Hard Reset (PC) Review

I recommend this game for the price I paid for it - $1 as a part of the a Humble Bundle deal.

Hard Reset was supposed to be an homage to the old school FPS games, but there are several design choices that prevent the game from reaching its potential.

The visuals are fantastic and they are by far the best aspect of the game. It played extremely well on a 21:9 ultrawide monitor without any problems, which is great considering this game was released in 2012.

Pretty much everything else is a step back, and could use some improvement.

Soundtrack is a fairly generic, and it ramps up when there are enemies. Enemies don’t seem to make any noise during movement, and I often found myself getting attacked from behind and there was absolutely no sound to indicate that there were enemies flanking.

Weapon system is needlessly complicated. Instead of giving the player a shotgun, rocket launcher etc., the game only has two weapons, a C.L.N weapon and an N.R.G weapon. A shotgun is a weapon mode of C.L.N weapon, and a railgun is a weapon mode of N.R.G weapon. So if the player wants to quickly switch between a shotgun and a railgun, it takes two button presses (equip the N.R.G weapon, and switch to the railgun mode) instead of one, and in the heat of combat, that is enough to get the player kill. This is change for the sake of change. There was no need to improve upon the conventional weapon system, the reason begin, it was tried and tested over the years, and this awful system adds nothing but busywork.

The difficulty in this game primarily comes from large enemy numbers, poor movement mechanics and awful reload/recharge times for weapons. I would be fine with there being a large number of enemies if the movement was smooth and the weapons reloaded at a “normal” rate.  As it stands, this leads to frustration and not fun.

In 2012, there aren’t as many shooters with similar gameplay. In 2018, there are many excellent shooters in this sub genre, such as the Wolfenstein, Doom (2016). Play those first, and if you are still not satiated, then pick up this game for less than $5.

Verdict - Excellent visuals, frustrating gameplay. Pick it up on deep discount.