TA Playlist Wrap-Up – Superhot

Thanks to this year’s GTASC winners for nominating five standout games for the October 2023 TA Playlist. Check out all the stats and community feedback from our playthrough of the featured game, Superhot!

The TA Playlist Team

Published 27 Nov 2023

SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT.

For the October TA Playlist poll, we turned the selection process over to this year’s Great TrueAchievements Score Challenge winners, which was a bit of an issue this time around since there were five of them: four from Beastmode (thearyadragon, TheOnlyMatto, Triple Triad777, and ElroyOMJ), the winners of the Team Competition, and then the Individual GTASC winner, Anti Champ.

Rather than pick four of the winners and leave the fifth out in the cold, we decided to open up the voting to an unprecedented five nominees, with each competitor picking a game that had helped them during their GTASC run or which they just enjoyed for other reasons. Three of the nominees were locked in a tight back-and-forth battle, but the ultimate winner was…

HSKULL55 said:

SUPER HOT
SUPER HOT
SUPER HOT
SUPER HOT
SUPER HOT

If you’ve played Superhot, you can’t possibly have read that post without hearing the voice flashing over the screen at the end of every level. The first game developed and produced by The Superhot Team, Superhot started as a contest entry in a 7-Day FPS Challenge but was so well-received that it was developed into a full game, making its way to Xbox consoles in 2016.

Superhot bills itself as a “Bullet-Time Puzzler,” where time moves only when you move. “No regenerating health bars. No conveniently placed ammo drops. It's just you, outnumbered and outgunned, grabbing weapons off fallen enemies to shoot, slice, and maneuver through a hurricane of slow-motion bullets.”
thefrozeneskimo said:

Not sure I'll ever be up to doing this game... looks too fast paced for me. My reflexes aren't what they used to be, haha.

Renki said:

Quite the opposite. The whole gimmick of the game is that time only moves when you move. That actually makes it the slowest-paced FPS ever made, in my opinion. Give it a go; it's fun!

If you watch any full-speed replays of levels, it seems like everything is moving impossibly quickly, with bullets whizzing past and enemies swarming from all sides, but once you’re in the game, time slows to a crawl. As you stand still and look around the level, enemies (and bullets) move at just a fraction of their normal speed, which takes a chaotic Jackie Chan-style action sequence and slows it down to a fluid ballet of movement and destruction.
HawkeyeBarry20 said:

Back when GWG was good, we got this game one month, and what a gem it was. Shooting enemies, throwing weapons, or even throwing random crap is so satisfying. I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of moving, learning to manipulate the tiniest of movements to help you survive was so much fun. I also like how the challenges made you a better player to really help you along as you played the tougher difficulties. The game is a blast that I would recommend to everyone.

Levels are presented in a sort of simulation-style 3D world, with weapons and throwable objects colored a glossy black, enemies as red humanoid shapes with a low polygon count, and pretty much everything else in shades of cool white that look like a model that hasn’t been painted yet. These stylistic choices were first made out of necessity – during the 7-Day FPS Challenge, they allowed the developers to focus mostly on gameplay and ignore things like detailed character models – but they also serve the game’s meta-narrative, which ends up taking surprising twists and turns as you progress.

As the game opens, you’re looking at an old-school text-based MS-DOS-style file menu when a message from your friend invites you to play this new game that’s being passed around, supposedly something that was pirated from a corporation’s secure servers. The limited color palette and crystalline-looking enemies enhance the feeling that this is some retro piece of software, like if you’d asked a 1980s Hollywood action movie what a mid-2000s virtual reality game would look like.

After the first few levels, the game crashes back to the desktop, and your friend sends you a patch to update the software and allow you to continue. After a while, though, you start receiving messages from the game itself, representing “The System” and warning you not to continue.
BigBanjo K said:

When I first got this in GWG, I reached a point where some dude tells you, "This is not a game; quit playing for your own good" or something
And I actually did quit playing for a few years

Those who decide to ignore the System’s warnings find themselves going deeper and deeper into the game, unlocking new abilities but also blurring the lines between the player’s character and the System itself. If your mind is connected to the System, and the System has control over your brain’s inputs and outputs, are you still you? Or have you become part of the System?
Grumpertson said:

It's the most innovative shooter I have played in years!

SysAdmin says:

GOOD DOG.

This unorthodox first-person shooter was nominated by ElroyOMJ, who called it a "very unique game that has a much deeper story to it than realized on the surface level. The bulk of the challenge comes after you beat the game with countless new ways and rules you can replay with to see if you actually mastered it, and that is also needed for the completion."

The first levels start out fairly tame, presenting just a few enemies charging directly at you that can easily be dispatched with a carefully aimed shot. As you progress through the game, levels become larger and more complex, with enemies spawning on all sides, and you often have to improvise with thrown weapons or objects until you can snatch a gun from one of the bad guys. Some levels are quite difficult, and minor mistakes can quickly end your run, forcing you to try the level again, which can be frustrating but also quite rewarding once you finally pass.

FF Square Enix said:

This game is Superhot! I have had this game in my backlog since it was free with Games with Gold; why have I not started it? It's truly amazing!! It's so addictive. Thanks, Playlist. Who knows when or if I would have started it, lol. Absolutely loving it!!

Even after clearing all 32 of the game’s normal levels, there’s still plenty to do as you move on to various challenge modes with time limits, weapons restrictions, endlessly spawning enemies, or other variations that you must master in order to complete the game. For some in our forums, this was a bit too much…
HawkeyeBarry20 said:

Only a few complaints, and the small one first, collectibles. They're not needed, impossible to find naturally, and the game is begging you to watch a guide to get them. There bigger problem in the game is the challenges, there are too many. The challenges create variety but not enough to warrant 13 playthroughs. It's odd that I enjoyed this game so much but at the same time I was done with it by the end. If you like this one play the sequel but it's not as good.

But anyone who does manage to make it through all the challenges and unlock all the achievements can definitely point to this completion as a badge of pride.

ManicMetalhead said:

I’m very glad to say I’ve actually managed to finish this game, although I had most of it done for a couple of years, apart from Hercules and a couple of other achievements. Finally managed to get it completed during GTASC.
That NORESTART challenge is a killer; probably spent just as much time trying to do that as I did most of the rest of the game.
Other than that, though, I really enjoyed the gameplay and the style. Making people explode like that was always fun and the challenges were indeed a challenge. A great game and a very satisfying completion.

There wasn’t a lot of chatter in the forums for this game, with more than the usual share of folks popping in just to say they had already played it or weren’t planning to, without much further commentary. As an older game without a really strong narrative, there wasn’t much discussion of the game’s storyline, but we did have some comments about the game’s difficulty.
Vok 250 said:

I likely won't be participating. I've gotten all the achievements with a ratio under 5.00 already. It's not an easy game to 100%.

In all, six of the game’s 25 achievements have a ratio greater than 5.00, with the rarest achievement, Hercules currently sitting at a whopping 10.21 ratio, or 2,043 TrueAchievement score. Which brings us to… stats!

We tracked three versions of Superhot this month: the console version, Superhot (Windows), and Superhot VR (Windows), though that last version is more like an entirely different standalone game with a very different achievement list. The VR version has also been removed from the Microsoft Store, and we haven’t seen many achievement unlocks in the past year. None of the achievements unlocked during October came from the Windows VR version.

In fact, it was a relatively low-scoring month for the Playlist in general, with only 373 tracked gamers earning achievements in Superhot, mostly from the console version. 104 gamers started the game during the month, with only six gamers earning the completion. The aforementioned “Hercules” achievement was the rarest achievement unlocked from that version, with exactly six unlocks during the month… probably not a coincidence.

That said, there were several achievements with fewer unlocks during the month, as it seems a few people were playing along with the Windows version of the game. Access Denied, Just, and We Can See You had two unlocks apiece, while No They Didn’t, Deep Web, One of Us, and We Told You to Leave were each unlocked one time during the month.

In all, the TA Playlist community popped a total of 1,309 achievements in Superhot during October, worth 30,396 GamerScore, or 95,710 TrueAchievement Score. That’s the lowest Gamerscore total ever for a month of TA Playlist, but it’s also the highest-ever TA Ratio, at ~3.149, topping the record of ~2.448 set by GoldenEye 007 back in April of this year.

Not surprisingly, very few people managed to both start and finish Superhot during October. The list of Shout-Outs for the month consists of just three gamers, so don’t bother clicking that link – we’ll just list them all here. Alchemist xPTKx had the best time, completing the game in just over 109 hours between October 1 and October 5, followed by EldritchAbyssal (192 1/2 hours) and WrierCrib24502 (342 1/2 hours). Congrats to all three of you and anyone else who’s completed this difficult game.

November is almost over, so we’ll be announcing the December TA Playlist game of the month soon, but there’s still time for you to take A Short Hike for the November Game of the Month. You can also drop a message in the Spoiler-Free and Spoiler Discussion Threads to tell us about your experiences on Hawk Peak, and advance your TA Playlist badge count at the same time. And don’t forget to vote in the poll for December’s game of the month, which closes tomorrow!

See you next month!

Thanks to BetaSigX20 for writing this Wrap-Up!

More SUPERHOT stories:

TA Playlist

Written by The TA Playlist Team

The TA Playlist is a monthly community event. Everyone votes on which of four games to play, and then we all play through it in the following month. There's a dedicated hub to discuss everything about the game, from story beats to gameplay tips – and of course, you can track your achievement progress during the month as well. TA Playlist was created by Mark Delaney and is now run by Miles, Nici and Chewie.