14 DAY TRIAL // 
Hard Reset came out of nowhere a few months ago, impressing lots of PC gamers with its lovely graphics and promising to deliver a high quality experience from a new studio, called Flying Wild Hog, composed of veterans from other Polish developers like People Can Fly, the makers of Painkiller or Bulletstorm, or CD Projekt Red, the creators of The Witcher.
Now, the game is finally out and people can see if Hard Reset can actually live up to the expectations of PC gamers, who want a cross between all the games mentioned above.
So, does Hard Reset manage to deliver a retro shooter experience, with tight gameplay and simple mechanics, or should it be put out of its misery with a full on headshot? Let's find out.
Story It's hard to talk about a story in Hard Reset, as it follows pretty much the same bare bone structure of Painkiller, for example, meaning you just go through levels and shoot everything that looks at you funny, or in this case any robot that tries to plant its metal into your fragile human body.
You play as Major Fletcher, a former Army veteran now handling security for a large corporation called … The Corporation, in a futuristic cyberpunk dystopia, where rogue robots controlled by an AI hive mind are threatening humanity in order to emerge the dominant force.
The Corporation is all that stands between Fletcher's home city of Bezoar and the robot hordes, but not everything is as it seems. Over the course of the game, the protagonist is set to deal with a robot breach into a district of the city and find its source, but it quickly becomes something much larger than himself.
Sadly, while the story in Hard Reset is pretty interesting in theory, the execution is convoluted and the animated comic book cut scenes don't really make it clear what's happening in the narrative. In a nutshell, you just need to run around and shoot robots until the end credits roll, just like in various other mindless shooters like Painkiller or Serious Sam.
Gameplay Seeing as how the story is hard to comprehend, Hard Reset needs to more than make up for it in terms of gameplay and, fortunately, I can report that it does just that. The shooting feels tight and precise, there's a lot of weapon variety, you can even level up your firearms and enemies are varied enough to keep you on your toes, especially on Normal difficulty.
You truly see the experience of Flying Wild Hog's members in terms of first person shooters with Hard Reset, as the gameplay is well balanced while the levels just beg you to take them into consideration when facing off against robot hordes. As such, you'll find a fair share of explosive barrels, but also various electronic displays or hubs which, when shot, send a surge of electricity flying around them, killing the smaller robots instantly while the big ones are stopped in their tracks.
You can also shoot cars that explode after popping enough bullets into them, while two main weapons are more enough to dispatch of your enemies, if you upgrade them carefully.
You collect three basic things in Hard Reset: health, obviously, as this isn't a modern shooter with regenerative health, ammo for your CLN rifle or NRG blaster, and NANO, a sort of in-game currency that allows you to upgrade your abilities or weapons.
When visiting special upgrade stations, you can choose to improve your standard weapon, or unlock new powers for it, like turning the regular rifle into a rocket launcher, or the NRG blaster into a sort of lightning dispenser. You can also upgrade your own body by implementing better armor or even a health or shield regenerator.
You'll certainly need most of these upgrades, as Hard Reset isn't an easy game, even on Normal difficulty, throwing at you legions of enemies at once, each with their own special powers, from small, razor blade-equiped ones to massive, human-like machines that can fire from a distance, not to mention a variety of hulking beasts that charge at you or throw grenades all over the level. As such, expect to die quite a lot if you don't learn to keep a good distance between yourself and the enemies.
These opponents are pretty smart, often using their large number against the player, so you always need to make sure you're using all the helpful items from your environment, while moving about to dodge their powerful attacks or lure them in traps.
Besides the levels, weapons and enemies, there's not a lot more than can be said about Hard Reset, as it keeps things extremely simple yet, in practice, everything goes better than quite a lot of games these days that want to throw all sorts of mechanics just to give players something new to do. In this game, firefights are short but intense, while the levels don't outstay their welcome.
Graphics and Sound Hard Reset is a gorgeous game, as Flying Wild Hog's proprietary Road Hog engine manages to shine, using all sorts of new graphics technologies to make its gritty cyberpunk world come to life. While you'll fight it out against robots at night, the world feels bright and colorful, thanks to the great design of your user interface as well as the variety of flashing lights and billboards decorating its levels.
Enemies are detailed, weapons effects look quite impressive, and there's not a single freeze or loading issue to be had. It's also worth pointing out that the game handles Alt+Tab situations very well, as it suspends its video rendering systems, restarting it when the player enters the game and immediately loads up the whole level just as you left it.
In terms of sound, Hard Reset is quite good, using a lot of futuristic electro music to highlight the nature of its world. There aren't any standout performances, largely because most of the times you'll be busy fighting it out with the legions of robots, listening to your own symphony of bullets than the actual music score.
Voice acting is pretty decent, with Fletcher having a good enough voice, although one of the characters you meet halfway through bears a striking similarity to the announcer of older Unreal Tournament games.
Conclusion Hard Reset is a cross between Bulletstorm and Painkiller, with a few sprinkles of Witcher in terms of the upgrade mechanic. The resulting mix is a great experience, especially for retro shooter fans that have awaited a new Painkiller or Serious Sam in recent years.
While it's not a particularly long affair, clocking in at around 5-6 hours, depending on the difficulty, Hard Reset is more than worth its $29.99/27.99€ price tag.
Hard Reset is now available on Steam, exclusively on the PC, and has support for both the regular mouse and keyboard control scheme as well as controllers like the Xbox 360 one.
