Mind Control Delete reforms Superhot's signature slow motion power fantasy into the shape of a procedurally generated roguelike. It retains the shiny spartan aesthetic, the bellicose narrative, and the most satisfying first-person shooter gimmick of the last decade, but the twists and tweaks behind its operation don't alter its basic complexion. Superhot felt euphoric when it was new. Mind Control Delete can only reheat that sensation of extravagance.
When Superhot finally released in 2016, its novel take on the first-person shooter allowed safe passage into best-of lists at the end of the year. Its concept, time only moves when you move, introduced acute planning and intense precision into a genre rife with frenzied action and conservative production. Superhot VR, an entirely different game based around the same set of principles, later used the same measures to disrupt the shooter-heavy virtual reality space. Mind Control Delete, the latest in the line of Superhot iterations, seeks to apply that same ethos to the ranks of roguelikes.
At its onset, Mind Control Delete seems identical to Superhot. Red Guys spill out of ethereal doorways into clinical white rooms and all of them want to kill you. Black objects in the room can be picked up and tossed at Red Guys to either disrupt their path or knock their weapon out of their hands. The player can acquire pistols, shotguns, katanas, and blunt instruments, each with unique functionality, to murder the red menace. Kill enough Red Guys and move on to the next level.
It is difficult to understate the explicit gratification from completing this process. All of the following can happen in five seconds that take place over two minutes: You line up a pistol shot to shoot a guy in the space where he will exist in two steps. You forget about the Red Guy coming up behind you, turning around just in time to toss your pistol into his face. That pistol throw makes the Red Guy release his katana, which you catch in mid-air and use to slice him in half. Turning around, a hail of machine gun bullets is slowly coming your way, so you can use the katana to reflect the bullet back to its point of origin. That katana then gets thrown into the legs of the Red Guy across the room, all while you grab that flying assault rifle out of the air and kill the final opponent over on the steps. Superhot then replays your beautiful bullet ballet in real time. It is majestic 100% of the time.
In 2016, Superhot’s thesis of Gun Kata x Max Payne was exactly what first-person shooters needed and also exactly what I needed. Playing Superhot was a singular experience and I couldn’t stop talking about the game to anyone who was almost willing to listen. Mind Control Delete has the uphill battle of finding its place in an even more crowded genre and with a set of mechanics that, while identically sound, have lost their novelty. Superhot is now in a different space and subject to a different group of peers.
After Mind Control Delete’s volley of linear levels comes Superhot’s requisite sequences of challenging the player’s need for violence. Then its presentation is rocked off its axis, briefly, until it settles into programmer’s paradigm of nodes that represent levels and strange, one-off sequences. Superhot now has a deliberately crude world map. Progression is opaque but it eventually settles into a rhythm. Advance through a collection of stable levels with procedurally generated enemy waves under the stress of limited hit points. Finish the node and then move on. Die, and repeat the whole thing.
Modern roguelikes thrive on unlocking irresistible abilities and then allowing the player to occasionally use a few of them. Mind Control Delete obliges this ethos with cores that can alter your avatar and hacks that can alter their world. Cores can add hit points or add abilities. Charge, for example, grants a rechargeable teleport rush to nearby enemies while Recall Force-pulls deployed katanas back to your hand. Between a series of levels, one of two hacks can be selected from a pool of around a dozen. Some hacks include increasing the player’s foot speed, boosting their melee speed, and automatically starting with either a katana or a random gun. More cores and hacks can be unlocked with basic progression.
Playing Superhot as roguelike through Mind Control Delete worked for me, at least for a few hours. I was comfortably recalling my dormant Superhot skills to move through its collections of levels with relative ease. At a certain point you can see through the code, pay attention to where the Red Guys are pointing their guns and move through their bullets with satisfying finesse. In this phase I was remembering what I loved about Superhot while appreciating the remixed challenge of Mind Control Delete’s remodeled set of rules.
Eventually, Mind Control Delete started pushing back. There were suddenly too many Red Guys and too many demanding levels. I could handle four in a row. Ten seemed unreasonable. Soon, however, I unlocked that Recall core and began to orchestrate death palaces where I would throw the sword into one Red Guy and then line up two others it could slice through on its return trip. That felt cool as shit. This mechanic kept my engagement up for another hour or so, but eventually I fell into the temptations of the external world. Through a mixture of tedium, a too-demanding challenge, and mechanics that didn’t fundamentally alter lessors I learned four years ago, I didn’t want to play Mind Control Delete anymore.
In theory, Mind Control Delete’s new suit of mods and mechanics seem sound inside their structure. Who wouldn’t appreciate making items explode like grenades, or katana-reflecting all bullets back after slicing just one? Remixing Superhot into a crackerjack collection of Hey Wouldn’t It Be Cool If mods should be a positive force of energy into this planet and yet I don’t really care to play it again. It is delivering an endless supply of challenges from a buffet when it may have only been equipped to serve a three course meal. I was good with the premise and it turns out I didn’t want anymore.
Genre classification also works against Mind Control Delete. Compared to other first-person shooters, then and now, Superhot is a divine revelation. Against Spelunky, Dead Cells, and Enter the Gungeon, Mind Control Delete can’t hang. Superhot is a wonderful first-person shooter and Mind Control Delete is an admirable effort at turning it into roguelike.
The question of value is also slippery. Currently, press material suggests players who purchased Superhot before Mind Control Delete’s release date will be able download Mind Control Delete at no additional charge. After Mind Control Delete’s release date, it will be priced at $24.99. It makes me curious what players who buy Mind Control Delete, having never played Superhot, will think of the product, and I would believe their response may be entirely different. Superhot ‘s peculiar novelty may be alive and well, after all. But only if you’ve never played it before.
Mind Control Delete reforms Superhot’s signature slow motion power fantasy into the shape of a procedurally generated roguelike. It retains the shiny spartan aesthetic, the bellicose narrative, and the most satisfying first-person shooter gimmick of the last decade, but the twists and tweaks behind its operation don’t alter its basic complexion. Superhot felt euphoric when it was new. Mind Control Delete can only reheat that sensation of extravagance.
