"Hard Reset: Extended Edition" Early Impressions

Hard Reset showed up in my mailbox unannounced and even though the game has been out for a while -- original release was September 13, 2011 -- I didn't know anything about it, so I went into the experience completely blind.

A couple hours in and it's safe to say it plays in same neighbourhood as Painkiller and Serious Sam and the early Doom games, only with a cyber/sci-fi sensibility.

Enemies most often run straight at you with no regard for tactics or cover. They simply converge. And, at least so far, it typically happens in some kind of "kill room" where the entrance slams shut the moment you enter the area and the exit won't open until you've killed everything that moves. Aim's important, of course, but Hard Reset also includes plenty of exploding barrels and electro-shock outlets to activate for at least some kind of planning to slow the attack of the robotic horde.

The graphic novel "cutscenes" got me thinking of the classic Dynamix title "Rise of the Dragon." But that's about all they've done so far.