; you never find another breathing soul in the playable part of the game.

Easily the highlight of Hard Reset is the graphics. Bezoar City is a rain-soaked metropolis right out of Blade Runner, with a combination of wartime desolation and high technology. Giant electronic billboards dot the landscape, flying vessels cruise through the night sky (it’s always night in Bezoar, it seems), and all of this minute detail is displayed in crystal-clear visuals that rarely stray below 60 fps, even with high settings engaged. Otherwise, the game cribs liberally from the classic Doom/Quake playbook. When you move into a new area, you fight, you search the area for loot, then you move on. There are secret areas, some of which can be found by shooting explosive barrels (what would a shooter be without red barrels that go boom?). You don’t go too long into the campaign before you discover which weapons you’ll use the most. The basic fire modes are ineffective past the first few areas, while the shotgun mod takes out whole groups of enemies with one or two shots, and the smartgun mod for the plasma cannon can target and fire through solid objects, giving you a way to fire from cover without peeking out or firing blind. You’re also encouraged to use the environment against your enemies; power sources arc deadly electricity when shot, gas valves spew out jets of fire when destroyed, and abandoned vehicles make excellent explosives. Ammunition is plentiful (all mods use the same ammo as the base weapons), either laying around in glowing boxes or dropped by vanquished foes, although some loot drops evaporate if you don’t pick them up fast enough. Your shields regenerate, but your health doesn’t, so you always need to be on the lookout for health drops.

The thing that diehard shooter fans will probably hate the most about Hard Reset is the extreme handholding. It’s one of the most linear games you’ll find today; there’s practically no room for exploration as the game herds you down the cattle chute from one area to the next. And just to make sure, the developer has added a helpful arrow that you can toggle on and off that literally points you in the right direction. You can always tell where the next big battle is going to be; the plentiful explodables in the area are a dead giveaway, as is the somewhat heavy-handed music, which swells just before the baddies arrive and cuts off once you’ve killed them all. There’s also a fairly intrusive hint system, which not only tells you what to do next, but also draws a blue box around your target and tells you how far away it is (fortunately you can turn the hints off in the options menu, but after a certain point they really don’t need to be displayed anyway). Another old shooter favorite, the monster closet, is in play as well, with enemies dropping down from above or breaking out of boxes when you pass by. There’s no crouch control, so some objects remain tantalizingly out of reach unless you can figure out another way to get to them. The ending is one of the most disappointing I’ve seen in a game in awhile. Thirty percent of my total playtime was taken up by a frustratingly hard last level and final boss fight, but the payoff was abrupt and unfulfilling to say the least. And where is everybody? We know that Fletcher isn’t the only person in the city, so what happened to the rest of the Corporation’s soldiers? Surely he’s not the only operative fighting such an important battle.

I love shooters. They’re all I used to play when I was first getting into the hobby. So there’s a lot for me to love about Hard Reset. It plays just like the great shooters of old (with a few welcome variations). The pace is fast; you’re never more than a few minutes away from another fight. It runs smoothly, and it looks awesome. But like most old-time shooters, it’s a one-trick pony. The levels are much too linear, the developer grabs you by the scruff of the neck and tells you exactly where to go, the comic-book cutscenes are out of character with the rest of the game, and the ending is a huge disappointment. But it’s being offered at half the usual price for a new game (currently $26.99 on Steam), so it’s still a good deal for nostalgic gamers. Not a bad first offering from a new developer; I look forward to seeing what they do next.

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