Review! Hotline Miami

System:  PC
How far did you get?  Finished one playthrough, including the resolution and bonus mission.

You're dead, indeed!

Hotline Miami is an indie game concoction of a lot of different kinds of games.  The best way I can think to describe it is to say it has the visuals and gameplay from the first Metal Gear (8-bit and all), the ultraviolence and weird story of something like Killer 7, and that "keep dying until you figure out how to not die" challenge you got from Dark Souls. 

So does all of that somehow work?

It does, indeed!

The gameplay is incredibly fast for what I would call a stealth game.  If an enemy notices you, you might have a second to react before you're dead.  You only get one life, too, but dying isn't too much of a hassle.  Each time you die, you'll only have to start over at the beginning of the floor you're on in the building.  Some enemies have guns, some have melee weapons, and some are, well, dogs.  You get to put on a mask before each level, each giving you a different advantage.  I must say that several of the masks you unlock seemed kind of pointless.  I played with the mask that made dogs not attack you for about 7 levels, and once I unlocked the quiet gun mask, I didn't touch another mask the rest of the game.

The stealth is done quite well.  Your instincts will tell you to go after those guns, but that's not always a good idea, especially early in the level.  If you fire off a gun, you can expect a good portion of the people and dogs on the floor to hear it and come after you.  It's hard enough to take on one 90 mph asshole with a shotgun, so you can imagine what it's like taking on six of them.  Probably my favorite way to take out enemies is to knock them down using a door, then jumping on them and beating the immortal piss out of them.  It's quite satisfying.

I would say the game looks purposely bad, but I don't think it's fair to say it looks bad.  Sure, it looks like an old Nintendo game, but it's colorful and trippy and induces feelings of both excitement and freaking out.  For a game as unusual as this, you'd expect some weird art, and this definitely delivers that.  There is blood everywhere, and the enemies die in enough different ways that you can play through the entire game and not get bored of it.

Another thing worth mentioning is the music.  I always thought 8-bit game music sounded odd and interesting anyway, but this game's music fits that definition like a glove, even if it's not really 8-bit music.  It's a bit meatier, though, with some hard hitting beats and a dance music feel.

I don't want to say too much about the story, but suffice to say it's pretty interesting, and creepy.  The general idea is you wake up to a message on your answering machine that gives you a totally random message, but hides an address in each one.  You go to the address, kill everyone there, then go to a restaurant or video store and talk to some weird guy.  Then you go home.  You do this for most of the levels, but everything gets progressively more unusual, particularly the sections when you talk to the strange guy.

I'm not going to say this is one of the most unique gameplay experiences I've had.  I've played games that play similar to this before, but none of them were anywhere near as well executed as this.  The game has very low system requirements, so if you have a PC of any kind, I'd highly recommend checking out the hidden gem.

9/10

Review! Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

System:  Playstation Vita (also available on 3DS)
How far did you get?:  Full completion.  Platinum Trophy.

The visual novel genre is not particularly popular these days.  After all, we live in a time where 140 characters or less is not only acceptable, but forced in some places.  Reading is time consuming, and we value our time.

However, we also complain that modern entertainment media is stupid and anti intellectual.  Television is controlled and designed for mass idiot consumption.  Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are outlets for dumb teenagers to spout off their opinions as though they were facts and insult anyone who disagrees.  Call of Duty is made for twitch gamers who's minds grow smaller every day they play.

Well, as they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too.   Perhaps that scary visual novel with all the words and stuff is exactly what you're looking for, and you just don't know it yet.

Zero Escape:  Virtue's Last Reward is 30-35 hour visual novel style game with occasional mind puzzles to break up the monotony a bit.  See, they're even trying to help keep you from getting bored!

It also isn't designed for children, for multiple reasons.  The general premise shares similarities to the Saw films, but it's far more in depth.  Your character and 8 others are stuck in a building being controlled by what seems like an evil person, and sometimes you have to make some rather difficult choices to get out.  People will die.  Tensions rise, and people get very upset.  It's all rather bleak.  You are forced to play a game, called the Nonery Game.  You have to group up with others in order to complete puzzles, so you can gather cards to use in the second part of the game, the AB Game.  This is where things get a little tense.  You are forced to go into rooms, and vote "ally or betray" in order to increase or decrease a number on a watch you are wearing.  Your goal is to reach 9 points, and if you do, you can leave.  However, the door only opens once, and once the door closes, everyone left behind is stuck there forever.  In order to avoid spoilers, I won't say what happens if it reaches 0, but needless to say it's not good.  An important thing to point out is that this game is a sequel to another game that appeared on the Nintendo DS titled 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors.  The story does connect, and while the game can certainly be played on it's own, it has much more to offer those that played it's prequel. 

In addition to the mature subject matter, the game focuses on a very complicated story involving the 4th dimension, conscious time travel, and a whole lot of math and science.  The puzzles aren't much different, especially regarding the math and science.  If you failed algebra, you may need to give this one a pass. or at least get very familiar with a strategy guide.

The story branches off into many paths.  The game has 22 endings, and requires many different choices in order to see all of them.  Each play through take about 3 hours, but you'll get but a fraction of what the story has to offer by only playing one path.  Fortunately, the game has a "flow" option, where you can view the story on a graph, and choose parts of the story where decisions were made and directly go there so you don't have to play the whole story again.  Occasionally, you'll see a a scene you've already seen in another timeline, and the game gives you the option to "skip" it, where it will fast forward through everything you've already seen and stop when new dialog pops up.  

As for visuals and sound, it's a competent looking game, but there isn't a lot of animation.  It's works more on a screen by screen basis, but things on each screen do move.  You can also maneuver about the puzzle rooms using the Vita touch screen.  The game doesn't look like anime, but the character models still look very anime inspired, so if that bothers you, it wouldn't hurt to keep that in mind.  The music fits the mood very well, and the voice acting is actually quite good, in both English and Japanese.

If you're the kind of gamer who feels like things are getting a little too easy, or a little too brainless in modern gaming, your prayers have been answered, assuming you're willing to be patient and deal with a book or two worth of voiced text.  It can be relentless and sometimes a bit too wordy, but it's also incredibly engaging and who knows?  You might learn a thing or two, as well.

Rating:  9/10