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Hotline Miami: Steal this game.

Started by Acceptable, October 31, 2012, 11:46:17 PM

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Acceptable

This game is pretty good.



Hotline Miami plays like an arcade game and feels like an arcade. You're assaulted with a cacophony of lights and sounds, showered with points and bloody explosions and gripped by the boundless malaise of a greasy, goatee'd paedophile staring at you from behind the change desk on Scarborough pier. It's also insanely violent.

There's not an ounce of fat on this game: the controls are perfect, everything is fast and clean and the entire experience is geared towards teaching you how to win. It's not some fucking religious experience (see: Every review so far), it's just in an indie game that isn't lazy.

Play it, and return here to wax lyrical.

Josef K

Beat me to it.

It's a marvel. I can't put my finger on what's so great about it. It's a fantastic merger of top down arcadey GTA of old with the meticulous planning and next to no health of the Hitman games. I think some reviewers have gone overboard on how 'arty' it is, with one claiming it's "the first postmodern game" but it's just a no frills joy from start to finish.

KLG-7A

It's not post-modern, tell them to fuck off back to writing school.

It's a great game. Planning is precisely what's great about it. It's rare to have such a good mix of strategy and action. As you get towards the end of the game you really get in touch with the game mechanics and find yourself playing like fucking D.A.R.R.Y.L. on the final missions.


Acceptable

You certainly start out playing it like a stealth game, with intricate plans and steady progress, but eventually something clicks and you become this whirling dervish tearing through the levels like an errant helicopter. As you improve you start to rely on intuition and muscle memory, then you get cocky, and then game gets faster and more violent. When things start to go wrong because one guy with a shotgun interrupts your methodical surgery you react...and 30 seconds later you've got the bloody remains of half to map at your feet and your pulse is through the roof.

I think the magic of this game is that it rewards being utterly jammy, it's like one of those pixel-perfect platform games except it constantly whispers in your ear "Go on, you can take him, go on...IT'LL BE AMAZING!"

mikeyg27

You know what's underrated about this game? The narrative. As in, there's just enough to add a further level of intrigue to proceedings, but there's not enough to get all intrusive and distracting. It's all just done in the background. This game has a habit of weirding me out between levels, after pumping up my adrenaline levels during them.

You know what's properly rated about this game (as in every review of the game raves about it)? The soundtrack.

madhair60

So far I don't get it and it seems a bit wanky.

It's clever that the dev has come out in support of torrent users, though - it pushes a Google for "Hotline Miami download torrent" back to about page 7 with all the coverage.

mcbpete

Quote from: Acceptable on November 01, 2012, 01:42:37 AM
You certainly start out playing it like a stealth game, with intricate plans and steady progress, but eventually something clicks and you become this whirling dervish tearing through the levels like an errant helicopter.
At the moment I'm near to that clicking moment - there's times that I can crash into a room (Knock out one guy in front of the door, a second by chucking a weapon and a third by the ol' neck slit ) but I'm still mostly playing it sneaky sneaky which I think is holding me back. Bloody loving it though, great soundtrack too.

mikeyg27

Quote from: mcbpete on November 01, 2012, 06:30:20 PM
great soundtrack too.

Something I didn't realise until I read about it yesterday - all the tracks are available as .ogg files in the data folder on your hard drive. I'm listening to 'Silver Lights' (the song from the intros with the people in masks) right now!

Obel

Typical. Best game out at the moment and no fucker is playing it.

Hotline Miami really is amazing. The individual parts are okay, but the way it comes together just makes this perfect whole. One of those games that rarely comes around and in between them I start to lose hope in gaming, but when it does come around it revives my passion for it in a big way.


madhair60

I don't see what the fuss is about to be honest.  It seems trite to me.

Obel

Well not everybody is going to be pleased eh?

I just think this game deserves more attention. There are same old same old FPS's like your Black Ops games being released constantly that by this stage seem so soulless it's depressing. For a little indie darling like this to pop up and go unnoticed because it's 2d and difficult is a little saddening for me.

madhair60

It's getting loads of attention. Tons of articles, discussions. All over the forums. I think it's as omnipresent as a small PC game can be. I can't seem to get away from it.

Obel

Okay then I want some people I can talk to about it other than internet goons! Are you happy now!? SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE!?

Viero_Berlotti


mikeyg27

Quote from: Obel on November 20, 2012, 10:18:49 AM
Typical. Best game out at the moment and no fucker is playing it.

But I HAVE played it. I'm just waiting for the Mac version (which should be very soon) before playing it again. I even bought it for my brother's Birthday present and got him hooked too. It's really fun watching him play and die.

Kolba

There aren't many games which can absorb my time these days, but Hotline: Miami has been one of them. It's just never been so satisfying to be a slick baseball bat swinging, door slamming, projectile throwing, uzi firing killing machine.

Quite a surprise as well, because I was never much a fan of Cactus' other games.

I've already completed the game with the hidden, more revealing ending; what does everyone think of the story? I managed to convince myself that I was playing through the game a second time so I could fully absorb its nuances and make sense of its vageries, rather than playing through a second time just because I hadn't had my fill of head bashing throat slashing.

Still haven't found 3 masks yet either. Another good excuse I suppose.

Obel

What masks are you missing?

I tend to wear Rasmus and trundle about looking for secrets. Currently picking up the pieces for the hidden ending myself and trying to nail A+'s. Harder than it looks!

mcbpete

Quote from: madhair60 on November 20, 2012, 10:19:44 AM
I don't see what the fuss is about to be honest.  It seems trite to me.
In what regards? I can't think of many other 2-d action-strategy stealth slaughter-em-ups of recent times.

madhair60

£3.49 on Steam for the next 10 hours.

madhair60

Yeah, this has really grown on me. The short goes I had before didn't let me get into the flow of it. I grabbed it on the Steam sale and have been playing it a fair bit since then. I really like the way you learn how to approach any given situation with surgical precision, then execute everyone in the building in about ten seconds, heart pounding.

Obel

Hooray! You've come around!

I think if the music and art style don't bring you around at the beginning (which they did for me, I bought the game after just hearing the track Hydrogen - never even played it) then I suppose you'd need a few levels to get into it.

I've put a good 12 hours into it. Slowly working my way through the achievements, gotten all the puzzle pieces and seen the true ending now. Some of the levels are so hard to get A+ on though! Can't wait for the sequel/DLC

madhair60

"Finished" this now - loved it overall, didn't find it even close to being affecting, or mind-blowing like some people seem to report.  Didn't make me think about my actions in the slightest.  It's a great little game and nothing more.  Might get the puzzle pieces, but probably not since it seems to be a rudimentary pixel hunt.

Blinder Data

So I'm playing this game as it was cheap on GOG and it's pretty great. The music is brilliant, it's proper thrilling at times and hugely satisfying when you perfectly execute a takedown of a stage.

There are a few problems as I see it though. The controls could be tightened up, it's massively frustrating when an enemy runs straight into you with his gun and you can't shoot him because fuck knows. Also the AI is pretty variable, some thugs run out of rooms that are far away from the action while others a few feet away stand like nothing's happening. Other times they manage to whip round at lightning speed and blast you away from twenty feet before someone right in front of you has registered your presence. And I don't quite understand the rating system, often getting C+s apart from that one time I got A- because I dunno, maybe I'm just crap at it.

Also it's very hard. Unforgiving and near impossible to work out the best course of action. I'm on the 'final' level now and I know how to kill the jaguars but the lady just runs at me and slices me up. I have no comeback. I have repeated this process several times and would like a remedy please.

Is the answer just hit her first?

She can only throw things at you if you're close enough, otherwise she has to run and try to stab you. As I remember it.

Rolf Lundgren

Resurrecting this thread since it's out on PS3/Vita.

Got it the other day and quickly raced through 8 or 9 levels then got stuck. It's the first level with four different sections to it, spent about an hour getting increasingly annoyed and increasingly determined to complete it and when I finally did the bloody game froze. Trying to let my heart rate calm down before playing it again.

It took time to pick up that the game is all about learning patterns rather than just ploughing into a room and beating everyone up like you can early on but the gameplay and mechanics are really satisfying. The speed is a double-edged sword because though I love running into a room and taking out 3 guys in a couple of seconds I equally dislike being mauled by a dog I didn't even know was in the level. The targeting system is also a bit off but not sure if that's just a PS3 thing.