SUPERHOT has always been about repetition, and the word of the day with Mind Control Delete is ‘more.’
The latest version of the time-bending FPS, SUPERHOT: Mind Control Delete, certainly offers a lot more of the mechanics and style of the franchise that quite literally screams its name out while you play. And that will come as welcome news to anyone who has enjoyed the bullet time brilliance of the first. But all things must evolve, and the path Mind Control Delete takes you down not only improves on the original but in many ways makes it feel like an altogether more complete game.
The original SUPERHOT was a test of survival in short but frantic bursts. Its simulation concept had a larger story that was weird and unsettling, but the goal was mostly surviving a single level without getting hit by fists or bullets from anonymous red humanoids. The system worked — it was addicting and finally getting through enough enemies to hear SUPER! HOT! screamed out while your gameplay is repeated at full speed was legitimately thrilling. All of that returns with Mind Control Delete, but the new features make that a more sustainable and satisfying game.
Unlike the original’s one hit kills you gameplay mechanic, though, Mind Control Delete adds new mechanics that stretch that anxiety out considerably. The levels come at you in groups now, with a partially-decrypted computer screen warning you how many more levels you must endure to finish a block of code. You start each block with a ‘core” skill like the ability to charge enemies. It sets up a game structure more about surviving a gauntlet than a single level, adding a heart meter you need to preserve while also enabling “hacks” that create new abilities and gameplay options. One hack might make throwable objects explode like grenades, for example. Others let you start each level with a random gun or katana, or restores your health as you try to complete the onslaught of levels.
If there’s a complaint to be had, the levels get repeated a number of times throughout Mind Control Delete, though you often explore new parts of them by starting in new positions, facing newer, tougher enemies and using your learned hacks to stay alive. With that repetition, though, comes new opportunities to develop strategies for survival. SUPERHOT has always been a game with replay value, and Mind Control Delete’s new additions only add chances to explore. Even the fish are valuable weapons in this one.
That a game built on repetition and promising more can still surprise you is worth the playthrough alone, even if you’re not one of the millions that can get the game for free thanks to buying the first. The “core” mechanics and “hacks” not only open up the strategic element of the game, but their random implementation gently nudge you out of your comfort zone and into new ways to string abilities together. Halfway through the game, I found myself eschewing guns altogether and challenging myself to finish entire levels with a single katana.
Some hacks inevitably won’t jive with your particular play style, and the most challenging levels often involved quite literally overcoming your own aversion to utilizing these specific cores or hacks to survive. Not all of them can be winners, of course, but the sheer variety and open-ended play possibilities in a game with a very simple premise were refreshing.
I will say I did miss the experience on the Switch given the game’s effortless integration of motion controls, and the review version I played did have a few bugs and kinks still to work out. That those seemed to fit in with the glitchy graphics of the game’s style, though, eased the trouble it caused considerably. Years later, SUPERHOT remains a brilliant and innovative first person shooter, and if Mind Control Delete is the evolution of the simulated world the game exists in, we’re (very slowly and violently) headed to an increasingly entertaining place.