Buy Hard Reset Extended edition

A linear, no-nonsense, unrelenting struggle against electricity and exploding barrels. I highly recommend this intense FPS; styled after the silver-age classics while employing only the necessary fundamentals. For some, a de facto Doom 4.

+Awesome graphics
+Lots of explosions
+Great dark sci-fi atmosphere
+Breaking sound effects
+Angry enemies
+Cool FPS action
+Brutal weapons (2 only, but with modes through nice transformations)
+Free DLC (beware that after the DLC installation, it may erase your original game's checkpoints)

-Repetitive gameplay
-Uninteresting story

This game in my opinion is a rethinking of an "old school" shooter similar to Serious Sam or especially Painkiller. If you like either of those games at all, you can stop reading now and just buy and play Hard Reset especially given the price.

Many of the game play elements, points accumulation and level crafting are very similar to those of Pain Killer. But Hard Reset has a Cyberpunk/AI based theme and evokes the sensibilities of Blade Runner including Industrial/Urban rainy scenes in low light though it is has many scenes that are very bright. It actually has some truly beautiful though Industrially themed scenes.

It has many secret areas and collectable items. The character movement is fairly traditional though is not too stictly scripted -- you can fall to your death in many areas. There is some tricky jumping and climbing involved to access the secret areas (some are as difficult as those in Pain Killer). There is a weapons/armor crafting system that allows one to buy upgrades for weaponry that suites your style (the shotgun is authoritative, I like it).

While it is not an open world, and has no optional quests, the level design is very complex and involves significant maze running. You won't likely be bored by traversing similarly designed levels -- the scenes are all quite different. The visual quatlity is very good and the game performance is remarkably good and has no real bugs or jarring graphical artifacts. The AI's are very good and at higher levels will brutalize you. But this is well suited to an aggressive style of guns-blazing play style that starts in the first 30 seconds of play. It's a shooter :)

The game is very replayable which I think makes up for it's main problem -- it is a bit short and difficult (think of it as a Philip K. ♥♥♥♥ short story). So you might want to try it first on a difficulty level that is a notch down from your typical settings. You can replay the game at higher level using the weaponry you acquired on a lower level.

The best thing I can say is this: in my first play through, I was sorry that the game came to end.

Hard Reset is a nice shooter. The longer I played the game the more I liked it. It's actually a good sign if you finish a game and feel like playing it all over again right away. The problem with this game is, it's not quite easy. Some say the game is too hard, even on normal difficulty. I thought it was OK on 'normal' although quite challenging. I had to give up on my second play-through because I tried it on 'madness', the second highest difficulty. It was simply impossible. Nevertheless, if on sale, I very much recommend this game, if you don't mind a challenge.

Pros:
- nice graphics
- good level design
- interesting weapon design, your weapons can be rifle, shotgun, rocket launcher, grenade thrower and mine thrower at the same time

Cons:
- story
- can be tough at times
- impossible to survive on higher difficulties

PS: I played this game with controller so I don't know how it plays with a mouse and keyboard.

For people who actually read reviews and want to try this game. You need to take a deep breath and start this game on insane difficulty. If you are doing the old "First I am gunna play on normal" then do not play this game. I started on Insane difficulty and died a lot but the satisfaction of actually being able to completely finish almost every level on insane difficulty when just starting the game is pure euphoria. Everytime you defeat a bunch of these robots, saying the phrase "Hunk of Junk" feels all that sweeter (There should have been an acheivement for this. Why they did not even think of making this an achievement is the devs fault). 10/10, I am gonna start EX mode to start my revenge.