Advance through a collection of stable levels with procedurally generated enemy waves under the stress of limited hit points.

Progression is opaque but it eventually settles into a rhythm. Superhot now has a deliberately crude world map. Then its presentation is rocked off its axis, briefly, until it settles into programmer’s paradigm of nodes that represent levels and strange, one-off sequences. Superhot is now in a different space and subject to a different group of peers.Īfter Mind Control Delete’s volley of linear levels comes Superhot’s requisite sequences of challenging the player’s need for violence. Mind Control Delete has the uphill battle of finding its place in an even more crowded genre and with a set of mechanics that, while identically sound, have lost their novelty. Playing Superhot was a singular experience and I couldn’t stop talking about the game to anyone who was almost willing to listen. In 2016, Superhot’s thesis of Gun Kata x Max Payne was exactly what first-person shooters needed and also exactly what I needed. Superhot then replays your beautiful bullet ballet in real time. That katana then gets thrown into the legs of the Red Guy across the room, all while you grab that flying assault rifle out of the air and kill the final opponent over on the steps. Turning around, a hail of machine gun bullets is slowly coming your way, so you can use the katana to reflect the bullet back to its point of origin. That pistol throw makes the Red Guy release his katana, which you catch in mid-air and use to slice him in half. You forget about the Red Guy coming up behind you, turning around just in time to toss your pistol into his face. All of the following can happen in five seconds that take place over two minutes: You line up a pistol shot to shoot a guy in the space where he will exist in two steps. It is difficult to understate the explicit gratification from completing this process. Kill enough Red Guys and move on to the next level. The player can acquire pistols, shotguns, katanas, and blunt instruments, each with unique functionality, to murder the red menace. Black objects in the room can be picked up and tossed at Red Guys to either disrupt their path or knock their weapon out of their hands. Red Guys spill out of ethereal doorways into clinical white rooms and all of them want to kill you.

Mind Control Delete, the latest in the line of Superhot iterations, seeks to apply that same ethos to the ranks of roguelikes.Īt its onset, Mind Control Delete seems identical to Superhot. Superhot VR, an entirely different game based around the same set of principles, later used the same measures to disrupt the shooter-heavy virtual reality space. Its concept, time only moves when you move, introduced acute planning and intense precision into a genre rife with frenzied action and conservative production. When Superhot finally released in 2016, its novel take on the first-person shooter allowed safe passage into best-of lists at the end of the year.

Superhot mind control delete powers