Why I Love... Superhot's Replays

How posing and playing with time in Superhot makes your dreams of becoming an action hero come true.

- Alex Spencer

The dream of shooting games is that you get to be the action star in your own private John Woo movie. John McClane in your own Die Hard. Arnold Schwarzenegger in basically anything he’s in. But not all of us are good enough with a thumbstick to make these fantasies a reality.

A confession: I’m talking about myself here. The actual pointing and shooting part of FPS games has never been one of my strengths, so I fall consistently short of my cinematic ambitions. Luckily, Superhot offers a solution. It’s a shooter where time only moves when you do – meaning you can stand still, with an enemy frozen in your sights, and consider your next move. You can gradually line up your next shot, as bullets crawl towards you like they’ve been fired into honey.

It’s like being able to see the Matrix. With a little practice, you can string together a perfect sequence of headshots, dancing between the bullets and not even looking back to check your opponents have fallen. But from the inside, when you’re just nudging the thumbstick to advance time a couple of frames per second, it doesn’t feel all that impressive.