First launched eight years in the past, SUPERHOT VR isn’t just a notable VR basic—it’s nonetheless a fantastic sport. Though it by no means bought a sequel, it left sufficient of a mark for not only one however a number of non secular successors. The upcoming Quest sport Motion Hero from Quick Journey Video games revisits SUPERHOT’s progressive mechanic with a sensible premise. However to satisfy or surpass its predecessor, Motion Hero might want to take it to the subsequent degree.
In the event you’ve by no means performed Superhot, it’s constructed round a core mechanic the place time solely strikes ahead when you’re bodily transferring. So for those who keep utterly nonetheless, the sport more-or-less freezes. Meaning if there’s a bullet heading in 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 determination about what to do subsequent. It’s principally ‘bullet time’ from The Matrix, however you’re accountable for it.
Motion Hero isn’t precisely making an attempt to cover its inspiration… actually I’d say the distinctive ‘time strikes whenever you transfer’ mechanic from Superhot is the actually the center of the sport and the principle cause to play it. After enjoying Motion Hero for myself I can affirm that dodging a bullet because it wizzes inches out of your face—whereas its path via time is immediately 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 you’re an motion film stunt particular person doing all these loopy strikes since you’re being filmed for a film.
It’s a intelligent concept. Ranges are packaged as ‘motion pictures’ which encompass a collection of scenes strung collectively beneath one umbrella. For example, there’s a degree that’s roughly within the useless of Indiana Jones, the place you’re in an historic temple-like surroundings capturing baddies. Every ‘scene’ inside the ‘film’ is a second of gameplay the place you’re tasked with dodging, capturing, and so on.
Once 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 necessary factor, then escapes).
This construction not solely will increase the cohesion of the scenes, but in addition permits for a bunch of various settings, enemies, weapons, and so on., by letting gamers bounce from one ‘film’ to a different.
The essential ‘time strikes whenever you transfer’ mechanic is executed nicely, and customarily feels as superior because it does in Superhot.
However to actually ship one thing that appears like a next-gen model of Superhot, Motion Hero wants to noticeably bump up the range and polish—in any other case, why not simply play Superhot as an alternative?
The entire premise of Motion Hero is that you simply’re a stunt particular person appearing out spectacular motion scenes in motion pictures. 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 and marketing tells us this sport is meant to be a “blockbuster VR FPS with explosive set items and cinematic design,” then these components ought to actually be in place earlier than displaying off the sport. With Motion Hero deliberate for launch by the top of this 12 months… 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 in addition as a result of the extent design—the particular eventualities the participant has to overcome—had been very nicely crafted. They had been difficult and assorted all through.
Motion Hero has confirmed that it could actually nail the basic mechanic, however it’s going to want to tighten up its degree design and convey extra selection—in weapons, enemies, and eventualities—into the combination 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 very distinctive mechanic and builds it atop a framework that permits for limitless creativity in what sorts of eventualities the participant might be put in—be that up to date motion, horror, sci-fi, western, and 1,000,000 different prospects. However when it comes proper all the way 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.
