Hard Reset

The PC-exclusive shooter Hard Reset is uncompromising in its old-school ways. There is no cover. Enemies bum rush you in disorganized hordes. Glowing green health packs and red and blue ammunition litter every environment. It’s comforting, in a way, to play a modern game that feels like it was developed ten years ago. It’s also frustrating, for as good as Hard Reset’s action can be, the overall experience is too short and uneven to break free of design flaws I thought we'd left behind.
Hard Reset takes place somewhere in Europe in 2436. You play as Major Fletcher, an Army Combat Veteran dispatched by the shadowy Corporation to protect mankind from the robot menace.

The rest of the confounding Philip K. Dick-cum-Matrix plot is delivered via motion comic cutscenes in which Fletcher curses at whoever’s trying to explain his next objective. It’s a good thing developer Flying Wild Hog prioritized almost every other aspect of the game, as the cyberpunk mishmash does little more than distract during loading screens.
While narrative clearly isn’t their strong suit, Flying Wild Hog does know a thing or two about combat. Hard Reset’s weapon selection is limited at first glance – an automatic rifle and a lightning-based energy weapon – but multiplies fivefold after you begin the upgrade process. Each of the two primary guns can morph into four others, and the accompanying animations of these intricate transformations had me changing weapons often just for the visuals.
The two-gun design helps set Hard Reset apart from its modern shooter brethren. What weapon to use is rarely if ever dictated by the game. Grenades pull from the same pool of ammo as shotgun shells, electric mortars from the same as plasma blasts. The guns never reload, either (they simply empty until you find more on the ground), and you wouldn’t want them to. Every second spent not shooting increases the likelihood of slaughter at the hands of maniacal robots. Hard Reset’s robot masses trip over one another to kill you. In fitting with the story of ambitious AI Hard Reset would love to be telling, the robots, while never tactical geniuses, become increasingly complex as their designs more closely resemble humanity. Enemy types conform to a sort of evolutionary ladder of AI: smaller creatures swarm you with tiny buzzsaws and helicopter blades, hulking mechs charge you shoulder first with little regard for the environment, and creepy humanoid soldiers wield shotguns and rocket launchers.

Minimum Recommended:
OS Windows XP/Vista/7 Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor 2.5 GHz Intel Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon 64 Intel Quad Core 2.3 GHz / AMD Phenom II x4 2.5 GHz
Memory 2 GB 3 GB
Hard Disk Space 4 GB 4 GB
Video Card 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GS / ATI Radeon HD 3870 or better 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT / ATI Radeon HD 4870 or better
DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c DirectX 9.0c
Sound: DirectX Compatible Direct X Compatible

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