toblix

Hotline Miami

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This game is coming out October 23rd:

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Apparently it's amazing and Twitter cannot wait to play it. Watching it myself, not know anything other than what the trailer tells me, makes me supremely uncomfortable. Does anyone know what kind of game it is, and what makes it so interesting? The massacre motif seems really gross – I guess they do something interesting with it?

edit: Okay, how do you embed Youtube again?

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I think you can just paste the url directly in, let me try:

In any case I'm looking forward to trying it. The gameplay sounds tense and fun, very easy to die, but there's also a strange impetus to go crazy and play without thinking. I like the style, kind of like the film Drive meets old school GTA meets GTA Vice City.

As for the violence? Yeah, it's grotesque, but some of it seems novel. Like the fact that you throw up after violently killing someone. There's a place for grotesque violence in art, depending on how it's approached. I liked Drive for example, and it had some sick stuff in it. But Winding Refn makes intelligent statements with his subject matter. We'll see if this does the same.

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It's available for preorder on Steam. I'm sort of hopeful that maybe the violence isn't just "let's do hyperviolence" but that it's integral to the style that the game has going on, like it was in Drive, for instance, and the reason I'm hopefuly is because the game is making great efforts at establishing a tone aside from the violence, what with the eerie animal masks and other touches of surreality.

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I never saw Drive so I can't say of the comparison, but I like the 80s vibe (Was drive in the 80s?) and reminds me of parts from Scarface.

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I've played through the first fifteen minutes or so.

The brutality makes it incredibly uncomfortable to play, but at the same time, the game design makes it incredibly addictive. You don't have health, you get hit and you die. It becomes very satisfying to look at a situation, plan an approach, then carry it out. That part of the game has an extremely quick feedback loop and is very well paced. Level restarts are instant, so just like Trials HD, you have another go, then another, then another.

What I've seen of the story is kind of creepy and uncomfortable. It hints at something else going on and your character eventually suffering guilt; or being asked to. Between missions, he visits shops and has friendly chats with shopkeepers, but they all insist on giving him stuff for free.

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Drive had an 80s vibe, yes. It's like Scarface but not over the top like Scarface.

That sounds uninteresting, probably why I never saw the film then.

Anyway though, this does look over the top and pretty neat.

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Well, no, it's not like Scarface at all except for the 80s vibe. I realize I worded that sentence badly. I don't know what it is about Drive that sounds uninteresting but it's a great movie and as someone with an avatar from Thirty Flights of Loving, which draws inspiration from Wong Kar-Wai's films, you might appreciate a movie that itself draws a lot of inspiration from Wong Kar-Wai.

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It's out, and everyone is rushing to play and praise it. I still can't get past the ultra-violence, and from what I hear it's not really doing anything interesting with it, either. Any comments or mini-reviews, those of you who've given it a shot?

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I played it at Fantastic Arcade. I was surprised by how fast it was. It really feels like a twitch shooter.

It's a lot of fun. I'm a fan of the ultra-violence myself. The thing about the violence in this game is that it's not a cheap ploy, it's the subject of the entire game. That said, I'm not expecting it to say some deep philosophical thing about the idea of violence, but horrible violence is a large part of the game experience.

I appreciated the use of negative space the most. Action doesn't build up at all, it happens immediately and brutally. Then you're walking around again, calmly.

Need to buy it.

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I'm on the last level and this game has fucking melting my brain.

Seriously, if you're thinking about buying it, don't read any hype shit, don't look at anything but the screenshots on Steam and just buy it.

It's amazing.

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I've never had a game make me feel more like the insane murderer parents are always worried their children might become if they spend too much time in front of the TV. The ultra-violence really bothered me at first, but now I'm on level ten and don't even notice it anymore. Instead, whenever I stop playing, my words and actions are so dialed up by the stress and adrenaline that it's like I've become the violence or something corny like that.

Still, I mentioned something about the easy flow of a good action game in the Far Cry 2 thread, but Hotline Miami takes the cake. After you've tried a level a couple times and gotten the layout down, the results of your inputs put the best fight choreography you've ever seen to shame. Kick the door open in some guy's face, pick up his lead pipe, chuck it at his buddy on the couch, beat both their faces in, scoop up a knife, throw it into a passing dog, etc. Even unloading a shotgun is epic when you lob the empty firearm at the last man standing.

I think I might stop for now, though. Sit down, watch some Star Trek, try to remember that peace is the only answer...

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Yep, the action really flows. In fact, the only way to succeed is to embrace that flow, that fugue state of a murderer barely hanging onto sanity. It's an interesting mixture of wanton violence and careful calculation. You're as vulnerable as everything else in the world so the whole game is about making a quick plan, getting the jump on your adversaries and then improvising when shit inevitably goes bad.

I'm also reminded of Super Meat Boy in the sheer amount of times I have to repeat certain parts. Not to mention the spring-loaded manner in which you start immediately after death, impatient to try a different tack.

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It hard locked my entire PC twice on the same level. ):

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It hard locked my entire PC twice on the same level. ):

No, it is frightfully buggy, to be honest. Botched controller support, botched redist packages, a couple hard locks, errors recording what masks and tiles are unlocked, the list goes on. The dev's working hard at it, but it's certainly not there yet.

I even had a couple instances in the level called "Hot & Heavy" (the eleventh one, I think) where I walked into an area that turned out to be an empty black box from which I couldn't escape, which drove me nuts because that level has a ball-crushingly painful opening (running past a gunman to take on two guys with knives). I was not happy to have to play that again once I thought it was behind me.

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I also dismissed this game a week ago because of all the violence in the trailer, but enough people said it was incredible that I picked it up. No regrets there!

I have this problem where I don't want a bad score, so I will be very risky and will die a lot. I probably spent twenty minutes on a single floor, but when it was over I had an A+ ranking which made it seem worth it.

Has anyone gotten any points in flexibility yet? It's always zero for me. Also, how do you kill dogs? It seems like you have to use guns on them since melee weapons pass over them when thrown and they basically teleport up to you to get at your throat. Maybe I'll try throwing a knife at them...

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I've only gone against one dog so far and was able to melee him with a knife. Though it's certainly trickier since they're much faster than humans.

I also only get 0 flexibility what's that about?

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Beat the game...

Now I'm playing as Motorcycle Man. He starts with a melee knife that you cannot exchange or drop, in addition to three throwing knifes that you can only pick up if you missed your target. There a lot of guys pointing their guns right at you as you go around a corner so I'm not sure how to proceed, other than maybe baiting them to rush me. There's a lot about this game that I can't tell if I'm doing something wrong or if the game is being buggy, for example I don't see why I can't retrieve my knives from my victims.

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n0b told me Flexibility is a joke, in that if you were flexible you would let some people live, but that's impossible in this game.

It sounds like a reasonable conclusion, but it could be wrong. U:

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I don't think it's that subtle. I think it's just meant to score you for using a variety of weapons, but it's been bugged since fairly early in the first alpha.

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Oh, that was my initial guess. I prefer n0b's idea. U:

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Also, fuck forced stealth levels and fuck boss fights that violate the game's established rules. That combined half-hour of gameplay is the only one I haven't enjoyed unconditionally, probably because it made me feel nothing like the badass the rest of the game assures me I am.

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Even though I found those sections to be frustrating I really appreciated the change of pace. It helps that after a failure you're right back in the game a la Super Meat Boy.

The sense of powerlessness in the hospital was very powerful. Coming out of there I had a really strong sense that finishing the game was an important thing to do.

Beat the game (again):

Now I'm collecting the puzzle pieces. Hopefully by the time I'm done that the game will patched and I can start getting some high scores. Really want to finish a level without being seen, and I got just the mask for it!

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