Hard Reset: a good old-fashioned FPS

Hard Reset

Rating: 

8

Price*: 

$29.99 USD

From: 

Flying Wild Hog

Tested on PC. Downloadable from Steam.

Verdict: 

Belongs in the past, but that’s when people knew how to have fun.

With only two customisable weapons, a very mid-1990s interface and level design, and the usual uni-designed game crutch of using robot enemies to hide an art team’s shortcomings, our expectations of Hard Reset weren’t high. But after a couple of hours with this barebones first-person shooter (FPS), we questioned our initial judgement. The setting may be hopelessly derivative — kill some killer robots in the future — and game mechanics belong at least a few generations back, complete with bunny-hop-to-go-faster movement and health pickups, but Hard Reset’s level design and gameplay are ridiculously tight and way too focused for a product of first-timers.

The action is fast, the weapons and enemies are well balanced, and the proprietary engine, while lacking modern post-processing effects, produces crisp, fast-moving visuals and handles heavy action fluently. Which is when the penny drops: looking up developer Flying Wild Hog reveals that the studio is made up of former People Can Fly employees, the same folk that made the equally single-minded Painkiller a few years back.

In most respects, Hard Reset is the same deal — Flying Wild Hog has arguably sacrificed story and graphical complexity to focus on gameplay and frankly that’s a trade-off we wish more developers made. It may lack big-budget spectacle, but it’s a satisfying, demanding and fun shooter.