Buy Hard Reset Extended edition

Game used to be great.
Then they added the DLC free. The DLC is obligatory. The game won't launch if you turn it off. The DLC is buggy, causes CTD and also affects the stability and performance of the main game. I don't want the DLC, I want the the original game. There's a reason that this DLC was left out in the first place (do some reading yourselves) - it was unfinished and not up to par.

Hard Reset is an old-school FPS shooter with a heavy dose of cyberpunk. As Major Fletcher in the year 2436, you have to defend Bezoar city - humanity’s last sanctuary from an unrelenting hoard of machines, while uncovering a more sinister plot unrevealing in the background. To do so you have two state of the art rifles at your disposal, one based upon kinetic projectiles and the other based upon futuristic energy tech.

There is no cover system and no crouching, this means quick decisive action is the main style of play. By upgrading your weapons with various modules, you can unlock different firing modes; such as shotgun and rockets for the kinetic rifle, or lightning and homing plasma for the energy rifle. There are no handholding tutorials either, so you have to figure out how best to utilise each module against your enemies. Learning to think on your feet is essential.

You can draw good comparisons between this and the Painkiller series, with each stage divided in multiple sections, defended by waves of robots; progress is inhibited until every last bit of those cursed bots are put down for good. So if you never liked playing Painkiller, this probably won’t fare much better with you.

Bezoar is a vibrant city with many dangers lurking every corner, hovercrafts blanketed the skies as neon billiards flickered under the heavy rain. Every stage is unique and distinct from one another, you can tell a lot of attention was placed in level designs. Which is a shame since the cityscape is mostly devoid of life and you will never see many people during game play, the robot menace are fairly uncreative too and they tend to become bullet sponges later on.

The main game consists of 7 levels while the free Exile DLC bought that up to 12. An initial play through lasts around 7-12 hours to complete, while it will take at least 40 hours or more if you aim to complete every achievement. An arena mode exists but it isn’t fully integrated with the Steam leader boards, so I didn’t bother much with it.

Lastly, a “re-mastered” version was released called “Redux”. Logic would assume that Redux will be superior, but with arguable improvements on graphics, a gimmicky “cyber katana” that added no value to actual game play, a seriously dumb down level of difficulty for console babies and no additional modes or levels, you are probably better off buying this cheaper version for now.

In conclusion Hard Reset is an underappreciated gem that can be a bit rough on the edges, but it is ultimately an enjoyable experience to play and a refreshing take on the old school formula. All FPS enthusiasts should look out for it during sales.

Great shooter with oldschool flair. Similar to Wolfenstein The New Order. Get the Redux edition of Hard Reset instead though.

A 12 mission corrider shooter where you can't jump over barriers or crouch under obstacles. It took me around 16 hours to complete it on normal. There will eventually be 10 weapons to choose from, but most likely you would focus on 3 or 4. I went mortar/shotgun at the start then switched to smartgun/mortar/rpg at the end. Not any really jumping puzzles, but I did kill myself from falling or jumping somewhere I shouldn't have a few times. The game uses a checkpoint save system. At worse, i think you would have to repeat 5 to 10 minutes of content if you died. I think there was a boss battle at the end of each mission and I think there was at least 3 big boss battles. My old 2008 XP computer did freeze and crash several times during gameplay, usually when there were a lot of enemies on my screen. It is unlikely I will play this game on harder difficulty levels or probably play the game ever again, but for $1.49, I definately think it was worth the money.

A solid shooter from flying wild hog, as expected. This game came before the shadow warrior reboot and you can see the improvements they have made over time. Regardless, it plays very nice.

It's a good shooter game. I liked the cyberpunk setting, but the world felt too static, even though you can use the environment to kill your enemies. The story was nothing special and couldn't made me care what exactly is happening.

I liked the weapon mechanics and I'd probably play some more in order to see how the game feels if you decide to develop the blue weapon. The enemies were interesting (although not very diverse) and challenging enough that I couldn't pass a single level without dying.

I'd recommend the game if you approach it without high expectations and just want to shoot, destroy and have some fun.

Hard Reset is like some strange and wondrous artifact from an alternate universe, one where technology continued to advance after the 90's, but none of the corridor shooter tropes we see in games nowadays ever caught on. It combines oldschool FPS gameplay from the Unreal era with shiny modern visuals, then adds a light sprinkling of modern shooter mechanics (a regenerating shield meter, two basic weapons that can be upgraded into several very different forms) that enhance the core gameplay without overwhelming it. Graphic novel-style cutscenes between levels tell a serviceable cyberpunk tale that provides context for all the shooting, but once the action starts, the story elements have the good grace to step aside and let you get down to business. The levels are open and reward exploration, with secrets to find and explosive items scattered about that let you set up environmental kills - another nod to oldschool design.

If you have even the slightest interest in oldschool FPS's, you owe it to yourself to check out Hard Reset.

If you're reading this, you already amaze me. This game is ludicrously obscure.
Simply put, Hard Reset is Bulletstorm done right. Made by 35 people on a budget of less than 5 million bucks, you can see the personality in this game.
The gameplay is a solid case of using the environment to your advantage, and the soundtrack is some of the best cyberpunk-esque you're going to hear in a long, long time.
The graphics put a very large number of triple a games to shame, and all in all the gameplay, sound design and aesthetic come together to make grenading a large group of enemies very, very, very satisfying.
My one and only complaint, as you tend to have with budget titles, is that the story was visibly handled after the rest of the game, being told almost entirely through a comic book style series of cutscenes with voice acting (that sometimes doesn't even match up with the guy voicing the character in gameplay) that doesn't exactly go out of its way to win any awards.
Aside from all this, the developers get major kudos for releasing extension DLC a good 8 months after the game's release completely free.

Hard Reset is a beautiful snack for folks who love retro shooters the likes of Doom, Serious Sam and Duke Nukem, but anyone else should steer clear, as this thing is a hell of an obscure niche title.

Edit: If you're asking whether this or Redux is better, the answer is that Redux nerfed difficulty a fair bit and added a sword weapon straight out of Shadow Warrior.
That's it.

I picked this up for cheap and put it on the "do play" pile. After it finaly got to my notice I went through it and was plesently surprised. This game might not be perfect but in some respect it gives plenty of good shooting without most of the modern flaws that plague FPS genre.

Let me get the downsides off first. The game is extremely linear. This is pretty much a coridor shooter with few hidden nooks and crannies that serve as game's secrets. There is very little variety in what you do, you go from one area, flip a switch fight enemies and move on. This in itself isn't a bad thing as long as the shooting is good, which it is. Another issue (which does have a fix) is the checkpoint system. You can't manualy save, for the most part it works fine but on harder difficulties there are sequences of encounters where there are no checkpoints in between and each encounter requires near flawless execution to proceed. It can be frustrating repeating the same bit over and over, just to die by one small enemy that sneaked past you. Thankfully via console you can bind a key to set your own checkpoint whenever you like. It works but beware, I wouldn't set checkpoints mid fight, do it only between encounters or you might end up corrupting your save file. With this little tweak the game becomes substantially better, because the biggest source of frustration is removed.

*Press ctrl+~ to bring up the console*
-Type: bind *whatever key you want* save //this will make that key set a checkpoint at that moment

-Type: bind *whatever key you want* load//this button will become quick load button to your checkpoint

Difficulty in this game is done right surprisingly. Game's harder difficulties are legitimately hard. They aren't unfair hard, you have plenty of tools at your disposal to deal with anything the game throws at you at any point, but if you are playing the first time and don't know what to upgrade...well you might run into good amount of frustration.

Upgrade system is simple and robust. Killing enemies and collecting nano will "level up" Fletcher. Then you can spend points upgrading one of your two guns or your suit. The two guns aren't really two guns. Each gun has 5 modes(you start with only one each), and each mode has 2 different fire modes. In essence you have 10 guns, with half of them using one ammo pool while other half the other.You get to pick which gun you get next, and which upgrades for it via the upgrade system. If playing the game the first time that can be a bit unfair because some upgrades are clearly more beneficial over others without the game giving you any sort of hint of what you need.

Every enemy type has simple ways of dispatching it, but the game gives little hint to what you need to use, you have to figure it out yourself. That can be harsh when you never knew you had to upgrade emp blast for the blaster or stasis for the mortar. However once you figure this out, it's a very pleasant skill based shooting experience. Speaking of enemies, beware, even the smallest enemies will rip you to pieces in seconds on harder difficulties. You will die if you let anything get near.

Overall this game was a really pleasant expereince, a little bit of take on Painkiller formula but not quite there yet. Still if you like a skill based shooting where you can get plenty of challange, this is the right game to play.

I kind of hate this game. Playing it well requires constantly harnessing the diversity of your arsenal, and I am just not good at fighting with more than one gun at a time. It is often difficult for me to assess a situation rapidly enough in the middle of battle—while my brain is consumed with the effort of dodging, shooting, and navigating to health and ammo pickups just in the nick of time—to see an opportunity for a better tactic represented by one of my other weapons.

So it has been an extremely frustrating experience, particularly because I stubbornly insist on sticking with Hard difficulty to the end (just regular Hard, mind you; there is worse available, if you wish for it). I can only play one level per session because it's such an exhausting ordeal, and I've spent the entire latter half of the game wishing it would end already.

Yet, objectively, I recognize that Hard Reset is a very good first-person shooter of the old school style. There are moments when I actually manage to adapt and perform well, and it is quite gratifying. I certainly do recommend it. Just be honest with yourself about who you really are before you make that purchase.