INTRO:
During the time of this game, there were and still are more than a few rumblings from older game consumers about the general state of the FPS genre in the present day. They happen to hark from the days of very old FPS games that made a tremendous impression on them, so such rumblings are quite understandable, if one was to assume their sometimes bitter point-of-view.
For better or worse, some upstart game-makers had decided to target this segment of the consumer base. Flying Wild Hog is one such game-maker, having touted Hard Reset to be a hark-back to those days when Doom titles and similar over-the-top shooters were the talk of the day among game consumers.
Unfortunately, Hard Reset is exemplary of the issue of games that try to sell themselves by exploiting the nostalgia of consumers who could not let go of the past; it has almost nothing new to offer to the FPS genre beyond its splendid but ultimately inconsequential aesthetics and graphics. Its interesting weapon designs held some promise, but Flying Wild Hog failed to realize and capitalize on the other main draw of the game, even with the free Exile DLC for Hard Reset.
SETTINGS:
Despite the game often being described as cyberpunk due to its gritty looks, Hard Reset would seem to lack convincing elements of this setting to people who know much about cyberpunk fiction.
If there is anything cyberpunk about the game, that would be its aesthetic designs. However, the other essential elements of cyberpunk, e.g. the depiction of dystopian society and harsh livelihoods are either absent from the game or poorly presented. There are suggestions of these elements in the graphic novel cutscenes, but the story is hampered by ham-fisted writing, throwaway plots and voice-overs that are hardly entertaining (as will be described later).
PREMISE:
Dystopian or apocalyptic futures make for very good excuses to include themes of physical conflict in a sci-fi shooter; Hard Reset would not buck this trend/trope, though it attempts to do both in clumsy ways.
The player takes on the role of a hard-bitten security enforcer with augmentations that he is not exactly comfortable with. He had a rote day-to-day job, but this would change in one eventful evening when he is summoned back to work after going off-duty to deal with a particularly deadly incident. What would have been another routine suppression of rogue machines that slipped past the stranglehold of his employer would turn out to be so much more than he could imagine.
Unfortunately, that is the extent of the quality of the story-writing in this game. Such a setup was ultimately used to pit the player character against hordes of robots and cyborgs in gritty-looking environments that happen to be devoid of any elements that would have made Hard Reset more convincingly cyberpunk.
CHARACTER DESIGNS & PACING:
This section would not be in this review if not for the significant wasted potential of the settings and backstory of the game.
The protagonist's personal issues could have been made into a riveting subplot, but instead he is depicted as little more than an angry grunt that is more than happy to solve problems with sheer violence. There is another important character whose drastic decisions as seen in the progression of the story could have been made more poignant, but he is nothing more than just another voice in the head of the confused protagonist that tells him what to do next.
What he does next involves more violence of course. In fact, much of what the player would do in any level is get from point A to point B. At point B, the player has to do something to get onto the path to point C, and this action usually triggers the arrival of mobs to hound the player character, before the player has to deal with even more mobs that would appear on said path. At point C, the process repeats again a few more times before the end of the level, which can sometimes occur abruptly and unexpectedly, e.g. walking down a corridor only to have the level completion screen come up.
Of course, one can argue that being a game that harks back to the supposedly "good ol' days", Hard Reset's pacing would be appropriate. Unfortunately, Hard Reset would also remind other, less nostalgic FPS veterans of how far the genre has come and how stagnant it is, to the point that titles like Hard Reset has to recycle very old gameplay just to seem refreshing to jaded eyes who do not know better.
PROTAGONIST'S APPEARANCE:
Throughout the game, both the original and the DLC, there is an inconsistent portrayal of the protagonist. At first, it would appear that the player character is bald, with hardly any hair on his head and face; the promotional materials for Hard Reset also suggest this. Yet, some of the graphic novel cutscenes and the protagonist's portrait in the Exile DLC portray him as having some hair and a beard.
The game does not appear to have an in-game model of the protagonist that the player can see. In fact, curiously enough, there is a lack of mirror-like surfaces in the game – not even what appear to be toilets and washrooms have mirrors.
This may seem like a minor issue, but it makes empathizing with the protagonist even more difficult. The game had marketed itself as having a gritty story, a hardy hero and such, but ultimately the presentation of these is half-hearted.
VALUE & FREE DLC:
The launch version of this was derided for being very short, especially considering its asking price at the time. Since then, Flying Wild Hog had released a free DLC package.
In addition to mitigating the underwhelming cliffhanger ending of the original version of the game, the DLC extended the game by adding several more levels and new enemies, as well as slashed the price of the license; these are decisions that had increased the game's perceived value.
Unfortunately, these decisions only came along long after the launch of the game, strongly suggesting that these were responses from Flying Wild Hog to the criticism levied at Hard Reset during launch. If this is true, then Flying Wild Hog should be commended for listening to the feedback, though it should not have made miscalculations in the first place.
The DLC attempts to flesh out the story some more by focusing on the backstory of the war between humans and machines, but this attempt can seem shoehorned. For example, PDA's are placed into the player character's path, which in turn causes the player character to lower his weapons to ostensibly to check what is on them. Of course, it appears that even if the player keeps moving, he would have his weapons up by the time the next hostile encounter occurs, but this only makes the story development seem even more shoehorned.
PLAYER CHARACTER:
The protagonist is supposedly augmented, so there is a good excuse for him to be a rather tough and fast soldier that is not too far different from his predecessors in old-school FPS titles. Like his predecessors, he has a finite amount of health that has to be regained by having him run over pick-ups, though this is not as simple as one would think due to problems with the physics in the game, as will be elaborated later.
What makes him far, far different from his old-school predecessors is his rechargeable shielding. His shielding works like a hybrid of the armor of FPS titles of yore and the shields of today's sci-fi shooters. It reduces damage done to the player character, much like old-school armor did, but can recharge, so there is no need to look around for armor pick-ups, of which there are none in the game.
Sceptical players would point out that this system of shielding runs against Flying Wild Hog's promises of old-school game designs, but other players would consider it quite useful but not as cheaply convenient as the shielding system of other sci-fi shooters.
An issue about the player character's design can be seen when his death occurs, likely due to a moment of incompetence on the part of the player. The camera appears to be abruptly set elsewhere, showing a blood-splattered screen; the corpse of the player character, if there is any model for this, is nowhere to be seen. This is an unpleasantly jarring transition.
N.A.N.O. SYSTEM:
There is an RPG-like system in Hard Reset that allows the player to upgrade the player character's capabilities and the firepower of his weapons. This system is also the only way to gain new firing modes for his weapons.
The "experience points" of this system, to borrow a term from the RPG genre, is N.A.N.O. points. These are mainly collected from destroying non-respawning enemies. They can also be gained from finding N.A.N.O. stashes that so happen to be hidden in the environment, usually out of plain sight.
After collecting enough N.A.N.O., the player gains a point that can be spent at vending machines that can upgrade his gear. These vending machines are often located at places where enemies do not spawn, so a vending machine that the player has seen for the first time is usually a safe place to catch some breath.
SECRETS:
The game has so-called "secret" places that tend to contain stashes of N.A.N.O. and sometimes supplies for health and ammo.
These "secret" places are sometimes in plain sight, but the player character cannot immediately reach them, at least not until moving on to the next few rooms. The more hidden ones are actually easier to find, especially for players who look behind every nook and cranny in the game's handful of levels for tell-tale signs of "secrets".
The player can check the number of secrets that he/she has found by bringing up a score window that shows the various statistics that measure the player's performance; this also includes the percentage of N.A.N.O. that the player has found within the level.
Other than checking the amount of N.A.N.O. that have yet to be found, there would be little other reason to use this screen. Most of them would be useful for players that want to brag about beating the game on very hard difficulty settings, however. In fact, some of these statistics, such as "achievement points", seem much more appropriate in a console game than a computer game that claims to be old-school.
ENEMIES:
The game does not waste time informing the player that the main antagonists of the game are robots, specifically machines that are under the control of rogue A.I.'s. Which A.I. is controlling which robots is an unclear matter, but this would not matter anyway as the story is a throwaway piece of writing.
Despite being controlled by A.I.'s that are mentioned in-game as being a lot smarter and more resourceful than humans, the robots are quite dumb, often running along the shortest paths to the player character and being oblivious to many environmental hazards around them. The player can exploit these flaws in their behaviour to defeat hordes of them quite handily, perhaps except at the highest difficulty level.
Sometimes, the robots do exhibit some cleverness, such as dodging incoming grenades and rockets that they can see coming. However, this is the only bit of convincing intelligence that they have; otherwise, they are very predictable, even on the highest difficulty.
Speaking of difficulty settings, these are the usual alteration of the damage that enemies can inflict on the player character and how much damage they can take before perishing. For an experienced FPS follower, he/she may want to consider playing the game at the highest or second highest difficulty setting for a worthwhile challenge.
On the other hand, players who are used to present-day FPS games may find the game too hard. Enemies, even at the lowest difficulty, can be a handful as they spawn in large numbers and swarm all over the place.
As for the enemies that the player would face, they are drawn from a rather limited menagerie. Even with the additional enemies that came with the free DLC, it would be difficult not to have an impression that the game throws a lot of the same enemies at the player.
Anyway, most of the enemies in the launch version of Hard Reset are of archetypes that would not surprise any FPS veteran. The player starts the game facing swarms of little robots that skitter about and attempt to swarm all over the player character. Eventually, semi-humanoid robots with guns for arms appear, thus posing as ranged threats. Then, there are brutes that are faster than they look and which have a tendency to bull-rush whenever they can.
There are robots that are somewhere in between these main archetypes, but they are not refreshingly new either.
The enemies in the original version of Hard Reset that would offer a worthy challenge are those that are armed with missiles and mortars. These will fire missiles when they have a direct line of sight to the player character, but switch to their mortars when the player attempts to make use of cover.
The free DLC introduces a handful of enemies that were not encountered in the original. One of them is an aerial drone that lingers about and fires considerable barrages of munitions from above, thus preventing the player from using low pieces of cover. The DLC also has much more challenging mixes of enemies, but compensates for this via providing more open areas with more pieces of hard cover than there were in the levels of the original version of the game.
There are bosses in the game, but although they do pose a much stiffer challenge than regular enemies, their designs would not seem refreshing at all. In particular, the game resorts to the typical system of glowing weak points to direct the player's fire.
Furthermore, one of the boss fights has an astonishingly cheap rise in difficulty compared to the previous boss fights. It has endlessly respawning swarms of little critters on the ground and endlessly respawning enemies on higher ground - something that no previous boss fight, much less regular fights had done. Ironically, the boss itself would have been quite easy to outwit, if not for its lackeys.
There is a system of weak points on enemies. Hitting these weak points inflicts tremendous damage on them, but it is often difficult and impractical to aim for weak points when the player is being pressured by swarms of enemies. More often than not, the player would be focusing on crowd control methods instead of aiming with finesse.
WEAPONS:
The guns that the protagonist can use are the highlight of the game, which can make Hard Reset worth playing for most people. However, they are not without issues either.
The protagonist officially has two guns: the CLN Firearm and the NRG Weapon. Both have been described as having a handful of firing modes, thus providing the protagonist with versatile firepower without him having to carry many guns. This is unlike the player characters of old-school FPS titles.
Of course, experienced and sceptical FPS followers would mention that these firing modes are ultimately just alternative representations of traditional weapon archetypes. Indeed, their default fire would not seem impressive to jaded FPS followers.
On the other hand, there are several designs about these two guns that help make them look more convincingly like two guns instead of just a cosmetic excuse to justify that the player character is not a "walking armory".
Firstly, all firing modes of one gun draw from the same reserves of munitions (for the CLN Firearm) and energy (in the case of the NRG Weapon). Running out of ammo for a firing mode that would be more useful for the next situation is an ever-present risk, especially for trigger-happy players. Secondly, the mode-switching animations are substantially faster than the animations for switching between the CLN Firearm and NRG Weapon.
However, there is a lost opportunity to make the mode-switching animations much more convincingly different. The mode-switching can only be done when the gun that is being used is in its "neutral" state, i.e. not firing and not being affected by recoil. If modes can be switched around even during the recoil animations, they would have been even more exciting to use and more convincing as modes for the same weapon.
Anyway, returning to the weapon firing modes, the default fire of these modes are little different from the weapon archetypes that have been seen in so many sci-fi shooters.
The CLN Firearm, being a weapon that apparently fires metal munitions, typically has firing modes that would be recognizable as emulating an assault rifle, a shotgun, a grenade launcher and a rocket launcher. The only firing mode with default fire that is atypical is the Proximity Mine launcher.
The NRG Weapon is an energy-based weapon, so its firing modes typically emulate a plasma rifle, a lightning emitter and a railgun. However, two of its firing modes are more refreshing than the others: one that launches sticky mines that emits arcs of electricity and one that fires homing projectiles that can go through most obstacles.
The CLN Firearm's assault rifle mode and the NRG Weapon's plasma rifle mode are already unlocked by default. This is perhaps fitting, because they are reliable general-purpose modes for long-range and close-range engagements, respectively.
If there is a major complaint about these guns and their firing modes, it is that the player cannot unlock certain firing modes without having unlocked others. For example, the rocket launcher mode for the CLN Firearm cannot be unlocked without having unlocked its shotgun mode already. This is a disappointing restriction, because the game could have been more fun if it can accommodate any preferred playstyle from the get-go.
Furthermore, the text for the in-game description of the prerequisites does not use the regular names of the firing modes. Instead, it uses their nicknames, such as "Muraena" for the shotgun mode. This means that a new player would have to look around the holographic user interface that a vending machine projects when it is used just to search for a gun with said nickname.
This is a minor design oversight, but it is still annoying and could have been prevented if there was not a lack of re-examination of the game on the part of the developer.
Anyway, these firing modes have upgrades that grant them secondary fire options, which make them more versatile.
Some of these seem comparatively dull, such as the assault rifle mode's no-frills zoom, but others are much more interesting. For example, the shotgun mode can fire EMP rounds that stagger virtually any enemy, making them easier to be finished off with its default fire.
A few of the secondary fire options are not well-conceived, unfortunately. The most significant of these is the zoom-cum-X-ray view of the railgun mode for the NRG weapon, which gives an impression that its designs are only figuratively halfway-there. The tunnel-vision from the view-zooming makes the X-ray scope difficult to utilize and the zooming is just not enough to make the railgun mode a convincingly useful sniping tool.
Nevertheless, if a player is diligent enough to accumulate the N.A.N.O. to unlock all of the firing modes and their secondary fire options, the player character would be well-equipped for just about any situation – provided that the player can remember which firing mode has which fire options. This can take a while to memorize, but eventually, a determined player would be experienced enough to bring the right tools to any fight.
The two guns are the only methods of offense and defence that the player character has. There is a risk of running out of munitions and energy to feed them with, but conveniently, the player character's reserves for these happen to regenerate, up to 100 points each. Therefore, as long as the player picks shots carefully, he/she would not be running empty.
OTHER GEAR:
The player can also unlock upgrades for the protagonist's own cybernetic augmentations, which are not visible to the player by the way. Of these, the scanner that shows where incoming damage is coming from is unlocked by default.
Unfortunately, the game does not have a lot of documentation on these particular upgrades and mods.
Moreover, some of them can seem to be not user-friendly. These happen to be the scanner upgrades, which alter the HUD to show the position of enemies and N.A.N.O. stashes. However, the blips that depict these are merely imposed on the segment of the HUD that shows the player character's health, shield and ammo status. This is not visually convenient.
Furthermore, the game and its manual do not mention how the player can make heads or tails of the blips. The size of the blips actually shows the height of objects relative to the player character, whereas the shockwaves emanating from the blips indicate the proximity of the objects. This can only be learned through observation, as the game will not mention this to the player, who may have a bad first impression of this feature.
The other "Combat Gear" upgrades are a lot more useful and easier to understand, fortunately. For example, the Trauma Pack is a must-have when playing at higher difficulty settings because the player character would be more than likely gravely injured, which is when the slow-mo effects would kick in for several precious seconds. However, the game would not speed up the firing rate of the guns, which is a setback that the game would not mention to the player; this makes the Trauma Pack much more useful for running away than for fighting.
LEVEL DESIGNS:
Hard Reset may be an astoundingly pretty game, but the levels in it are ultimately simply-designed and would not surprise FPS veterans. This is especially so for the levels in the original version of the game, most of which are horizontally flat. There are some levels with areas where there is some verticality, such as areas with gangways and multiple floors overlooking an atrium, but these are few and far in between and their only significance is to set up nasty combat situations.
There is a rather uncomfortable amount of narrow corridors in the launch version of Hard Reset, as well as enemies that come down them. Such designs can seem tiresome to those who had seen one too many of such level design tropes.
The DLC offers much better designed levels with more verticality, such as the inclusion of more slopes, and many more pieces of cover, though this does come with more troublesome composition of enemies in the waves of robots that would be coming. However, the levels in the DLC also have their own tiresome tropes, such as obvious triggers for the spawning of enemies which usually come in the form of switches with glowing buttons and barriers that can only be traversed in one direction.
The level designs in the DLC appear to have the player going in, out and around buildings, seemingly in an attempt to make them seem less linear. However, they are ultimately still composed of rigid routes, because the paths that the player has to take are either two-way only (forward and back) or loop around, thus inadvertently leading to backtracking.
CHECKPOINT SYSTEM:
Flying Wild Hog may have hyped up its game as a hark-back to old-school FPS titles, but it does not even have the convenience of letting the player make a game-save where he/she wants. Instead, there are checkpoints that the player has to reach to get the game to record his/her progress.
This can be a disappointment to players that have been inveigled into playing the game by its promises of old-school design. Furthermore, the checkpoint system can seem more of an impediment when playing at the higher difficulty settings.
PHYSICS:
As far as the player character and enemies are concerned, the physics that govern them while they are still operational are adequate at making sure they exist in any level in convincing ways. The player will not see enemies sinking into the level or clipping through objects; not even the bits that they and other destructible objects leave behind clip into the level. This speaks well of the satisfactorily tight coding for collisions.
However, there is an issue with the physics-scripting for small objects, namely the small health, ammo and energy pickups and small N.A.N.O. containers. These can be violently hurled about by explosions, causing them to be caught in places where the player cannot reach. This can be frustrating, especially if the player is hard-pressed for health replenishments for the player character during a heated battle.
The physics designs also figuratively rear their ugly heads when the player attempts to go for certain "secrets". These tend to require the player character to go through precarious places, which will expose flaws in the physics and the movement of the player character; he cannot duck, and jumps and landings can be very treacherous when trying to get to a N.A.N.O. stash that is located in an unlikely precarious place.
GRAPHICS:
The game was targeted at computer gamers who have a predilection for the latest graphics technology at the time. Hard Reset would appear to satisfy such indulgence.
Indeed, to have the game looking at its best, one would need a computer rig that was cutting-edge during its time. With it, Hard Reset looks as gritty and cyberpunk as it is described to be in the promotional materials for the game. In fact, the eye candy that the game provides would distract all but the most sceptical players from the fact that they are just furnishings for linear levels and underutilized story settings.
The best graphical designs are those for the weapons. The mode-switching for the CLN Firearm can seem particularly impressive, thanks to many polygons and animations for its many moving parts. In fact, one would have an impression that the CLN Firearm is a miniature factory of munitions that also happens to use its own products.
The NRG Weapon has a lot less moving parts, but its appeal lies in its reactor core, which has many lighting effects that change significantly from mode to mode and even when it fires. It can be mesmerizing to look at, especially when the player has unlocked a new firing mode.
There are plenty of particle effects in the game, and not just for the brilliant explosions and gunfire. In times of calm, the player can see pieces of paper and sometimes ashes flitting across the screen. Gases spout from vents and breaches in pipes in very convincing ways, but the player should not expect believable gas physics from the game.
The lighting and shadowing are also splendid. There are many long shadows that are cast from the environment and smaller shadows that are cast from explosions. However, dynamic shadowing is only available for very powerful rigs.
Nevertheless, weaker computers would not be left out much, because Hard Reset is surprisingly stable, even when there is a lot of action occurring on-screen.
Considering the game's other aspects that are just not as impressive as its graphics, one would suspect that most of the developer's work had been invested in the game's graphics.
Unfortunately, if the player is expecting in-game cutscenes, he/she would be disappointed as most of the story is told via graphic novels. The inking and brush strokes in them can contrast greatly with the graphics of the game. Although the graphic novel cutscenes have been described by the developer as a novel presentation of the story, promotional talk aside, they are hardly pleasant intervals, due to the presence of the potty-mouthed protagonist.
SOUNDS:
As mentioned earlier, the game has poor voice-overs. The protagonist can be unbearably crass at times, while other characters sound bland, as if their voice actors/actresses are bored with the script. The only voice-over that is worthwhile to listen to happens to be the most prominent of the voices in the protagonist's head, and even so, his lines would seem barely decent to followers of story-writing.
The other sounds in game are more pleasing to listen to in comparison. The explosions are satisfactorily loud and would sound even more wonderful when accompanied with the sounds of metallic enemies being broken and rent apart.
The noises for gunfire can seem underwhelming, which is a surprise, considering how impressive they look. For example, the assault rifle mode sounds weak and most of the NRG Weapon's firing modes would not sound refreshing to those who have heard the noises of many sci-fi energy weapons before.
The musical soundtracks are rather limited. Most of the music is concentrated in the graphic novel cutscenes, and they tend to be hybrids of electronic and metal. This is perhaps fitting considering that this is a sci-fi shooter that claims to be old-school, but the music could have been better off if they are played during actual gameplay instead of the cutscenes.
As for the music that does play during actual gameplay, the only few soundtracks that the player would get to listen to are the tracks that play when enemies are attacking the player character. There is one for the original levels of the game, and another for the levels in the DLC.
They are suspenseful and exciting, but the player will be listening to them many times over. It would be difficult not to eventually ignore it and consider its only significance to be to inform the player when trouble is looming.
CONCLUSION:
Hard Reset would have been a decently fun old-school FPS title, if its developer had actually designed it to be convincingly old-school. Flying Wild Hog also made mistakes in the design of its launch version that took too long to rectify. Since then, after the game's update to its "Extended" version, it has become a lot better at offering satisfactorily long enough entertainment to make its revised asking price seem worthwhile. However, one can still say that Flying Wild Hog failed to deliver on the hype that it wrapped around its product.