1. CannibalBob

   9

   Hard Reset takes a futuristic throwback to brainless, unforgiving shooters of the 90's and blends it with some modern paradigms to give us a polished, enjoyable action-fest!
   
   I especially enjoyed the visually spectacular graphics, specifically its detailed environments, bright, colourful effects, discernible enemies and plenty of explosions! Throw in some fast-paced music and bassy sound effects and explosions, and you get a very visceral and satisfying FPS.
   
   Being an indie game, I was surprised to enjoy such a smooth and beautiful engine. Some of the modern paradigms worked really well, including the leveling system coupled with nostalgic secret-hunting. Find more secrets, and you're rewarded with better weapons and skills via the leveling system! The only drawback was the checkpoint save system was too restrictive, inhibiting the player from "messing around", and the interface can be laggy, especially when one wants to switch weapons or jump. It took me 7.4 hours to beat Hard Reset on Hard Mode, and was excited that I can replay the campaign to max out my level with an "Ex" mode!
   
   Overall, I loved the experience, and really liked the game's design, but felt that it could've been perfect with a smoother interface and less restrict save system.… Expand

   • Helpful? 3 of 3 users said Yes.
2. CHIHWAHLI

   8

   This game is fun and plays differently depending on what weapons you chose to upgrade. There are 2 main types of weapons:
   
   Standard: shorgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, mine, etc
   Energy based: railgun, plasma ball gun, electric bomb thrower, etc
   
   Each weapon has 3 upgrades that give extra effects or even new posibilities. Like the railgun being able to use X ray vision and easily hit targets behind objects. Or homing electric balls, etc
   
   The interface with doors and upgrade terminal is cleverly using the PC mouse. If your pointer is close to the terminal screen it changes to a small pointer and you can click the button to open the door.
   
   The level design has destructable surroundings, that could help you defeat enemies.
   
   The enemies are not limited to a few, but the boss fights are nice! They are huge!
   
   Between the levels there is an animated video telling the story in between. Interesting way of drawing.
   
   This game stands out in the whole list of doom clones. Certainly entertaining.… Expand

   • Helpful? 3 of 3 users said Yes.
3. dawgman67

   7

   Ok I just finished this game after 16 hours of gameplay on the normal difficulty. It wasn't too bad of a game. Pretty much what I expected after playing the demo. The visuals are great. It's a very colorful game. The action for the most part if fast paced though can get repetitive after awhile. There are 2 major bosses that take a while to beat. There are 2 major bad points in the game. 1 the storyline sucks. Doesn't make much sense and I found myself just daydreaming why the story was being told between levels. 2 the ending leaves a lot to be desired.
   
   All in all a decent game and for what I paid $5 on steam it was a nice stop in between more advanced games like Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3.… Expand

   • Helpful? 3 of 3 users said Yes.
4. Pandarve

   3

   Hard Reset has great graphics, great musical score and an excellent cyberpunk setting, the surroundings have a strange kind of beauty to them despite the dystopian setting. The story isn't anything to write home about, doesn't make any sense and has some very low-budget voice-acting but since it's all about shooting robots, it doesn't really matter any way. The player is equipped with two firearms, one energy-based and one projectile-based, and these can be upgraded at terminals that are placed throughout the game's maps. The player can also upgrade other statistics related to the avatar's health and shield and unlock new abilities. Health is regained by picking up health-boosts and shield regenerates automatically. Oddly enough, the shield doesn't block all damage and you will loose health even if your shield is up to full strength. Why the developer didn't just call it "armour" is beyond me. Unfortunately, this game is marred by seriously bad design decisions that eventually made me give up on the game. First of all; the developer has a habbit of blocking the way behind you and then throwing wave after wave of enemies at you. It doesn't just do this once but most, if not all, battles begin and end in the same spot, namely with your back to the wall spamming your area-of-effect weapons at kamikaze robots until they stop. There are some interesting enemies like the one that charges you but once you figure out how to deal with him, he's not much of a challenge. Most of the time you'll die due to a lack of health rather than tactical ingenuity on the AI's side. The other problem is when you upgrade your character and choose the wrong types of upgrades, it will make the game very difficult later on as you'll at some point discover that you're lacking the right type of weapon for the job. It also isn't always clear what an upgrade does and you might find an effect to not be worth the hard-fought point but that's just too bad because the game doesn't allow you to respecify your character, forcing you to not only walk around with a less-than-optimal load-out but also barring the player from experimenting. Weapon switching is rather slow for such a fast-paced shooter and the way you switch between weapons and their mods is confusing in the middle of a difficult fight. Not to mention the designer's decision to not include a savegame system but instead rely on checkpoints, often forcing you to replay sections of the game just to get back to the part where you died. All in all, Hard Reset does some things right but it gets the fundamentals all wrong, resulting in a shooter that's more frustrating than fun, especially on higher difficulties.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 3 users said Yes.

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