First launched eight years in the past, SUPERHOT VR isn’t just a notable VR traditional—it’s nonetheless a terrific recreation. Though it by no means obtained a sequel, it left sufficient of a mark for not only one however a number of non secular successors. The upcoming Quest recreation Motion Hero from Quick Journey Video games revisits SUPERHOT’s revolutionary mechanic with a sensible premise. However to fulfill or surpass its predecessor, Motion Hero might want to take it to the subsequent degree.
In case you’ve by no means performed Superhot, it’s constructed round a core mechanic the place time solely strikes ahead if you end up bodily transferring. So when you keep utterly nonetheless, the sport more-or-less freezes. Meaning if there’s a bullet heading on your face and also you freeze in place, the bullet freezes too. That offers you time to look at the scenario and make a calculated choice about what to do subsequent. It’s principally ‘bullet time’ from The Matrix, however you’re in charge of it.
Motion Hero isn’t precisely making an attempt to cover its inspiration… in truth I’d say the distinctive ‘time strikes while you transfer’ mechanic from Superhot is the actually the guts of the sport and the primary purpose to play it. After taking part in Motion Hero for myself I can affirm that dodging a bullet because it wizzes inches out of your face—whereas its path by way of time is instantly associated to your actions—is nonetheless an extremely distinctive and interesting VR expertise.
However the place SUPERHOT had an deliberately low-poly look and consisted of a setting that was little greater than a imprecise backdrop for the sport to exist, Motion Hero is constructed round the concept that you’re an motion film stunt individual doing all these loopy strikes since you’re being filmed for a film.
It’s a intelligent thought. Ranges are packaged as ‘films’ which include a collection of scenes strung collectively below one umbrella. As an illustration, there’s a degree that’s roughly within the useless of Indiana Jones, the place you’re in an historical temple-like setting taking pictures baddies. Every ‘scene’ throughout the ‘film’ is a second of gameplay the place you’re tasked with dodging, taking pictures, and so on.
Whenever you full a scene, you progress ahead to the subsequent one, and so forth, with a logical development that follows a primary film narrative (ie: hero enters temple, kills goons, stops unhealthy guys from stealing the vital factor, then escapes).
This construction not solely will increase the cohesion of the scenes, but additionally permits for a bunch of various settings, enemies, weapons, and so on., by letting gamers bounce from one ‘film’ to a different.
The fundamental ‘time strikes while you transfer’ mechanic is executed properly, and usually feels as superior because it does in Superhot.
However to essentially ship one thing that looks like a next-gen model of Superhot, Motion Hero wants to noticeably bump up the variability and polish—in any other case, why not simply play Superhot as an alternative?
The entire premise of Motion Hero is that you just’re a stunt individual performing out spectacular motion scenes in films. However spectacle is missing. The sport doesn’t really feel significantly polished visually or audibly.
After all that is an unfinished construct of the sport and hopefully extra polish comes later. But when the advertising tells us this recreation is meant to be a “blockbuster VR FPS with explosive set items and cinematic design,” then these parts ought to actually be in place earlier than exhibiting off the sport. With Motion Hero deliberate for launch by the top of this yr… there’s solely 4 months, at most, for that to fall into place.
It’s not simply visible and audio polish both. SUPERHOT succeeded not simply because it had a very cool basic mechanic, but additionally as a result of the extent design—the particular situations the participant has to beat—have been very properly crafted. They have been difficult and assorted all through.
Motion Hero has confirmed that it might nail the elemental mechanic, nevertheless it’s going to wish to tighten up its degree design and carry extra selection—in weapons, enemies, and situations—into the combo if it needs to have a real worth proposition when put subsequent to Superhot itself.
I, for one, would like to see Quick Journey Video games pull this off. Conceptually, Motion Hero is genius. It revives a really distinctive mechanic and builds it atop a framework that enables for limitless creativity in what sorts of situations the participant may very well be put in—be that modern motion, horror, sci-fi, western, and 1,000,000 different potentialities. However when it comes proper right down to it, amount isn’t high quality. The studio must nail the depth of gameplay earlier than it’s price leveraging the breadth of gameplay.
