This review is based on the game played at the highest possible FOV setting in order to test performance. Lower FOV settings may differ in performance.
I adore old school shooters. The fast-paced gameplay of classics like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D combined with the gargantuan amount of secrets hidden within every wall of their maps were and still are some of the most entertaining factors of this genre. Recently, there has been a pretty big resurgence in the genre. With Flying Wild Hog’s post-Hard Reset title, Shadow Warrior in 2013, and id Software’s reboot of the Doom series just last month, the style of old school FPS is back and stronger than ever. But with this resurgence, is there any need for Hard Reset anymore?
When Hard Reset originally released back in 2011, the old school shooter genre was pretty much dead. Earlier that year, Gearbox released the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever, a game so awful that it only further solidified the thoughts that there was no return to the shooting style of the ’90s and mid-2000s. Then Flying Wild Hog released Hard Reset and everyone jumped, screamed, rejoiced and cried at the genre finally returning and not being horribly broken and offensive like Duke Nukem Forever was. But is Hard Reset still good? Well, kind of.
Hard Reset: Redux is a slight remaster of the extended edition of the original PC game, and features the original game and the Exile expansion pack. Both are blended together in such a way that I was unaware the first game had even ended by the time I was finished with Exile. The entire game has been ported to the newest version of Flying Wild Hog’s RoadHog engine. As a result of this, the game now utilises more advanced lighting, shaders and effects. It also completely rebalanced the original version’s gameplay and enemies to create a more polished experience for the current generation.
When starting Hard Reset: Redux, it’s very, very hard to see Hard Reset as a current-generation console game. The cyberpunk, dystopian city of Bezoar looks drab and uninspired in the game’s jump-started introduction. The initial segments of the game feel reminiscent of a game cobbled together in FPS Creator or Game Guru. Even the combat feels boring, making the opening sections of Hard Reset: Redux feel like a monotonous forty minutes of bad tutorials. Everything, including the secrets in its opening section—especially when compared to say E1M1 in the original Doom— feel as though they are part of a proof of concept engine test instead of being levels designed for public consumption. In fact, most of the first hour’s secrets are simply hidden behind a wall that blows up when shooting the barrel in front of it, which is extremely likely to explode anyways thanks to the fast and frantic style of gameplay.
Every secret in this game is a pick-up. You’ll either find health, ammo or upgrade points to use on the many upgrade terminals dotted throughout the game. You technically have three weapons: a standard gun that shoots bullets, an energy gun that uses plasma ammo and a new energy katana that you find halfway through the game. The two projectile weapons can be upgraded through these terminals allowing them to morph into other types of weapons, leaving your total weapon count at eleven when all are unlocked. Each weapon takes from a pool of ammo depending on if they are of the standard or energy variety.
Each weapon also has an unlockable firing mode. The rifle gets improved aiming, the RPG gets a tracking dot, the smartgun gets a lock-on that stacks and so much more. These weapon upgrades combined with the multitude of upgrades for health, shields and your HUD mean that to get every upgrade, you’ll have to either search through ever single nook and cranny and find every secret or play the game’s New Game+ mode.
You may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned anything to do with the narrative of Hard Reset. Well, that’s because plotwise, Hard Reset not only lacks in substance but is also extremely convoluted. Eventually, you’ll get to grips with the basic gist of what’s happening through the game’s motion comic cutscenes. The city of Bezoar is getting taken over by robots and you need to assimilate some AI in order to stop them, maybe. For the majority of the story this seems to be the plot of the game, with an ending which you would assume to be the ultimate destruction of the robot enemies or at least driving them out of Bezoar. Hard Reset, however, takes weird twists and turns, and creates an even more convoluted story. While each level seemingly ramps the stakes higher and higher, the game ends on some of the most disappointing flatlines and unsatisfying credits I’ve seen this generation. It just ends.
Graphically, this remaster can sometimes land in the disappointing pile as well. As I mentioned earlier, the beginning of Hard Reset: Redux looks pretty dated for a current-generation game even in this remastered form. Every object has this weird overly metallic sheen with everything looking a bit too caked in Vaseline compared to the dark, low-detailed surroundings leading to a huge dissonance between the environment and the enemies.
The further you get in the game, however, the better looking the game seems to get. Effects become more heavy and detailed with gunships laying into the ground with machine guns and brightly-lit trains speeding past sending brief glimpses of long shadows across the floor and up the walls. However, while the game gets better visually as it progresses, the performance gradually gets worse the further you delve in.
Performance throughout is generally quite varied. From the very start of the game, crowds of small enemies can cause the entire game to stutter when dispatched with the shotgun. The game’s overly large amount of explosive barrels dotted around the levels also causes the game to slow down and stutter, and when combined with larger groups of enemies, this slows down the game just enough to become an annoying experience. Late game missions, though, especially a mission set in a factory near the end, have moments where the game’s frame rate can chug for seemingly no reason. There isn’t any noticeable extra load from increased enemy counts, effects or heavily scripted sequences in the affected areas—in fact, the scripted boss battles seem to perform perfectly—Hard Reset: Redux just slows down.
For all the negativity though, Hard Reset: Redux is still a fun and enjoyable title. While sections of it, again mostly in the early game, feel as though the game is more of a proof of concept or tech demo for Flying Wild Hog pre-Shadow Warrior, there are still sections of pure, old school fun. Taking out large crowds of enemies in one massive explosion from your RPG, dashing away from a group of gunships as they rain down chaingun fire above you whilst firing a barrage of smartgun rounds into their hulls and taking on gigantic, towering robot bosses is extremely entertaining once you get a few extra weapons and abilities.
Later levels become larger with puzzles that require you to travel to all four corners of the map, collect items, press buttons and dispatch increasingly larger groups of foes as you progress. When everything comes together properly, you will have a blast playing the game. Even though Hard Reset has a lot of problems throughout its eight-hour campaign, including Exile, it is still an enjoyable enough experience worthy of being played by fans of the genre.
It’s a shame then that Hard Reset has come out now, in a generation that already has Flying Wild Hog’s successor, Shadow Warrior, and a world where we have the new Doom. Everything that Hard Reset does, minus the robot-filled dystopian cyberpunk future, is done better in Shadow Warrior. This version of Flying Wild Hog’s work, while spruced up, feels lacking compared to what they now offer.
Summary
Hard Reset: Redux offers a fun time. After the initial hour of uninspired boredom, Hard Reset starts to feel like a good old school FPS with the fantastic lighting, vistas and effect work that start to appear the further you get into the game. It’s just a shame that everything Hard Reset can offer you gameplay-wise is lacking compared to Shadow Warrior, from gameplay and narrative to visuals and performance. If it’s an old school shooter you’re looking for, it’s in Shadow Warrior and not this.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.