toblix

Hotline Miami

Recommended Posts

COLLECTOR'S EDITION SHIPPED

 

ESTIMATED ARRIVAL DATE THUR 3/05/2015

 

 

HNNNNNNGG

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Huh, five days before the launch. I wonder whether it'll work. Is it a Steamworks game?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If it's like when I got Dark Souls early, it'll add it to your library, but then will lock you out until launch date.

 

edit: also the special edition doesn't come with a game disk, just LP's and a game code.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, it's coming with a Steam code, and I expect it to just not unlock until release day.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Got the Collector's Edition in yesterday:

 

post-8476-0-64215500-1425687844_thumb.jpg

post-8476-0-00521300-1425687854_thumb.jpg

 

Now I just need to find someone to borrow a turntable from...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Got my vinyl set today. I only listened to the first LP but I'm loving the soundtrack so far. It's pretty much what you would expect from a Hotline Miami soundtrack. Can't wait to hear the rest in the game tomorrow!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am really digging the variety of playstyles afforded by the different characters this time around. The tracks are very well matched with the levels they are paired with too. Loving this!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

i ordered the vinyl set weeks ago, but after the first press cut off, but i never got a DL code. Should I have?

 

is anybody else in that boat?

 

The code is provided via a fake phone card that's attached to the album jacket, so you won't have a code until you get the set itself.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

please hide those spoilers megaspel! I know it seems silly, but I'm upset that I know about that plot point. I've purposelly kept myself blind to everything in this game, even the story. Whilst it may seem like a moot point, the plot of the first game I found to be interesting, and it's obtuse manner meant that it wasn't just something I skipped when I replayed it. I'm certainly not doing that in HM2, when I get it.

 

for what it's worth, feelthedarkness, I am also in that same boat. I figured what Korax said, so I'm not too fussed. Also means I'm spending less money (for now).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

please hide those spoilers megaspel! I know it seems silly, but I'm upset that I know about that plot point. I've purposelly kept myself blind to everything in this game, even the story. Whilst it may seem like a moot point, the plot of the first game I found to be interesting, and it's obtuse manner meant that it wasn't just something I skipped when I replayed it. I'm certainly not doing that in HM2, when I get it.

I mean, I understand some spoiler aversion, but it's literally the very first thing that happens in the game, before any of the actual gameplay.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It was also shown in a demo a while back. 

 

I'm waiting on my album + phonecard game code to get here, also. Site said they'd ship them late march if you ordered after January 21st. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Now that I finished it I was wondering if anyone else felt underwhelmed by the game.

 

I don't think it's bad but the story stuff isn't as interesting as I thought it would be, considering I found the very few scraps of story interesting in the first game, and I found a few of the levels a lot more frustrating that anything in the first game. It also felt a lot slower paced in the outdoor levels.

 

Oh well, I'll still probably try to unlock a few of the achievements as an excuse to go back to some of the levels and at least the soundtrack is still amazing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Now that I finished it I was wondering if anyone else felt underwhelmed by the game.

 

I don't think it's bad but the story stuff isn't as interesting as I thought it would be, considering I found the very few scraps of story interesting in the first game, and I found a few of the levels a lot more frustrating that anything in the first game. It also felt a lot slower paced in the outdoor levels.

 

Oh well, I'll still probably try to unlock a few of the achievements as an excuse to go back to some of the levels and at least the soundtrack is still amazing.

 

I don't know how far I am, maybe twenty levels into the game, but I'm getting a lot of feelings, not all of them good. The story is way too big, with way too many characters, really to be supported by the mechanics of Hotline Miami. There's much less confidence in letting the weirdness and confusion lie, like it did in the first game.

 

The levels are also too big, too open, and often too puzzly, the lattermost not being helped by certain playable characters with extremely specific strengths and weaknesses being typically forced upon you without choice. In Hotline Miami, if I was eating shit with Jake, it was time to change things up with Tony or Louie. In Hotline Miami 2, save for a few exceptions among the levels, if I'm eating shit, it's probably just because I haven't found the best path through a given level yet. There's just not that much strategy to mix up without the masks and a denser level design. I honestly don't see how you're supposed to be able to get an A+ on most levels without cheese like hopping around corners or firing off guns to attract attention and get high combos. Flexibility is a meaningless category because a level has a dozen weapons at most and the time it takes to switch between them is going to lose you more on your Time Bonus than you'll gain for Flexibility, anyway. The later levels have an extremely high threshold just for awarding a passing grade, with one (level 17, I think) giving me a C despite three double-digit combos and not a second lost on time. I know, I'm bitching about the scoring system, but it's indicative of the slight bloating that sometimes crowd out the good stuff in this game.

 

I mean, don't get me wrong. It's not bad. It's still the same basic mechanics as Hotline Miami, although I could swear that some small stuff has been changed, like thrown knives now only having maybe a one-in-three chance of instantly killing. It's just a much larger and yet much more linear game, with fewer options and fewer surprises.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Now that I finished it I was wondering if anyone else felt underwhelmed by the game.

 

I don't think it's bad but the story stuff isn't as interesting as I thought it would be, considering I found the very few scraps of story interesting in the first game, and I found a few of the levels a lot more frustrating that anything in the first game. It also felt a lot slower paced in the outdoor levels.

 

Oh well, I'll still probably try to unlock a few of the achievements as an excuse to go back to some of the levels and at least the soundtrack is still amazing.

 

The reviews seem to say the same thing as you, that it's a good game, but doesn't live up to the first. I'm not particularly far but I've found it to be a lot more frustrating than HM1 (cut). In the original I could just basically run through everyone and kill them all without once stopping, if I did everything right. This so far has required me to stop, back away, wait for enemies to charge me which doesn't feel as insanely fun. It might just be because I don't know the levels well though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I like it so far. The middling-to-bad reviews for it are weirdly the ones that best explain why - one compared it to a giant quake map pack, another to DLC. It sorta reminds me of like The Sims Go Medieval or whatever. There's a sense of something being replicated over and over until it loses all focus and becomes distortion with maybe an occasional glimpsed recognition of contour underneath, which is something that I think meshes a lot with the actual feeling of playing these games. I suspect is direct inverse link between how much anyone cared about plot of the first one and how much anybody will like the second. For me first one was a really tight, direct package and was fun but I didn't get much conceptual mileage out of it or whatever. This one feels like it's constantly playing with and grinding against the "iconic" (awful word) aspects of the first one, like that's the hidden pole everything orbits around and is unintelligible without. Like all the varying ideas of what the first one was gradually got bootlegged into own conflicting franchises, horror movie, mob slice of life, seedy reportage, action, vigilante, etc. And the kind of swampy tone that comes with holding together all these varying perspectives. Apparently it actually did start as DLC which would explain a lot.

I like it and can't think of any better fate for the original than to disintegrate structurally into the weird blurred queasy paranoid mangle that makes up the actual play experience. All the tricksiness of plot and commentary sort of collapses leaving world of perpetual decentralized vague dread and dance music as more and more people put on the animal masks for reasons none of them really understand. Like all those sequels to Death Wish where they had to keep giving Charles Bronson new family members to be killed off so that he could go back to having a Death Wish, extended to infinity. They killed my..... cousin!!

 

 

I don't like the rape scene, and it feels like the developers don't really like it either, and that's why it's so awkwardly handled on top of everything else. For better or worse I think if exact same scene was buried somewhere later in the game alongside all these other little segments it'd maybe read as actual commentary of a pretty damning kind - as a distorted chinesewhisper of the role of women in original, taking something faintly gross that got more or less glossed over in how that game was covered and moving it horribly into the foreground to stand as the most important aspect. And I think the eventual resurfacing of this plot thread actually does hit this note of selfcannibalising loathing and ended up being weirdly effective to me, but again it works as standalone rather than followup to the scene. As it is it's just this awful bit you have to grind through before the, pretty unrelated, rest of the game happens.

 

 

The action segments sort of feel antsier and more pedantic but again to me that feels like just building on how the first one ended up being. I like all the extra glass, less so the guys who can kill you from outside line of sight.

 

 

The way windows turned from being this really minor element of the first into big structural role sorta reminds me of the Mario Lost Levels.

 

 

I think I'm more or less just glad to see specter of weirdly technical-exercise-y shareware murk get raised and played with again, think it's a much cooler and more interesting direction to go in than another breakout action game.

Hotline Miami 2: The Tribes

Oh No! More Hotline Miami

Christmas Hotline Miami

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I beat it and my opinion is unchanged. Why did they get rid of the mask selection, that's what I can't figure out. Also, I was waiting for one of the playable characters to be a woman, and I guess one of the twins is, but man if they didn't softball it.

 

The action segments sort of feel antsier and more pedantic but again to me that feels like just building on how the first one ended up being. I like all the extra glass, less so the guys who can kill you from outside line of sight.

 

The way windows turned from being this really minor element of the first into big structural role sorta reminds me of the Mario Lost Levels.

 

As a millionaire mobster, I'm going to construct my multi-story mansion with all-glass hallways. Privacy is for the law-abiding and the poor!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Christmas Hotline Miami

Haha I'd kill for this oh man. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm pretty sure I liked Hotline Miami 2 a lot.
 

I suspect is direct inverse link between how much anyone cared about plot of the first one and how much anybody will like the second.

If so then I am atypical, in that I liked the plot of the first and like the second very much. I think it's fine that it's different, and it makes the first game feel more intimately tied to Jacket's personal reality which is something I liked about it anyway. I like that each character feels a bit different, both in the way their weird nightmares manifest and in the way they play.

 

I do think I would have preferred it as like each act split into a $2-3 DLC pack though, in like an episodic kind of thing. It would have made the difficulty curve make a bit more sense, and tie in well with the fragmented multiple-perspective plot. Oh well!

 

Currently wondering if there was supposed to be a direct causal link between the actions of the protagonists and the events of the ending. Hm.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now