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Superhot: Mind Control Delete is a game which takes a little bit of getting used to, since at first, it felt very hit-and-miss as to whether I could even pick up a gun, but you learn how to move your character so that it’s in the right place on the screen and is selectable.
You’ll need these quite often if you’re to survive, since enemies can come at you from all angles and don’t take pity on your lack of firearms. However, you’ll not just pick up guns, but also household implements, for example… fish! This will hopefully make them drop the gun they’re carrying, then you can pick it up, and exact your revenge.
The game is not a case of going straight from one level to the next, but working through a number of chapters (or ‘Nodes’), each with a few levels – sometimes labelled, say, 3, 3A, 3B and so on, or 4, 4B, 4C, 4D, so nothing is too straight-forward, here. However, the levels in each chapter are largely the same, albeit starting from different locations within said level, and that location can determine whether your experience will be anywhere from easy to difficult.
Sometimes, you don’t even have to kill everybody on the level because anywhere from 5, early on, to 10 or more later, will secure that level… as long as you stay alive. I haven’t played the original Superhot, but I understand you only had one life in that, whereas here, you can have additional lives – or hearts, and in later chapters, as you finish each level, you’ll get a choice of rewards such as extra hearts or refilling the hearts. That aspect is less confusing than it sounds.
However, confusion does come at times when the game occasionally makes you think you finished it, when you haven’t at all.
When I got to Node 6, in addition to having to complete 10 levels, there’s a dog-like character running around (and one with a bandana), and he can’t be shot with a gun, so when he turns up you gotta run, rather than just try and find a good spot to hole up in, shooting baddies as they come to you. This was the point where it really didn’t feel like a fair fight… but then it just gets even tougher from then.
When I first looked this game up on How Long To Beat, it said two-and-a-half hours, and later, 3 hours. Well, in my time with this game, I’ve been playing it for 15 hours and I’ve certainly not finished at all.
But the frustration is a killer, since you can get to the point where you’re literally one bullet away from completing a a chapter, and then you get killed by someone you didn’t spot creeping around behind you, and you have to restart again! I don’t mind playing a game to completion if it’s at least going to give me a fair fight, but as the game gets crazy-hard, it really should be a bit more ready to refill your hearts more often, for example.
And then I got to Node 8, where instead of going for nothing but Node 7’s 10 levels in a row without dying completely – which was bad enough – this started off with 15! I know that, even later, comes Core 100, which is 100 levels in a row… But, like Duncan Bannatyne on Dragon’s Den, I’m out. There’s a fine line between fun and banging your head against a brick wall.
I’ve uploaded one piece of my own gameplay from this game above, as it’s so repetitive, but I’ve linked another guy’s walkthrough below.
It does occasionally have humourous moments, though, such as when one baddie accidentally kills another one, because the first one has got in the way of the bullets.
Overall Score: 7/10
Superhot: Mind Control Delete is out now PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Important info:
- Developer: Superhot Team
- Publisher: Superhot Team
- Players: Single player campaign
My rig:
- Intel i7 Six Core Processor i7-5820K (3.3GHz) 15MB Cache
ASUS® X99-A: ATX, HSW-E CPU, USB 3.0, SATA 6 GB/s Motherboard
16Gb Kingston Hyper-X Fury DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 8GB)
4GB nVidia GeForce GTX 980
250Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540Mb/sR | 520Mb/sW)
3Tb 3.5″ SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200rpm 64Mb cache
16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
CORSAIR 750W CS Series Modular 80 Plus ® Gold, Ultra Quiet
Creative Sound Blaster Z 5.1 PCI-E Soundcard – OEM
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1
Zalman Z11 Plus Black Mid Tower Case
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.