Quick Look: Superhot: Mind Control Delete

SUPER. HOT.

SUPER. HOT.

Damn, that sound board is only $99? Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

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thethethethethethe UNDERtaker

SUPER. DUPER. HOT.

Hope they do another VR game as well. These folks know how to make games fun as hell.

@dr_mel: Has brought out the twisty rockets!

I didn't even know where there was a new super hot, this is great thank you. Although I wish you could super hot and texture the levels, the grey color scheme just gets to be a total drag for me personally. The fact devs dont just give us easy access dev tools to make their games better / longer reaching is beyond me. This isn't the best example, but it is one of them.

I loved the first game and despite having a valve index I haven't played it in VR. I can't play anything in VR though because it makes me motion sick...

@steveurkel: If you ever feel like giving it a shot, Super Hot VR is known as a "safe game" as far as motion sickness is concerned. if it goes on sale in the future, might be worth giving a stab. Most people can get their "VR legs", it's just way more work for some than others. Also, a lot of people just jump into racing games and all sorts of nonsense and blow chunks all over the place and destroy VR for themselves for a while. I got ill once and just the thought of VR gave me mild nausea for a good month or so. Never had any more issues though. Took it slow and safe and now nothing can really get to me (unless it's just horribly made with bad controls and tracking etc.)

If you haven't made a serious effort to grow yourself some VR legs there are guides on how to do that as comfortably as possible. First and foremost, never push yourself. if your face gets hot, you get out cause nausea is about to set in. "powering through" isn't a concept that actually works. Your brain gets accustomed to VR over time with repetition, not through a feat of willpower. If you keep at it in small bursts with simple non-moving games and then slowly move on to something slightly more intense, sooner or later your brain is going to be just used to it and then you're good to go.

It's best to quit before you even get queezy, your brain has still had another stab at figuring out what the hell is wrong with the mismatch between eyes and what your balance system tells you is going on. It'll be used to it within a few weeks if you keep at it. Our brains are really adaptive to all sorts of stuff. Also easily fooled by VR it seems :)

Helluva strong start. I'd like to request all future videos start with some sort of command center shenanigans. Make it happen.

Best start to a quick look in a loooooong time. Fantastic

I had a pretty confusing bug in the very intro of this game where half the enemies were invisible and it made the game very hard. I thought it was a new mechanic or something, but couldn’t beat the section to progress because I kept losing all my hearts...got frustrated, came back later, no invisible enemies! It was very strange.

dog memory

Interesting strategy for a video site to make their videos unwatchable. Hope that soundboard catches fire.

If there's a Jeff video I really want to watch I'll download it and crop out all the shit with VLC so that I can actually watch the video.

I've been enjoying my time with this well enough so far, with some caveats. The first being: isn't it weird how a level will end without all enemies dead? When i'm super-hotting my way through scores of red dudes, I'm always planning on how to get the next one in the coolest way possible. To have the level suddenly end while one or two other dudes are in killing range is weird and awkward.

Two: music? There was one level that was pumping bass and the song sped up or slowed down as you moved. It added a layer of pressure and felt like a good reward for planning ahead and being able to act out your murder fantasy in real time, but I haven't heard it since. The game is really quiet and it feels boring because of it.

Three: the meta-narrative is fucking insufferable. Like holy shit, it's the weakest high school-philosophy bullpoo. All of this stuff admonishing you for engaging with the game, taunting you about needing progression meters to fill up to enjoy yourself, killing yourself at the end of each successful run... holy fuck. It's not clever. I get it, arcade-based video games are fleeting forms of escapism. Acknowledging a thing and then doing that thing anyway isn't commentary. They went from "bUt ThE vIdEo GaMe CoNtRoLs YoU" to "bUt ThE vIdEo GaMe Is MeAnInGlEsS" and have failed to actually deliver a thesis. It's just a suggestion of an idea. It's the kind of conversation I've had while high.

Why is the game only taking up like 60% of the screen? Is the game weird with fullscreening, or is this a stylistic choice from GB?

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After spending some time with this one, the decisions make a lot more sense to me than they did on paper. I think expanding on the systems and structure of the game was a good direction to go. It still feels really simplistic, which is a great thing. Being able to look at the game and immediately understand what it is, is part of why it works so well. Adding some power ups doesn't really muddy it up, but still gives it some flavor. And the runs--although very frustrating when you die on the last segment of them and have to start over on them--do provide some tension that really feels different than the tension in the first game, which relied on longer streams of enemies.

I also agree with Jeff that the replays are never quite as cool as you'll hope they be. I wonder if pulling the camera out of the first person view would help that. I guess that introduces a ton of potential issues though.

What would make it commentary? Would it have to be an open world game or something else to be able to comment on arcade-based games? Or would it have to say "Other arcade-based games are fleeting forms of escapism, but this isn't!"?

Yes, actually. That's the point of my comment. It would have to do something to elevate it beyond the exact escapism it is attempting to critique with all of the elegance of a stoned teenager.

@the_nubster: Is that a blanket statement or does it just fail in the execution? Is Spec Ops: The Line not a competent critique of war games by virtue of being a war game itself?

I haven't played much of this game, but I thought the point of the story was "You can keep playing if you want, but there's really nothing more here", kind of like Braid. How does that work without giving you the choice to keep playing for nothing? Maybe you're right that the message just requires another medium to be acceptable.

@eccentrix: A game like Spec Ops works because it isn't just a war game where you shoot brown people for America. It has emotional story beats, character development, and actively paints the PC as a bad person for just following orders. There are moments where you can avoid violence entirely but many players choose violence because that's all they know these types of games to let them do. It uses its mechanics and story to illustrate the dangers of "just following orders" and perpetuating violence. The game is built around that feeling and the structure of the game is one that's meant to be played out to completion for the full message. MCD doesn't do that. it's just a roguelite that sneers at you occasionally. MCD is like taking a recent Call of Duty game and putting chastising messages about war crimes and military violence in the loading screen; the message would fail because every other part of the game is a pro-gun, pro-violence, pro-patriotism, pro-military extremism experience. It doesn't use genre or player expectations to do or say anything interesting, it's just putting on the skin of a popular genre and trying to act like it's better than it is by acknowledging that it is nothing more than it is.

To make the point of another medium, it would be like saying that the first Friday the 13th movie is a deconstruction of Halloween (the film) because it was admitted to be a cynical cash grab made to cash in on the popularity of Halloween, right down to some exact shots. That wouldn't hold up, because it is what it is: a cash-grab. It was made to replicate the surging popularity of a genre in order to make money, and no amount of self-awareness from the writers, directors, cast, or crew would make it otherwise simply because they admitted to it being just a cash-grab.