Rating of
2.5/5
Cyber Funk 1997
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/03/18
In my desperate search for another FPS that even comes close to capturing the majesty of “Shadow Warrior 2,” I figured I may as well go to the back catalog of the developer that created that pinnacle of gun porn and graphic violence: Flying Wild Hog, out of Warsaw, Poland. It turns out that Flying Wild Hog has been making FPSes almost exclusively since they entered the game development industry in 2011, and “Hard Reset” was their inaugural game. In the intervening years, Flying Wild Hog released a remastered version of this game, “Hard Reset Redux” (“HRR”), that combines the add-ons and fixes released for the original game post-launch, and moves the entire thing to a newer engine (buying from Steam even gets you the original game thrown in as a bonus). My expectations were low, and, unfortunately, they were met.
Presentation
“HRR” is rebuilt in the same version of the Havok Engine as Flying Wild Hog’s 2013 reboot of “Shadow Warrior.” It looks adequate for a 2016 remaster, though I can’t say that the original art style is anything to get excited about. “HRR” is a game that very much wants to be as cyberpunk as cyberpunk can be, with grim, gritty, gray-on-gray environments intermittently splashed with blasts of neon color from holographic advertising. And there’s advertising EVERYWHERE, fortunately for fake in-world products rather than real products, as a heavy-handed parody of how out of nauseating and out of control the modern Internet is without an ad-blocker. Enemy designs are rather atrocious and remind me quite a bit of the half-machine/half-meat Stroggs from “Quake 2.” There also isn’t a whole lot of variety amongst the enemies, and most of them consider ‘charge at player’ to be the epitome of strategy.
Sandwiched between the games playable missions are a large number of cutscenes. These are rather interesting in style, as, instead of relying on the 3D game engine to produce them, they are entirely flat, hand-painted stills that have been given the textual and transitional stylings of a comic book. The effect would be striking, if the art were better.
Audiowise, “HRR” is sub-par. The soundtrack is incredibly grating and unpleasant, while the voiceacting is almost entirely amateur-hour levels of awkward. The sole saving grace is the voice of Professor Novak, who mostly nails his performance and seems very out-of-place with the rest of it.
Technically, I have no complaints about “HRR.” If I wanted to pick nits, I’d point out that every single Flying Wild Hog FPS stutters for a moment when the game makes a checkpoint, but that’s really the only problem here. “HRR” supports native Xinput and flips seamlessly between controller and typewriter support.
Story
“HRR” can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be the original “Deus Ex” or “The Matrix,” but it doesn’t do a particularly good job of being either. Our hero is Major Fletcher of the CNL (Corporation Something Something, a private police force) working to protect the people living in Bezoar, the last human city on earth… and apparently something like the Matrix, with people living digital lives instead of in meatspace. There’s talk of a past war where machine AIs took over the rest of the world, and babble about an External AI and an Internal AI, but none of it really makes any sense.
The story loses track of itself and skips over quite a few important pieces of information, but before long, Major Fletcher ends up allied with an elderly scientist named Novak who downloads himself into Fletchers cranial cybernetics and sends Fletcher on a wild goose chase to hunt down the source of the most recent, vicious AI attacks. Fletcher, much like good old J.C. Denton of “Deus Ex,” ends up on the wrong side of the law, and becomes hunted by his former colleagues, but is shocked to discover that there are some people still living outside of the Matrix and outside of Bezoar, who have formed a resistance movement against the machines.
And then the game abruptly ends.
Apparently, when “Hard Reset” first launched in 2011, it was even shorter and ended even more abruptly, but Flying Wild Hog released two expanded versions (“Hard Reset: Exile” and “Hard Reset: Extended Edition”)… which still left it feeling woefully incomplete.
With 12 missions and roughly 9 hours of gameplay (with plenty more for achievement whores and completionists), “HRR” feels like it ends just when it’s getting started.
Gameplay
“HRR” is supposed to be some sort of ‘10s answer to the existential angst of the FPS genre. Old fans of the genre’s humble beginnings found themselves repulsed and disgusted by what they perceived as the ‘casualization’ of their genre in Military Shooters like “Call of Duty.” The slower movement speed (what?), tactical use of cover, limited arsenal, and regenerating health just ruined FPSes in the minds of the old guard, leaving an exploitable niche for someone to fill. Flying Wild Hog tried to fill it.
“HRR” doesn’t have regenerating health (but it does have regenerating ammo). Hell, it’ doesn’t have bullet magazines or even a reload button! It tries to replicate the style of old shooters like “DOOM” and “Quake” but fails to do so because it’s so much better. Not that it takes much to be better than those dusty turds, but having a competent control scheme allows “HRR” to blow them away without even looking at the details.
But we’re going to look at the details anyway. “HRR” features a tiny arsenal of two guns and, because “Deus Ex” has one, an energy katana. But wait! These guns are actually kind of cool, because, much like the Robots in Disguise we all know and love from the ‘80s, they can be upgraded to transform into a larger variety of weapons. The two basic guns are a CLN Firearm, which shoots bullets, and an NRG (hurr durr) Weapon that shoots – say it with me – energy. Each of these guns starts with a basic mode, but can have an additional 4 modes unlocked, resulting in a maximum arsenal of 10 different guns (and a katana). On the bullet (red pill) side, there’s a basic rifle, a shotgun, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, and proximity mines; while on the energy (blue pill) side there’s a crappy default pew-pew weapon, an arc lightning stungun, an energy mortar (with optional stasis field), a homing smartgun, and a wall-penetrating railgun. There are only two ammo pools, though (bullets and energy), and all gun modes draw from the respective pool for their type.
In order to access these gun modes, as well as a variety of defensive upgrades, the player must gather NANO cartridges. These are found scattered throughout the stages, often in devilishly-hidden secret areas. Enemies also award a small amount of NANO when slain, so I guess that makes “HRR” a full-fledged RPG in the small minds of Millennials (it isn’t). Buying upgrades is a simple matter of finding enough NANO to earn a perk point, then proceeding to the nearest in-stage Upgrade Terminal to pick which goody to unlock.
The only place where “HRR” resembles my beloved “Shadow Warrior 2” in any way is in Fletcher’s ability to dodge in any direction. This is a nice feature to have in a FPS (and in “HRR” it doesn’t consume stamina like in the “Shadow Warrior” reboot). In general, though, Fletcher doesn’t really seem any more or less nimble than typical FPS protagonists have been for decades. He jumps like a clod and the game tends to overuse invisible blocking volumes to prevent players from going where they aren’t supposed to within the linear stage structures (which tend to loop back on themselves)… except when they ARE supposed to go outside the rails in search of secrets, which is frustrating.
It also came as a shock to me that a significant number of people seem to think “HRR” is a hard game. I can’t stand hard games in general, but “HRR” never gave me much trouble. I died a few times, sure, but in most cases, there were gobs and gobs of ammo and health pickups I had no use for littering the floor when I left each area. The game is quite generous (at least on Normal mode, but if you’re playing on a harder mode than that, you deserve what you get) with resources, and I never had to wait around for the relatively slow ammo regen to top me off as there were always a few red-and-blue 200-unit (out of a max 240) ammo containers lying around. On top of this generosity, the game allows players to save ANYWHERE and also keeps reasonably-spaced auto-save checkpoints.
Overall
“Hard Reset Redux” desperately wants to be a ‘90s FPS, a sibling to the original “Deus Ex,” and a spin-off of “The Matrix,” but doesn’t do a good job at any of it. Boring and derivative, the bright side is that “HRR” is also short and cheap, so anyone wanting to try it for themselves to see if it’s their particular cup of tea won’t have to invest much in either time or money. It’s not awful, but it certainly isn’t good.
Presentation: 2.5/5
Story: 2/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 2.5/5
