SuperHotline Miami

SuperHotline Miami is an in browser fan created mash-up of Super Hot (play it here) and one of my favorites, Hotline Miami. Super Hot was an in browser first person shooter game released a few years ago. In Super Hot you made your way through stark white environments while engaging in firefights with red polygonal figures. But it has one major twist, time only moves when you do. This in turn creates a twitch trigger shooter that has you planning out your moves to choreograph the perfect play-through. If that sounds familiar it's because Hotline Miami runs on an extremely similar formula and a combination of the two makes for a really interesting and fun game.

SuperHotline combines Hotline Miami's top down viewpoint and gun-play with Super Hot's aesthetics and time stopping mechanics, the result is something special for sure. The game plays like Hotline Miami: wasd to move, left click to shoot, right click to pick guns up. And shares the objective of killing all enemies on screen to progress to the next level. Without the time stopping mechanic the game would be next to impossible to play because of its instadeath and dead accurate goons, but with it you can gracefully weave between the enemies bullets and have a moment to think on what your next few moves will be.

I would have thought that the mechanic wouldn't have worked as well as it did but I (to my pleasant surprise) found that time stop was very useful and not nearly as gimmicky as I perceived it to be. While SHM was a really fun game to play it was extremely short (each level only takes a few minutes on average to beat) but it's already had an update since its release so there is hope that more levels will be added later on.

Click here if you want to play the game, it should prove to be interesting even to those who don't play video games and since it's in browser practically any machine can run it

The problem with download sizes

In the recent years gaming has made a transition from physical discs being the most common distribution medium to digital distribution being the most popular. This was perfectly fine a few years ago when the average game download didn't exceed a twenty gigabyte download size, but today games download sizes can be double or even triple that. For many consumers this causes 2 major problems. The first being hard drive space, the average computer usually contains a hard drive able to hold 500 gigabytes to one terabyte (a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes) while this allows for quite a few games to be installed currently it could pose a problem in the future where, if games continue increasing the amount of space needed to install, would result in the user only being able to install a small handful of games at a time. The other problem (and one I and many others around here suffer from) is dreadfully slow download speeds. In cities with dense population packed closely together it's easy to provide them with say, fiber optic cables (which have incredibly fast transfer rates resulting in download speed of potentially a gigabyte per second) but around small low population areas like the small foothill town I live in it's considered a miracle for a download speed to reach 800 kilobytes a second (1024 kilobytes to a megabyte and 1024 megabytes to a gigabyte) which means if I want to download a game it can be a process that spans multiple days when it should only be a couple of hours. In example the recently released on pc Grand Theft Auto 5 had a download size of over sixty gigabytes, this took me literally two full days to download and put an level of strain on my aging system that it shouldn't be subjected to.

The way I see it the only solutions to these problems would be to a. discover a new way to optimize games, further reducing the size needed to install. b. Find a way to make larger hard drives a cheaper and more accessible option for future systems. c. Find a cost effective way to provide even low population areas with fiber optic internet cables. While a and b are more likely to happen its unfortunately a fools dream to hope for things such c because areas like mine wouldn't generate enough cash for the companies providing fiber optic internet service to consider it a viable option.

pictured is an internet speed test done on my computer notice the F grade and slower than 81% of US

Developers should take a note on Payday 2's well thought out weapon customization system!

Payday 2 is a game that I greatly enjoy, from its tight controls to its just a little over the top heists everything about this game is fun. But despite the fun factor Payday 2 has managed to do something many games have tried to do and failed at doing so. I am of course talking about its weapon modification system. While most games will just sprinkle the players arsenal with a few modifications (which sometimes only act as a cosmetic item) and usually don't change the weapons behavior all that much, Payday 2 does quite the opposite and almost overwhelms the player with a wealth of mods that can be just minor stat changers or be so drastic it can entirely re purpose the gun!

The weapons of Payday 2 have 8 statistic categories; magazine which obviously denotes the magazine capacity of the gun, total ammo which is the overall amount of ammo that you can carry for the weapon, rate of fire which is the amount of bullets the gun can shoot in a minute, damage which is the amount of damage inflicted per bullet, accuracy which affects the weapons bullet grouping, stability which is how controllable the weapon is, concealment which is how noticeable the gun is and finally threat which is how intimidating the gun looks.

The greatest example of the games modification options is the Car-4. It is the most customizable weapon in the game. This rifle can be made into a silent discreet gun with pinpoint accuracy that's very controllable to it's polar opposite, a high powered, high profile death machine. Every part of this gun can be swapped out for other parts making it from this

to something like this 

The part I most enjoy is the balance you have to find when building a gun. For example if you were looking to build a suppressed high concealment rating rifle you could use only parts designed with stealth in mind but that will more than likely leave you with a weapon that suffers from low damage and usually either a low accuracy or stability. This may not seem all that bad but even a difference of a few points in a guns stats can make a major difference on its usefulness in game. This naturally guides the player to start experimenting with modifications, using a combination of stealthy and aggressive mods to find the perfect balance  for their gun that fits the needs they require it to fulfill.

Pictured below (and a few above) are a few of my most customized guns in Payday 2 and their base models as well 

Grand Theft Auto 5 PC Version First Impressions

It's now been two days since GTA V has released and after messing around with it for a few hours I'd like to give it a "worth it or not?" rundown. Upon my first launch it booted up, the rockstar logo appeared (for those of you who don't know they're the studio responsible for this game) and then it got caught in an infinite loop making me force quit the game, the same thing happened about 2-3 more times before I got it to load into the main menu. Fortunately that's where my trouble with the game ended and the fun began, The game opens with you in control of one of three bank robbers who refer to each other only by their initials. After herding the panicked civilians into the tellers room you make your way to the vault and bag a couple million in cold hard cash, a guard grabs you pulls off your mask and points a gun at your head. At this point the game prompts you to press a button causing your control to switch over to one of the other robbers who then shoots the guard freeing up "T". The trio fights their way out of the bank and through a couple car fulls of cops before you make your getaway in a car by the road. The next sequence has you drive down a snowy road avoiding the cop cruisers trying to run you off the road until a scripted sequence in which a train hits your car forces you to continue on foot until "M" and "B" are shot while "T" manages to evade the police. That was just the opening sequence to GTA V and the action to the point that I've played has not yet let up.

Killing Floor Review

Killing Floor is a cooperative survival horror first person shooter by Tripwire Interactive. It was released May 14th, 2009 and ever since has remained an very popular game in the pc world.

Killing Floor takes place in England where a Biotechnology company in London called Horzine Biotech was contracted by the military to do experimentation on cloning and genetic modification. The experiments fail becoming horridly mutated and extremely aggressive. As you can probably guess something goes wrong causing all of the experiments to escape and attack the population. The police try holding them off but it does no good and soon the mutant clones overrun the city and the military is called in to help deal with the outbreak.

The player is given a choice between a couple different classes each one offering different perks like increased accuracy or improved healing. The players start the level with a knife a pistol a medical syringe and a welding tool and can find extra ammo and even some of the less expensive weapons scattered throughout the map. Other weapons can be bought from a trader along with armor and other items with the money accumulated from killing mutants. The syringe can be used to heal other players (and yourself if you play as the medic class) and is an excellent tool for getting players to not stray to far from each other and promotes teamwork. The welding tool is used to barricade doors and fix electronics.

The game plays out in a wave form meaning that a set number of enemies will spawn, once they are killed there is downtime before the next round to stock up and the next wave of enemies spawn usually increasing in difficulty until the final wave which spawns mostly lower level enemies and a boss mutant. The boss mutants are incredibly powerful and require much more coordination and skill to kill compared to the other mutants. As you would expect from a game like this all the maps bring a heavy post apocalyptic atmosphere with them. Be it the blood splattered walls of a dimly lit ravaged underground laboratory, crumbling bombed out apartment complexes or an eerie farmhouse tucked away in the woods.

Despite being a game about England on its last leg trying to fight off the mutants it manages to stay very lighthearted. On certain holidays (Halloween, Christmas etc) the game gets a little visual change that makes the mutants look more appropriately themed (such as looking like ginger bread men or dressed as Santa for the Christmas event). And even if you don't have the privilege of playing during a holiday event you can still enjoy the quips of the soldiers as they call they poke fun at the mutants or jokingly jeer at each other. Killing floor is a really fun game and an excellent way to pass the time with your friends or strangers alike (although it is more fun to play with your friends as most multiplayer games are).

Payday 2 Car Shop Heist

The Payday 2 car shop heist was a free unique heist update released last week. As you've probably guessed from the name the heist has you sneak your way into a faux-Lamborghini dealership and stealing their finest vehicles.

The mission can only be played in a stealth play style (you can't have cops shooting up cars you want to steal) so try to have at least 2 people with stealth oriented skill sets in your crew. The mission starts with you having to locate the manager of the store to get a key card for access to the car keys. Afterwards you have to hack the security and blow a hole above a tunnel leading to your escape zone. Once the C-4 blows you have around 2:30 minutes to drive the cars into shipping containers and escape.

In the escape sequence you actually get to drive the cars you're stealing. This part was actually more enjoyable than i thought it would be, Overkill managed to make the cars control and handle fairly well and while the road you drive on isn't all that exciting it's still fun to drive due to its challenging route.

Overall this was a fun little heist and I certainly can't complain for it being free and all

Hotline Miami 2 Review

I've now played through the entire story of Hotline Miami 2 since my previous post and this one will go more in depth about the game. Warning this article contains major spoilers to Hotline Miami 1 & 2

HM2 takes everything people liked about Hotline Miami like its psychedelic soundtrack and high octane game play that left you shaking with adrenaline after countless failures finally morph themselves into the perfect run of the level.

The Hotline Miami universe takes place in an alternate timeline where Russia fills the role as the great super power due to a large arsenal of nukes. The U.S. eventually goes to war with the Russia on the Russian controlled Hawaiian islands. Thanks to the help of an elite group of soldiers known as the "Wolf Squad" the U.S. drives Russian presence out of Hawaii. Later on April 3rd 1986 a catastrophic event happens destroying San Francisco (don't want to mention it as its a major spoiler) which causes the 50 blessing organization to form. Flash forward 3 more years and the events of Hotline Miami take place.

Aside from the fans the player are given control of other characters with their own stories and motives. Manny Pardo is a Miami police detective who doesn't follow the rules and abuses his badge, he plays fairly basically but starts his levels with access to a shotgun. There is also the mobster who works for the Russian mafia doing their dirty work even though he just wants out of it all. along with them you get to play as a member of Wolf squad during the Hawaiian islands conflict, Richter who's in the 50 blessings program, Jake another 50 blessings member (and the original owner of the Jake mask Jacket finds in the first game) Evan a freelance writer doing a story on the "masked vigilantes of Miami" and a friend of Manny Pardo and you even get to play as the leader of the Russian mob.

The game is split up into 6 acts plus an intro and outro level at the beginning/end of the game. Each act is about 4-6 levels and the game is in a anachronistic form which means in order to fully get the plot you'll have to piece the timeline together yourself using the time stamp at the beginning of each level to put them in chronological order. 

Hotline Miami 2 really lived up to expectations of the series fans and was definitely the perfect way to close off the series. For now there isn't much to do with the game after beating it except improving scores and achievement hunting but that will certainly change when they release the level editor (which was planned as a way for players to start creating their own stories and essentially their very own Hotline Miami game.)