Heat Signature Reviews
A scrappy, open-ended, infiltrator's delight for the player who enjoys breaking levels more than beating them.
With a set of thieving and assassination tools that beg to be used creatively, Heat Signature's puzzle-like missions are great for jumping into for a few goes at a time to try something just crazy enough to work. That's when the fun stuff happens.
By making excellent use of its procedurally generated world and wacky gadgets, Heat Signature is a mission worth taking.
Heat Signature demands you learn its intricacies. When you finally do, the infiltration stories you walk away with are legendary
Heat Signature is one of the tightest indie action games I've played, packing a maximum amount of excitement into a minimum amount of time and space. My first few hours with the game were genuinely wonderful, filled with rapid-fire moments of delight and triumph. But when I hit my personal skill ceiling, I could do no more than repeatedly bang my head against it. I respect Heat Signature. I admire its success in accomplishing with such skill what it set out to do, and if it had been more forgiving, it wouldn't be as tense. Heat Signature's laser focus on in-depth mechanical play with high consequence is at once what made it satisfying for me to play and what made it easy to put down and walk away from when I hit the limits of my tactical creativity.
Suspicious Developments have distilled that chaotic kinaesthesia into something much smaller, smarter and spacier, which is absolutely to be praised.
It all feels worth it for those moments when there are a few seconds left on the clock and you are forced to take desperate action.
Heat Signature is such a surprise to play. It’s freedom, and cycling number of missions allow you to take the tools which you’ve been given and craft and experience all your own. The incredibly smart integration of your Steam friends finding their way into your game adds reference and value to the tasks you’re given. Heat Signature is easily one of my favorite games of the year.
Heat Signature looks like Hotline Miami to the untrained eye, but this is a game that rewards planning more than violence at a breakneck pace. Sneak your way onto procedural-generated ships and use a wide variety of gear to maim, steal, swap, teleport, decrypt, and simply break your targets. Heat Signature provides some amazing watercooler moments, but eventually players will hit a pretty high difficulty wall and the game punishes failure hard. Until then, there's a unique stealth action title to be found here.
Have you ever wanted to be Boba Fett, Spike, or Jubal Early? This is the game for you. Addictive, fun, and easy to jump in for two missions or 2 hours, you'd be hard-pressed to find a fan of science fiction or shooters who didn't like this game.