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Hotline Miami or I am in awe.

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,566
Codex 2013
Bro, the game doesn't even support controllers....

U trollin or wat homeboi?

69gtck.png
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
29,683
Location
About 8 meters beneath sea level.
That's the pirated unpatched release version. Both that and the alienware thing were broken and disappeared with the first patch. Controller should come back today or tomorrow in a new patch.

:hmmm:

Just got my first A+. On one of the later levels nonetheless. Groovy.
 

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,566
Codex 2013
Hmm, so how are the controls on the patched version? Maybe it's just the unpatched one that's wonky then? I bought it on Steam after testing the 'free' version, but I haven't bothered downloading yet because my ISP shapes my download speeds to more or less the equivalent of high speed internet from the 90s during business hours.

Also, what the hell is the Alienware thing supposed to do?
 

Eyeball

Arcane
Joined
Sep 3, 2010
Messages
2,541
Pirated it. Turns out I was correct - pretentious faggotass indie with wonky controls and unbearable repetitive bleepbloop music. The base premise is pretty badass, frankly - GTA without cars. Storm into gangster hideout wearing garish mask and Bruce Willis the fuck out of everybody there, rinse and repeat, interspaced with fairly well done little cutscenes illustrating what a loser your nameless PC is. It also balances well between being Agent 47 and Max Payne. You start the level by picking off the White Suit Dudes who're isolated or with their backs turned and then progress into hectic firefights once you've lost the element of surprise.

The dream sequences can suck my dick, though. "Oooh, fear us, we are mysterious weirdos wearing rubber masks, we know the secret to your existence oooh we've watched Donny Darko too often oooh!" These sequences add 300% pretentiousness bonus to the game and piss me off.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, it is extremely repetitive and plays largely like a puzzle game combined with a shit-AI exploitation minigame, with the added twst that the AI is somehow unpredictable in what it will and won't react to. Sometimes, I can sneak up on enemies no problem and clobber them, other times they turn around and oneshot me. Still, the shock-and-awe stealth kills are fun, but the game falls completely to pieces during gunfights. The mouse controls are unresponsive and the "lockon" mechanism is unwieldy as fuck and is really only of much use to me when targeting an enemy who's unaware of me. However, if the "lockon" mechanism gets made more useful in a later patch, this will immensely add to the value of the game for me, so that is something to look forward to.

There is one thing I REALLY like about the game, though - those situations where you burst into a room with two guys armed with shotguns, knock one guy down with the door, bludgeon the other before he can get a shot off and then stomp the first guy's head into the floorboards. These moments make me feel LIKE A BAWS!

Unfortunately, larger fights are only really winnable through exploiting the nonexistent AI due to the extremely poor targeting controls, and the short LOS make for a lot of ragequit worthy situations where you get shot from offscreen since the bad guys apparently have perfect 20/20 vision.

The game needs a level editor, by the way. It would be fun to play through other people's custom assassination jobs and beating their scores and the game is simple enough to let you do that. That would be the only thing that would justify it's high price tag.
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
29,683
Location
About 8 meters beneath sea level.
Hmm, so how are the controls on the patched version?

Dunno. They feel better but it might also be because I've become better at the game. First patch introduced a shitload of problems for me but game seems stable and relatively bug free with the second one.

Also, what the hell is the Alienware thing supposed to do?

No idea. Didn't do shit at launch and was promptly gone after the patch.
 

Kaiserin

Liturgist
Joined
Mar 14, 2008
Messages
4,082
Unfortunately, larger fights are only really winnable through exploiting the nonexistent AI due to the extremely poor targeting controls, and the short LOS make for a lot of ragequit worthy situations where you get shot from offscreen since the bad guys apparently have perfect 20/20 vision.
Sounds like you don't know how to play the game, because every level i've played(which is all of them, including the ones with the second character) has a 'route' that you can run through nonstop and get a full combo.

I think one of the bigger mistakes people are making is that they are not really grasping that while it's not quite a puzzle game, it isn't a normal action game either. It's about breaking down the situation, connecting the dots, exploiting the combo mechanics and timing, and then wrapping that all together into a game plan.

Some levels you literally count to a certain number before you start moving, so that by the time you finish clearing one room(which btw, you don't always clear a room, sometimes you move in, hit a guy, the move to another room, so that when you double back around those guys are chasing you in and you keep your combo moving ) you will come into another room just as the patrol of two guys with guns lines up where the one in the back is facing the door, thus allowing you to knock him down immediately and hit the second guy with a gun(who would have shot you if you were a second earlier or later) then clear out the other guys.

But yeah, very unique game, and it demands a unique playstyle.
 

Wulfstand

Prophet
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Messages
2,209
Shiiieeeeeet, and there I was, thinking that X-Com was this year's best title, when this jewel of a game hit me. Fucking GOTY so far, it gripped me to the screen like a sumbitch.
 

asper

Arcane
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
Messages
2,207
Project: Eternity
Aye, the game is really great. It's the first time I see this concept; bursting in, and using different combat mechanics, killing your way though a level in bursts of ferocious speed. Combat is fast and fun, combo's are satisfying.

The intermissions of buying stuff and the dream sequences add a lot to the game, without them it would become monotonous. I quite enjoy an action game like this taking time to tell a story.

What Eyeball wrote is nonsense. The game doesn't strike me as pretentious at all. The psychedelic story fits in well with the overall style. Anything that is stylized is called "hipsterish" nowadays, whatever that means. It's just a meaningless derogatory term, applied when the syle doesn't suit you personally and you're too lazy for giving any actual criticism. It has great music, stylized menus and pixelart, so go ahead and yell "for hipsters"; meanwhile, there is a quite good and extremely refreshing game hidden there.

The game has a certain style but is not "trying too hard" or indulding the audience at all. Story, gameplay, visuals, music all fit together. The combat mechanics and playstyle are not alike old games at all, let's hear those titles with similar gameplay to this one...? The speed of the combat, the succession of short, small levels are modern ideas. Like Kaiserin said, the deeper mechanics of the game aren't those of traditional action games at all. It's the first time I see brutal combo-combinations as fast succesions through a short level in a top-down 2d game. It's actually like old shooters were all taken apart in pieces and re-arranged in a completely different way. Moreover, pixelart of course isn't shit, but can create great visuals. In this case it fits well in the setting of the game, not to mention the gameplay: such fast top-down combat is best done with sprites.

At ten bucks it's a steal, I would myself be willing to pay more, if there would be a few more levels. I don't get how some may say this is a low price for such an obviously polished game. It's like the philosophy of oldschool games - no hand-holding - re-imagined in a combo-filled speedfest. Hopefully they will add more content in an expansion.

One of the best top-down games I have played, right there with Chaos Engine!

It feels good to play a really fast game again...

The melee by the way totally rocks, to the point of being a bit overpowered. Running into a room and punching two guys holding guns to death within seconds is a bit too ridiculous :D All I use guns for is for throwing them into people...
 

Kaiserin

Liturgist
Joined
Mar 14, 2008
Messages
4,082
The melee by the way totally rocks, to the point of being a bit overpowered. Running into a room and punching two guys holding guns to death within seconds is a bit too ridiculous :D All I use guns for is for throwing them into people...
Don't underestimate guns, they are great for drawing people into a crowd, and sometimes you can close a really big gap between guys in a combo route by firing a gun so that you don't have to go to them, but they come to you.

What I really love is how when you pick up a new weapon, you throw the old one. So if you kill a guy holding a shotgun using a melee weapon, you can immediately move over his shotgun and throw your bat *as* you pick up the gun. I personally find that chaining shotguns in this manner is a really fun way to play, and knocking people down gives you points *in addition* to the killing blow, so you get even higher scores using this method in my experience.

Heck, I'm currently experimenting with a strat where I move through and just knock people down on the first go around nonlethally, then on the return swoop I finish up the combo and get double the points. It's a lot harder to pull off, and I'm not sure if it's possible to get a full combo this way, but if so it just goes to show how deep the gameplay really goes in spite of it's mechanics appearing 'simple' on face value. The hallmark of truly good design in my opinion right there, not piling on features until something creates the illusion of depth, but making the core mechanics so good and fluid that you get a more or less entirely open ended number of ways to play the game. It's one of those things that as far as I've seen, the better you get, the more ways you find to challenge yourself, this extremely rare when it comes to video games!
 

Eyeball

Arcane
Joined
Sep 3, 2010
Messages
2,541
Unfortunately, larger fights are only really winnable through exploiting the nonexistent AI due to the extremely poor targeting controls, and the short LOS make for a lot of ragequit worthy situations where you get shot from offscreen since the bad guys apparently have perfect 20/20 vision.
Sounds like you don't know how to play the game, because every level i've played(which is all of them, including the ones with the second character) has a 'route' that you can run through nonstop and get a full combo.
Oh, you CAN blast through the levels like this. Unfortunately, the unbelievable shitness of the controls and semi-randomness of enemy LOS makes this an exercise in sheer luck far too often. As I said, if lockon was made to work better, the game would be ten times better as a result, although that wouldn't do anything to make it any less pretentious. Add to this the multitude of really obvious bugs that can fuck you over at inconvenient times and you have a game where you can play like dogshit but still win due to the enemy's shotgun not working at point blank range or them getting stuck behind doors or any one of a million 8-bit era flaws that might have been charming in 1989 but are inexcusable today.

Finished the "main story" now. Such as it was. The game has no story, no characters and absolutely no cohesion. You may argue that it is meant to be psychedelic and confusing, which is true, but it merely comes across as being extremely pretentious. Which is a shame, because the Magic Bonus Granting Rubber Mask thing is creepy and atmospheric and really adds to the game, but it just doesn't tie together at all. The GOG forums actually has a thread of queerdos trying to dissect the plot when the obvious truth is that the plot is deliberately minimalistic and half-baked so the game can focus on a certain style instead. It reminded me a bit of Manhunt at times, faceless nameless murderers in weird masks and tons of blood and guts, which it may have been trying to emulate to a point.

The only part of the story that was well done was the girlfriend angle. It was a nice touch to have her hang around your apartment after you found her.

I WILL say that it is actually very well put together as a tactical game - although it pains me to admit it, I had fun plotting out the different routes that I could take through the levels and ambushing White Suit Dudes without raising the alarm, even though the unicorn mask made this a non-issue once I got it.

How did you guys beat the level 15 end boss anyway? I had to exploit the aforementioned buggy shitness of the game, which allowed me to stand right next to him and not be harmed by his guns. Then it was just a matter of waiting until he reloaded, pick up a knife and cut him to pieces. What's the non-exploitation way of beating him? When I tried to tough it out, I died instantly half a million times.

Fair is fair - I did get like 4 hours of interesting splattery out of this. I will buy the game for 5 dollars come next sale and I would like to play some fanmade levels but fuck replaying this. Gameplay has too many frustrating issues and bugs to make that an enjoyable waste of time.
 

Commander Xbox

Learned
Joined
Apr 25, 2011
Messages
277
Unfortunately, larger fights are only really winnable through exploiting the nonexistent AI due to the extremely poor targeting controls, and the short LOS make for a lot of ragequit worthy situations where you get shot from offscreen since the bad guys apparently have perfect 20/20 vision.
Sounds like you don't know how to play the game, because every level i've played(which is all of them, including the ones with the second character) has a 'route' that you can run through nonstop and get a full combo.
Oh, you CAN blast through the levels like this. Unfortunately, the unbelievable shitness of the controls and semi-randomness of enemy LOS makes this an exercise in sheer luck far too often. As I said, if lockon was made to work better, the game would be ten times better as a result, although that wouldn't do anything to make it any less pretentious. Add to this the multitude of really obvious bugs that can fuck you over at inconvenient times and you have a game where you can play like dogshit but still win due to the enemy's shotgun not working at point blank range or them getting stuck behind doors or any one of a million 8-bit era flaws that might have been charming in 1989 but are inexcusable today.

Finished the "main story" now. Such as it was. The game has no story, no characters and absolutely no cohesion. You may argue that it is meant to be psychedelic and confusing, which is true, but it merely comes across as being extremely pretentious. Which is a shame, because the Magic Bonus Granting Rubber Mask thing is creepy and atmospheric and really adds to the game, but it just doesn't tie together at all. The GOG forums actually has a thread of queerdos trying to dissect the plot when the obvious truth is that the plot is deliberately minimalistic and half-baked so the game can focus on a certain style instead. It reminded me a bit of Manhunt at times, faceless nameless murderers in weird masks and tons of blood and guts, which it may have been trying to emulate to a point.

The only part of the story that was well done was the girlfriend angle. It was a nice touch to have her hang around your apartment after you found her.

I WILL say that it is actually very well put together as a tactical game - although it pains me to admit it, I had fun plotting out the different routes that I could take through the levels and ambushing White Suit Dudes without raising the alarm, even though the unicorn mask made this a non-issue once I got it.

How did you guys beat the level 15 end boss anyway? I had to exploit the aforementioned buggy shitness of the game, which allowed me to stand right next to him and not be harmed by his guns. Then it was just a matter of waiting until he reloaded, pick up a knife and cut him to pieces. What's the non-exploitation way of beating him? When I tried to tough it out, I died instantly half a million times.

Fair is fair - I did get like 4 hours of interesting splattery out of this. I will buy the game for 5 dollars come next sale and I would like to play some fanmade levels but fuck replaying this. Gameplay has too many frustrating issues and bugs to make that an enjoyable waste of time.

jesus shut up. its a 5 dollar cheap thrill you play for a day or so then forget, calm down brah
 

Eyeball

Arcane
Joined
Sep 3, 2010
Messages
2,541
And yet people are calling it GOTY and praising the non-existent story. Butthurt diatribes appropriate.
 

Wulfstand

Prophet
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Messages
2,209
Man, I hope they release new missions soon. If only there'd be a map editor available for the general public...

* SPOILERS * So do the last missions with the helmet guy take place in a universe that is parallel to the one in the main mission, or what? The reason for this question is pretty obvious for anybody that has finished the whole game. * SPOILERS *
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
29,683
Location
About 8 meters beneath sea level.
How did you guys beat the level 15 end boss anyway? I had to exploit the aforementioned buggy shitness of the game, which allowed me to stand right next to him and not be harmed by his guns. Then it was just a matter of waiting until he reloaded, pick up a knife and cut him to pieces. What's the non-exploitation way of beating him? When I tried to tough it out, I died instantly half a million times.

Kill the big cats by hiding behind the fountain and luring them towards you. Trial and error. Expect to die a lot. Lure knife lady away from boss. Toss medal in her face. Choke her a bit and when she wrestles free collect knifes and toss them behind fountain. Kill her and run to the fountain. Boss fires like mad, expands mags and reloads. At which time you toss a knife in his face. Rinse and repeat. Felt like a good old fashioned memorisation of patterns the like I've done since Nemesis.
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
Patron
Joined
Dec 24, 2008
Messages
1,871,744
Location
Land of Rape & Honey ❤️
Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
^ You can also throw the knives through the door, for the ultimate safest method.

* SPOILERS * So do the last missions with the helmet guy take place in a universe that is parallel to the one in the main mission, or what? The reason for this question is pretty obvious for anybody that has finished the whole game. * SPOILERS *

It is pretty explicit. "None of this is really happening, you know?" "Nothing you do from this point on has any meaning" etc.
Also remember how the guys in the beginning of the game talk about your girlfriend...
 

Commander Xbox

Learned
Joined
Apr 25, 2011
Messages
277
I thought the story was that the main protagonist actually died halfway through the game when you face the helmet guy, then you later see what really happened when playing as the hemet guy. cause after that happens the story becomes increasingly bizzare and nonsensical and the hallucinations and weird shit start happening. After that is some kind of hell/ dream before he dies. but i still dont get the significance of the 3 masked dudes
 

Peter

Arcane
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
1,570
Since we're talking about the story, what did anyone else make of the overly-friendly banter and the freebies from the cashiers and shit? Thought there was some shady business going on, drug pick-ups or something, but that part of the story didn't really go anywhere.
 

Eyeball

Arcane
Joined
Sep 3, 2010
Messages
2,541
It's not supposed to make sense. The game doesn't give you half the info needed to fill out its titanic plot holes no matter how much you theorise on the internet. The point seems to be to ignore the overarching plot and just enjoy the weirdness and carnage.

Hotline Miami has taught me a very important life lesson: When somebody is about to shoot themself in the head, it is unwise to stand right next to them.

Most hilarious death I ever had in a video game.
 

Peter

Arcane
Joined
Jun 11, 2009
Messages
1,570
Same shit happened to me :lol:

And yeah, I know the plot is very loose, just wanted to hear silly internet theories.
 

Brinko

Arcane
Joined
May 7, 2012
Messages
884
Real ending where you have to collect all those damn puzzles pieces hidden in the game to unlock it.
 

Kimprime

Novice
Joined
Oct 29, 2012
Messages
9
Location
North Korea
Probably the best game I've played all year.

Especially if you're into trippy hipster crap like moi.
Definitely worth the few hours it'll take you to beat it.

Oh, and the devs (a duo by the name of Dennaton Games) are pretty cool too, even offering support on TPB.
 

meh

Educated
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
349
Yes, definitely an enjoyable game. Finished playing yesterday when I reached the motorcycle guy boss, couldn't beat him, though I *think* I know how to do it. Also, I think my best score was B-, didn't get few masks and definitely didn't find all secrets. :(

P.S. Drive ripoff.
 
Joined
Mar 19, 2010
Messages
400
Location
Nazi Germany
Dead State Project: Eternity Wasteland 2
The first levels were pretty meh, but then in that first level with a dog I figured out how to chain some stuff together. Insanely fun. Reminds me of the better firefights in the Max Payne games, which I reloaded several times until I killed them in a sufficiently badass way. Only much more intense. If this gets a map editor and replay feature...
Also I can't get some of the songs out of my head. Worth every cent.
 

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