Blog - 2021 September
2021 September 11th - Updating two days in a row!
Well, apparently finishing that Superhot article yesterday lit a fire under me, as I’ve now just finished up another draft, this time one I’ve been sitting on for two months! It’s an exploration into Industrial musician’s love of subverting format conventions in their album releases.
I’m a huge, life-long fan of Industrial, so I’m really happy to finally get some of my thoughts down in writing. Hopefully this is just the beginning, as I have several ideas for more essays in the near-ish future.
2021 September 10th - Superhot VR used to be amazing
So, it’s taken me six weeks and change, but I’ve finally gotten my opinion and analysis of the Superhot VR debacle into a coherent enough state to finally post. You’d think it’d no longer be topical by this point, but they’re still receiving the odd negative review over it on Steam, so I guess it’s still technically an ongoing situation. If the devs were planning to wait out the storm, it looks like they may still have little longer to go. It feels ridiculous to me, given just how much flack they’re taking, that there appears to have been no introspection on the behalf of the developer, but not surprising, considering “the time we’re living in”.
Outside of what this case means for gaming as a whole though, I am legitimately upset with their decision to neuter their game in the manner that they have. I played Superhot VR around a friend’s house a few years back, and I genuinely enjoyed it, I felt like it really fulfilled the fantasy of taking part in Hollywood shoot-outs. Looking back on my short time with the game, there were a few moments that stuck with me. Pulling guns out of the car trunk, snatching weapons out of the air, being forced to dodge bullets on the nightclub stage. And of course, one of the now-removed scenes, where you’re forced to jump off a building.
Said jumping scene was really effective. You spawn in, on the lip of a building, and the on-screen prompt tells you to look down. Following the instructions, you lean over and peer down at the ground below. It’s really simple, yet very effective in selling you the illusion of you actually standing on the edge. Next comes your next instruction: “Show Your Commitment”. It’s clear what the game wants you to do, and of course it’s just a game, there’s no real risk here, so you just need to step forward. And yet, for a few moments, I hesitated. It was actually pretty unnerving, and even armed with the rational knowledge that you’re perfectly safe, there’s still that instinctive voice in the back of you head telling you not to do it.
Looking back, I’m really intrigued as to why this managed to trigger a specific fear response in me, when everything else was fine. I mean, this is a game where you are getting shot at, attacked with swords ect, and yet that all felt fine, par for the course. I’m wondering if the knowledge that it’s all a game actually shaped my responses here, as after all, enemy attacks don’t phase me in most games, but almost falling off a ledge give me a mini-heart attack. So maybe it wasn’t alarming due to its realism, but because it goes against but we’ve previously been conditioned to behave in-game? I’d really like the explore that idea, as it opens up some fascinating insights into how we interact with games.
In any event, having this scene pruned disappoints me, because I know there will be many people in the future who are going to miss out on this fantastic moment, and that’s a damn shame.
