"Hard Reset" is a disgraceful game, a piece of caramelized shit wrapped into a packaging made of broken nostalgia. Honestly, the only game that was worse this year is S.P.A.Z., which was a "we were wondering why nobody made games like these anymore so we made our own" piece of crap game (It's our first game! Come on! Like it!).
The problem with HR is that it only pretends to be old-school. Sure it has waves of enemies, a non-regenerating health and secrets scattered around... but it also has an idiotic upgrade system, because every game must have one nowadays, it's probably written in the constitution somewhere. An upgrade system that rewards you if you scout every little corner in search of N.A.N.O., which breaks the flow of the game. An upgrade system that punishes you for making wrong choices like HUD upgrades and not taking the Plasma Mortar upgrades (the only decent starter weapon). It has regenerative shields as well... "Halo" style, because as we all know that game was a pants load of jolly good fun.
HR is the only meaty shooter that has nor blood nor meat in it... Wait, what? (excuse me for using such an outdated cliche). It also features a story that had been slapped on at the last minute, a story that makes no sense whatsoever. Yes, did I mention bad controls? It has that too. Strafing is as slow as a turtle and jumping is as low as maybe twenty centimeters, all of which makes dodging immensely hard and even impossible in the heat of battle, oftentimes too because there is simply no room for dodging. Exploding environment (barrels especially) everywhere that kill you more often than your enemies... And the sprint... the sprint, the sprint that makes you feel as if though you're approaching the speed of light since it can apparently twist the space-time around you, the sprint that always takes too long to activate, the sprint that makes the confusing graphics even more confusing due to the overuse of filters...
I give up, this game is a steaming piece of junk. Games like these make me feel ashamed of being a gamer and a game programmer / game dev to be.
P.S.: Oh, yeah, who's bright idea was it to make two weapons going for five each and NOT JUST MAKE ONE WEAPON GOING FOR TEN!?! Freakin' morons.