Somewhere in the Universe there exists a world absolutely out of its mind. It is filthy rich in three things:

Iron

Electricity

Pure Violence

This is a world where Serious Sam had a child with Unreal that later fell in love with, and reproduced with, all things Steampunk. This seems to have happened for ages, and the world is now amassed with beautiful madness. This is a world called Hard Reset. Hard Reset is a first person shooter that Call of Duty blowhards are probably going hate, and middle aged FPS players are going to love. It’s a hard-to-pass, no bullshit shoot-em-up shitfest, and you’d better not buy it if you like to snipe.



Turn on your imagination

You’ve just been dropped right in to the middle of a beautiful world with nothing but a couple of fun-to-use gigantic guns. Every time you clear a room of bloodthirsty machines that want you dead, you will find yourself holding your breath and barely hanging on to life. This game is hard, and you are going to like it for that because you like it hard. After an extremely intense five minute firefight, you wait for the silence of the machines to make sure they are dead. Slowly the familiar sound of the city’s ubiquitous advertisements come back. Breathe in the smell of burning metal and blood. It smells good, but nothing is more rewarding than the visual—all around you, you’ve violated your environment. You used the massive explosive hanging on the wall next to you to kill off the machines, but the one across the room? You blew it up just for fun. You destroyed every piece of electronic equipment in the room and joyously watched the electricity bounce off the iron walls and floors as you did it. It has been an absolute pleasure to just trainwreck everything in sight.

Here is the good part: You leave the room and the building it was in. You enter the streets of the city. This is the real reward. Everything you just did was a waste of time, because here is what you want. Here are the visuals that are so stunning, so detailed and so complex that you will feel small. The level design in this game is jaw-dropping.

An alcoholic cop something robots

Honestly, I don’t know what the the story behind Hard Reset is—even after playing it for hours and trying somewhat to pay attention to the Max Payne-style comic cut scenes. Something like man vs. machine, and you’re an alcoholic cop saving your people. Perfect, good enough. I don’t know more than that and I don’t care. I just want to go kill more machines and smile at how pretty it is while I do it.

I’m not going to want to play this game through a second time, unless I get a new video card or display. It would be one of those “Oh! I want to see what this game looks like with my new gear!” types of things. It pushes my hardware to the limits to create all the amazing visuals it packs in. It’s not a game for a squeamish PC, but that being said I’m running it on the highest settings using year old hardware.

Hard Reset:Extended Edition is selling at an unbelievably low $3.75 right now. The game is made by former developers of CD Projekt Red. For anything under $20, this is a very high quality indie FPS. The amount of money you were going to spend on a pint at the pub could buy you hours of entertainment.

If you like first person shooters and are in the mood for classic FPS rip-roaring fun with a sexy Steampunk twist, you have found your new drink.

Lol, hard.