Serious Sam Goes Cyberpunk
+ graphics are nice
+ can run on a potato (my 1L mini pc ran 30 FPS @ 720p)
... but everything else is ... "meh" to "ugh"
- graphics sometimes get in the way making it hard to see (volumetric smoke, bloom, etc)
- the "gritty night city" dark color pallete has everything blending together
- level design can leave you with "where do I go? what do I do?" moments
- level design is so intricate it's easy to get hung-up on stuff while back-peddling in combat
- you fight the same small roster of enemies over and over, some just have extra armor/weapons
- explore, fight, explore, fight, explore, fight.. just like Serious Sam (for better or worse)
- fights become tedious and boring after a while
- bullet-sponge enemies (even on easiest mode) make weapons feel flaccid and weak
I started this game with a "this is interesting" attitude, but as the game progressed I just wanted to get it over with. You fight through a wave of enemies, then wander around trying to figure out where to go. You know you're on the right track when another wave of enemies is unleashed. There's nothing organic about it. It's as if all the enemies are lined up at starting gates for the kentucky derby, and you crossing certain lines in the game unleashes them. Then you wander around more, next wave shows up.
This becomes repetitious and quite distracting after a while. B/c other games will more organically place enemies. They'll have a few in a hallway. They'll have a big lug in some room when you round a corner. You'll encounter them in a more organic, hand-placed way.
The way enemies come across in Hard Reset, it absolutely feels like you just trigger "spawn enemies" areas, and the enemies just spawn in. They're not already there organically. This makes it easier to make easy, med, hard modes I guess, b/c you just up the spawn count in the trigger. But, it creates this repetitious "waves" fighting pattern. Go some place, trigger a "wave", fight it, move on. It just becomes a slog after a while.
And, while there's lots of weapon types, there's no real indication if certain weapons do better against certain enemies. You have really big hulking lugs. Shotgun, grenade, rockets.. it all seems to just do the same to them. Sometimes they go down easily. Other times they take a beating like a bullet sponge. I guess the enemies spawn with random health? I never got to a point where I went "ah, THIS enemy, I know exactly how to deal with them!" Nope. I was just pulling out random weapons and blasting away until out of ammo, then switched weapons.
The main perk of some weapons is they can paralyze or ensnare enemies. This lets you switch to another weapon to blast them easier. But, for the most part, the weapons all "work" the same in that they don't seem to make a difference. So, you just pick if you want to machine gun, shotgun, pulse rifle, shock mortar, etc the enemies how you see fit. A lot of the combat is just enemy management to avoid getting ganged up on, hence the paralytic / snare weapons help the most.
The level design is very detailed and complex, to the point that you will get confused on where to go and what to do. Often they'll have you backtrack around, and you won't realize it until you're back in some main area. Everything looks the same, so it's hard to tell if you're seeing a new place or back where you started. The level design is so intricate you'll find yourself getting hung-up on walls and outcroppings while trying to back-peddle to retreat from enemies.
The plot starts semi-interestingly, but just kind of drifts off, as if whoever was writing it couldn't decide what direction to go. There's some semblance of an interesting game world out there, and you're only getting a very small sliver of it. But, it's introduced piece-meal in cut scenes. Little is explained, and your jerk main character is too busy being an a**hole to everyone he meets to care about listening to them explain things.
The main character is also a red x. It's hard to want to be him, because he's what a 12yo thinks "tough" should be; an insufferable a-hole that doesn't want to listen and "plays by his own rules". Meanwhile he's getting led around by the nose. This schtick worked for 80's action movie stars and Solid Snake, but the schtick has worn thin. There's a compelling world and events to be uncovered, and the main protagonist is doing everything they can to avoid you learning more about it.
Basically, whoever did the graphics in the game really busted their tail to optimize things. But, everything else about the game turns it into a "style over substance" endeavor. I really would like to recommend the game, but even the "just switch your brain off and treat it like a summer popcorn action movie" is stretching thin. By the time I was almost halfway through the game I just wanted it to be over, and just rushed through the rest to complete it. The enjoyment stops, and it feels like a chore. So, sadly, I have to give this a downvote.
