Review of an early version of Hard Bullet

Hard Bullet is an interesting preparation for a future game. The project is a set of several thematic levels and two modes to choose from. A sandbox where within a small location you can try out all the game elements, as well as three small arenas where you have to withstand the onslaught of enemies. From five waves on the easy difficulty level, up to fifteen on the hard one.

The player can choose two control styles. “Arcade”, where the weapon is reloaded by simply touching the weapon to the thigh, or “Tactical”, where everything is “like in life”.

Actually, the whole game is 4 locations, 2 modes, 3 types of enemies and more than 10 types of weapons. It will be difficult for an outsider to understand why buy a Hard Bullet, if there are analogues deeper, more diverse and, most importantly, better. The question is removed when the time dilation button is detected. At this point, Hard Bullet shows what the project was created for in the first place. To give the owners of VR headsets the same feeling that the shooter F.E.A.R!

Monolith’s 2005 game was famous not so much for its innovative SWAT vs. Bell Girl formula, but for its advanced artificial intelligence and explosive firefights. And all this with the effect of time dilation.

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Hard Bullet in its current state resembles F.E.A.R. generating spectacular firefights using the ability to slow down time. All fired bullets have a colorful plume. Any surface the projectile hits spews huge dust clouds. Items are blown to pieces, electrical shields shoot out lightning, killing nearby soldiers. And, most importantly, the enemies writhing under a hail of bullets, filling the space with their blood.

But without slowing down, a very average and not very exciting shooting gallery appears before the player. Enemies cannot boast of mental abilities, often accumulate in one place, shoot each other in the back, suddenly appear out of thin air. Plus, numerous bugs break the passage. You can rush around the tiny arena for five minutes in search of the last unfinished adversary and not find him. Because he failed in the texture. Or suddenly disappeared and reappeared three minutes later. For ten seconds. Or the next wave never starts.

At the current stage of the project, the waves are no different. No winding up complexity, no new scenarios. Just shoot, hit, throw objects, push enemies into each other. It’s fun at first, but after half an hour the player has time to try everything that Hard Bullet has to offer, and then they will have to entertain themselves by discovering new weapons.

Hard Bullet suffers from its own ambitions. The game has a claim to a real physical model of the world. For example, you can shoot a piece of wood, take a broken piece and smack it on the enemy. But in the heat of a hot battle, all this physics plays against the user, especially in tactical mode, where you need to realistically reload weapons. You get distracted by a lot of unnecessary elements.

Capturing enemies and weapons works through time. Weapons, enemies and all items are weightless. The spread of bullets when holding the machine gun with one hand is practically no different from the grip with both hands. Of course, all this is corrected by further polishing, but flirting with the mechanics of Boneworks not only does not work, they are not needed by Hard Bullet at all!

The arcade mode clearly shows that Hard Bullet’s strongest point is the generation of environmental chaos, so that chips fly, dust rises, and blood repaints the walls. And all this under the incessant battle in slowdown.

Diagnosis

Studio GexagonVR should focus on the single player campaign, which they promise to add. We must forget about sandbox modes, wave attacks and simulation of real physics. Even with further polishing, Hard Bullet will look like a pale shadow against Boneworks. But if you make a dynamic campaign, where sheer madness will be created at the levels, then the game will not only have the right to life, but also its own unique face. Those few elements that the creators of Hard Bullet really succeeded in, you will not find anywhere in modern VR projects.

Pros

• Wonderfully implemented time dilation mechanics
• Colorful skirmishes with accompanying destruction of the surrounding world and a bloody mess

Cons

• Bugs that break the game and the overall unfinished project
• Same type, tiny arenas
• All game content is exhausted in 30-40 minutes