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Comment by erikb | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it looks like a great mechanic and I really love to see that mechanic happen. But I believe that FPS don't live from such a mechanic alone. The atmosphere and the balanced, interesting set of weapons is what makes the game or not. Sadly the video does not show much about that area of the game so it's hard to say if it will be super hot or not.

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The mechanic itself isn't actually that interesting. When they released the demo there was a discussion about how the mechanic works over on the destiny.bungie.org forum: http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=15007 — in a nutshell the time pausing mechanic doesn't really make the game a ‘puzzle’: it just lets you pause the game arbitrarily to let you line up your shots. This is why other shooter games (F.E.A.R, Max Payne) that have let you slow down time do so with finite resource mechanics to prevent overuse.

If the developers implemented any more interesting mechanics that let you rewind time, or made some enemies immune from time pausing then this might become an interesting game, but based on the demo it just looks like a shallow but pretty game, and is unlikely to be that much fun.

The time pausing mechanic also lets someone who has not played FPSs for half their life have the experience of being a god-like player who avoids all shots and gets a head shot every time. As someone who normally hates first person games and has no interest in practicing them for months on end, this is cool.

Yes, this really seems like it's an FPS intended for non-FPS players. I think that's the whole point - the game basically says "let's eliminate all skill from the FPS game and make it into pure strategy and see if there's a fun game there".

That's an interesting question - once you can nail every headshot, plan every evasion, and spot every foe with complete ease... is an FPS still fun? Can it be made to be fun?

Obviously, for an FPS fan for whom the skill is a core part of the gameplay, this might not be an interesting question for them.

Is it an option? I think if you move the time moves as well. If you aim badly you still need more time to get it right. You can just take a break in the middle by not moving at all. At least that's how I understood it.

In the original 7-day prototype, time moved at a crawl if you stood still, and accelerated to normal speed when you moved. Changing the view with your mouse did not count as "moving" so you have a lot more time to line up a shot. Of course you also have to contend with travel time of characters and bullets, which is not a wholly trivial task.

I think this is a good point. F.E.A.R did this amazingly well in the first instalment, and the way that the enemies worked with cohesive group strategies was pretty ground breaking for the time.

I think this title could benefit from something similar. It's a fine line to walk though, they have to be different enough to not just be a rehash.

If you play the demo, this game is extremely clearly not a rehash of the way bullet-time was used in F.E.A.R. or Max Payne.

In the demo, you could never fully "pause" the game. Even when you stopped moving, everything still moved, just very slowly.

The game most definitely turned into a puzzle in the same way that Braid's levels were puzzles. I can't see how you could say it was anything else.

IMO, the demo was a blast. If they made 30 more levels like the demo, I'd buy it. Adding grenades, swords, and interesting level designs is more than enough to warrant a purchase.

I can't stand FPSs normally but when the original prototype of Superhot made the rounds I loved it. Whether they can stretch it to a full sized game remains to be seen; they certainly seem to have a bunch of ideas on how to do it.

Just moving around in the prototype is a lot of fun, and that can go a long way for me.

I'm an avid FPS player (Counter-Strike, Quake, Doom, Halo, Far Cry) so I get what you mean about FPS games, but it's really not applicable. The issue is that Superhot isn't much about the "shooter" part of FPS. It's more of a puzzle game, and it's much more dependent on level design than balanced weapons (especially since weapon balance comes in to play most greatly in multiplayer).

I'd really suggest playing the demo they put out. I'm very excited to see a full game come out.

One could argue the same thing about Portal, but it was quite successful.

Have you actually played Portal? The game is dripping with atmosphere. In fact, I would say it is completely the antithesis of your argument: there is far more to it than just an interesting game mechanic.

I remember playing Portal without knowing anything about it. The game mechanics drew me in at first, but my interest waned as it got more difficult, because much as I like puzzle elements, I'm not a hardcore fan.

And just at that point the story took some turns and I was hooked. Amazing game, and I can't imagine the amount of tweaking involved to get the balance just right.

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I suppose a better comparison would be Narbacular Drop, which Portal is related to.

Portal would be interesting as a concept alone, but they packed it together with a cool story and characters like GLADOS that turned a cool mechanic into an excellent game. There were a lot of things outside of the puzzles, the warnings on the walls (the cake is a lie), etc... it was brilliant.

Portal flashed in my mind as I played through this game. Specifically, the idea of being thrust in to a world you don't yet know all the rules of and having to figure them out as you go. I'd almost prefer if they didn't flash the instructions in big letters and you have to learn the mechanics on your own.

I never played portal exactly for that reason. It seems to have a story, more than one tool to interact with, flair, etc. Therefore it's not a perfect example. But I actually believe there are probably a lot of games out there who simply won with one mechanic, like back in the day when Max Payne was a not-so-bad shooter with a simple mechanic added, to slow down the time until some "Mana" runs out. It really happens, I agree on that. But if I want to invest my money in a crowd funding campaign I don't bet on luck. I bet on things I believe to be success factors, which in this case is not a mechanic.

Portal was definitely more than one clever gimmick repeatedly reused though: puzzle design, plot (short as it was), and atmosphere were very well thought through. I recommend giving it a shot if you have a couple of hours spare next time the original is dirt cheap in a Steam sale.

It is worth replaying with the "commentary track" option afterwards: it is quite an education to find out how much play testing and rework effort goes into trying to get everything "balanced just right" even for a game of that size (which in turn explains where a chunk of the massive amounts of money and other resource ploughed into some larger titles goes, and why naively cheap game based kickstarters are a often bad idea).

If with this game the creators can wrap the other elements around their core gameplay artifact(s) in the same way then it'll be well worth a go, if they can't then, well, that is always the risk of kickstarter and it is your choice (valid either way) to, or not to, take a punt on that.

And don't forget Portal 2; the plot was much more fleshed out and followed a great story.

I am intrigued by this commentary track, looks like I'll be playing Portal tonight!

I usually don't mention Portal 2 until they'#ve play the original. Avoids the "I don't have time for both right so is it worth it?" thought! Mention Portal 2 once Portal has been played and they want more now...

There are various bits of the commentary when they discuss previous versions of levels and why they changed things after the play-testing sessions. A lot more effort seems to have been expended getting things as close to "just right" as possible than you might first think.

I still feel Portal 1 works very well as a kind of introduction to the much bigger (and in most ways better) Portal 2. I also usually suggest people play the first one, especially if they're not that into FPS games, because it's less of an investment and focuses a bit more on just the puzzles.

Also the story.

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