PC Gamer - October 2011

“UNLIMITED POWER!” cackle*

HARD RE SE T
HANDS-ON Pigs fly—Deus Ex meets Painkiller in Flying Wild Hog’s first FPS

I knew that glow from a mile away— the way it pulsated and beeped—I could practically smell the damn thing: a terminal. “Hack,” a quick prompt told me as I approached. Hardened by years of gaming experience, I braced for an obnoxious minigame. But nothing happened. And that’s when I realized that Hard Reset isn’t like other modern FPSes. Oh, sure, every electrified pore of this PC-exclusive—built by a team that includes former Painkiller devs—crackles with cyberpunk chic, but make no mistake: this is a game about shooting things. Does it move? Shoot it.

Has it stopped moving? Shoot it more. Is it a wall? Shoot it anyway—just to be safe.

Hard Reset doesn’t bother with filler. And why should it? After all, there are 50-foot-tall nanoma-chine statues of Greek gods that need killing.

The road to that big fat Greek showdown,

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DEVELOPER

Flying Wild Hog

LINK

www. flyingwildhog.com

however, could be a bit more straightforward. Hard Reset’s premise pelted me with jargon-laden curveballs until I was an ugly mass of black-and-blue. Here’s the gist, though: it’s the year 2436, and humanity has its hands full with a race of hyper-sophisticated AIs. As Fletcher, a security specialist for the monolithic Corporation, I was tasked with investigating a hospital break-in by some nefarious robo-ne’er-do-wells. Then the game started mentioning “The Sanctuary,” “exterior AIs,” and “quantum entanglement,” and, well, at least its gorgeous comic book cutscenes were easy on the eyes.

Up your arsenal
Really, though, I doubt Hard Reset’s
gunning for any writing awards. If you
were to grab a scalpel and go digging
through the game’s guts, you’d find tons
of guns, even more enemies, and little
else. This isn’t just a simple throwback to
the heydays of Painkiller and Serious Sam,
though. Hard Reset’s sticking its tongue
out at Halo and its ilk by giving the oh-so-
trendy two-gun limit a much-needed
makeover. Make no mistake: Fletcher’s
not some Rambo-style walking armory.
He does, however, have an ace up his
sleeve—or rather, about 20 of them. See,
Fletcher only carries two guns (one
mechanical and one energy based), but
they’re essentially handheld

It’s the year 2436, and humanity has its hands full with a race of hyper-sophisticated AIs.

Transformers—both in their ability to, you know, transform, and their subtle use of explosions every 2. 3 seconds.

Fully upgraded, both of your guns have five unique firing modes, each of which branch into upgrades and alternate firing modes of their own. Sound confusing?