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.)

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number First Impressions

It's finally out, the sequel to one of my most loved games has finally been released! And after having a few hours to explore the new story Dennaton Games have masterfully created and also to soak in the synthey bassey soundtrack that always seems to sync up perfectly with you playing.

HM2 opens up with the opening to a slasher flick called "Midnight Animal". After a short cutscene you're given control of the Pig Butcher (he's based off of Jacket from Hotline Miami 1 and the movie is based on the events of the first game) and rampage through a house killing everyone, enemy or not, while you learn the controls of the game.

After learning the basics and starting your game after being dropped into the main menu you get your first look at the fans. The fans are a group of "vigilante" types who want to follow Jackets example and kill Russian mobsters for the 50 blessings project. After a bit of chatting they settle for patrolling around looking for random thugs to kill.

Each playable character in HM2 is defined by a unique trait. For example, the fans consists of 5 members; Corey who wears a zebra mask and is incredibly agile allowing them to roll and dodge attacks and gunfire, Tony who wears Jackets own Tony the tiger mask (how he got it is unknown, also not the cereal tony the tiger) and can't use guns but throws lethal punches, Alex & Ash a twin team Alex (the sister) leads the two with a chainsaw while Ash (the brother) follows closely with a firearm, and finally Mark who wears a bear mask and starts the level dual wielding sub machine guns and carrying spare ammo for it and can shoot in front or directly to both his sides.

The game is really fun and manages to feel like a completely new experience compared to the original hotline Miami. The levels have way more open space and incorporates gun play a whole lot more which leads to a more varied and interesting experience when you play. I don't want to say too much about the game now as its still very new and I don't want to spoil too much, but I will do a more in depth review later on.

*I'll upload a short clip of me playing when I've got some time to record*

Upcoming content

I wasn't able to find anything I wanted to write a review on this week so I decided to talk about some things coming out soon that I'll be taking a look at.

First off coming out next week is Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, I'm really excited for this as it's the sequel to one of my favorite games and I have nothing but high hopes for this one. It follows the aftermath of HM1's main protagonist jacket, the game seems to be more of the same with general improvements and new game play elements to freshen it up. (they've released a series of web comics detailing the background of the different characters of HM2 you can download off of steam.)

Jacket Character/mask pack for payday 2: In another collaboration with Dennaton games (creators of Hotline Miami 1/2) overkill has made 2 Hotline Miami 2 themed dlc packs that can be obtained through buying the regular and special editions of Hotline Miami 2. Buying the standard edition of HM2 gets you a mask pack themed off of HM1 and 2 character masks and even the infamous Biker helmet.The real interesting bonus comes from the special edition which gets you the Jacket character pack, this allows you to play as the rooster mask wearing, varsity jacket donning mute killer and gives you access to a themed gun and melee weapon and a skill pack themed around Jackets sociopath tendencies this dlc and the mask pack both unlock on march 10th along with the release of Hotline Miami 2

Grand Theft Auto V: This game is in a sort of pc release limbo where it keeps getting delayed and that pisses everyone off but then they say its to add more features and polish the game so it makes everyone happy. Anyway GTAV is on most pc gamers top anticipated releases which unfortunately got pushed back again from a March 23 release date to April 13. along with the pushed back date rockstar has promised players who've pre ordered an extra $200,000 in game cash and the inclusion of the most recent online update which adds a handful of new game modes and a wealth of new activities to the online mode to revitalize it.

Thief Review

Thief was published in 2014 by Square Enix and developed by Eidos Montreal. Thief was the recent reboot of the Thief series, in Thief you play as Garret a master thief who gallivants around a fictional steam punk like Victorian era city stealing valuables and keeping to the shadows to avoid confrontation from guards.

Thief was an interesting game to play, since you aren't playing the usual gun toting meat head of shooter games the player has to take a lot of precautions and carefully plan how to get around a patrol of guards or find a path from the street up to a third story window left open that could open up to a room of loot ripe for the taking. To help Garret move around the city he has a special claw-like device that helps him quickly climb certain surfaces (usually outlined in blue) and a bow with special arrows like ones meant to put out fire or ones with rope attached to access an otherwise out of reach area.

The stealth mechanics in Thief are nothing new but they are done well. The shadows are your greatest asset in staying hidden as it greatly reduces the chances of being spotted but if an enemy is reasonably close they'll still be able to see you. Noise and movement are the other two main stealth factors that you need to focus on to stay hidden, obviously its easier to see a moving object and this is certainly the case with Garret and staying crouched usually keeps the player quiet enough but occasional surfaces make too much noise when walked across normally (i.e. walking across a creek) so you have to carefully walk across it by holding down a specific key

While the character Garret prefers to avoid confrontation sometimes it's inevitable, when that's the case Garret prefers using non-lethal take downs instead of killing which he views as thoughtless violence. The player can do this numerous ways like sneaking up behind a guard and knocking them out with a swift strike from Garrets blackjack, or shooting an arrow filled with choking powder near a group of guards causing them to pass out or just incapacitating them long enough to let you slip by unnoticed.

Thief is a fairly fun and interesting stealth game with an interesting story rich universe to explore that I'd recommend playing but it's not something you should run out and buy right away

A few screenshots I took:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Directors Cut edition review

Deus Ex is set in a future where people enhance themselves with body augmentations. They range from  uses like prosthetic limbs to weapons or to use as we would use our smartphones currently, however there is a group of radicals who believe in not modifying the human body who try to stop it. You play as Adam Jensen, an ex swat member who was hired as head security of Sariff corporations the very company to invent and introduce these modifications. After a terrorist attack Adam is almost killed, on the brink of death doctors save him by loading him full of these augmentations.

Throughout the game your actions gain you xp points, these points along with upgrade cards can be spent to improve the augmentations Adam has. These upgrades are mostly the usual ones like more inventory or health while other ones (like punching through light walls) gave interesting opportunities to me as a player. The game mainly plays in a first person format with a third person cover system (the camera pans from the characters point of view to slightly behind them while they take cover behind objects). The guns are unique looking in appearance with most looking futuristic and sleek others looked like they hadn't changed with age in this games depiction of the future. The shooting feels nice but the enemy artificial intelligence leaves much to be desired. All they seem to be able to do is look at you, shoot and move left to right a little. (I didn't get that far into the game yet so this may just be the easier ai at play.

Deus Ex: HR seemed really fun from what short amount I played and I look forward to beating it, even though its almost 4 years old this game holds up very well.

here is a link to my youtube with a short gameplay clip uploaded

How the most popular genres of video games are ruining them.

A few years ago in 2009 a game called Just Cause 2 was released and was considered one of the first major open world sandbox game successes along with another more familiar game Minecraft. In 1996 Resident Evil was released and praised as an amazing and unique survival horror game, now browsing steam it seems like every other game is a survival horror game and every other survival horror is one with zombies in it. These genres and a few others (first and third person shooters free-to-play etc).

The reason why every developer who just finished watching some YouTube tutorials usually chooses games of these genres is caused by how easy it is to crap out a horribly basic shooter and how it's equally as easy to get published and charge five to ten dollars for something that would maybe be considered good, if it were an iphone game.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes PC edition review

(text in this font is my personal experience playing this game for the first time.)
The game enthusiasts among you are probably very aware of this series but for those who aren't here is a little background info. Metal Gear Solid is a stealth espionage action (with heavy dose of third person shooter thrown in) game series created by Hideo Kojima. It follows the"perfect soldier" in some games and his clone (this is not the sci-fi cloning it's more realistically based) in others. Here's a link to the wikipedia if you want to try and understand the series intricate plot

Ground Zeroes is more or less a glorified demo that sets the stage for mgsv: the phantom pain which will release later this year, now this doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad game. With a far less outrageous price tag than the console version of the game did on release it's far more justifiable buying this game that can easily be finished in around an hour... but shouldn't be played that way. I as many others did learned through trial and error that metal gear solid was a game that got more fun the more time you spent carefully planning out your mission as you pick what entrance you want to take where you go from there and if there are any points of interest you could explore on the way (that building could be useless but it could just as easily contain some much needed firepower or a suppressor to replace the one you just wore out) and ground zeroes does it perfectly.

My mission: to extract two hostages being held in a U.S. marine base. I enter the base scanning the environment, quickly marking the closest enemies before finding a spot to hide in some bushes behind some crates. I then pull up my map look for a vantage point, mark it out and head over to it. once there I do a more comprehensive search of the compound making note of the prison on the other side and the small army of marines patrolling the base between me and it. 

what would ensue for the next few hours was one of my favorite gaming experiences so far. Incredibly well programmed artificial intelligence stopped this mission from being a cakewalk by having marines comprehensibly searching areas where I'd been spotted and by making good use of tactics, cover and weaponry at their disposal up until the literal last moments of gameplay.

I thought it was all over as I loaded the last hostage and myself onto the helicopter I called in. The alarms were blaring but the soldiers were searching for me in area I had left a while ago, as we lifted off I felt a sense of pride in completing the mission... or at least I thought I had. Off in the distance I can see another helicopter approaching, fast, my pilot tells me that the chopper isn't friendly and needs to be taken out, A simple task if I weren't carrying only low caliber weapons. The Helicopter fires a few rounds as it approaches missing us by only a little bit, My mind races as I try to figure out a way take out this threat. As the helicopter closes in a sudden stroke of genius hits me and I ready my rifle to take what has to be some very precise shots. I pull the trigger and send a stream of bullets straight through the enemy copters windshield and right through the skull of the pilot. The doors slowly close as I watch the helicopter spiral towards the ground and then go up in fireball that was once my enemy, bringing my mission full circle.

Another cut-scene later and I found myself back at the main menu with host of new missions  (all on the same military base map) unlocked that range from assassinating high value targets all the way to fighting body snatching aliens. 

Having previously seen the game in action I was pleasantly surprised to find that the game ran at a constant smooth sixty frames per second on mixed medium/high quality settings on my starting to become dated (a.k.a. 3+ year old technology) laptop which shows a lot of effort went in to the optimization and the entire game in general.

Despite only having about a days worth of base content MGSV: Ground Zeroes has impressed and entertained me far more than a lot of games with about five times the content and is another great installment in the series that can be enjoyed by returning fans or potential new ones

Rogue Legacy Review

Rogue Legacy is an indie game developed by Cellar Door Games published June 27th, 2013. The game has "rougue-like" elements in it (a rouge element in video games usually means that when a character dies there's no way to bring them back.)

In Rogue Legacy you get to play as the great knight of the land... until they die, leaving the task to their heir. The Heir is the one of three you select each with positive and negative traits (because nobody is perfect!) such as ADHD (you move faster), Vertigo (the game is upside down), and even Alektrophobia the fear of chickens (sometimes a chicken will appear occasionally instead of a health item). Altogether the game has many more traits than this and randomly combines a few of them for a varied experience in playing every time.

Each time the player dies and choose a new heir they can purchase upgrades and new classes to play as with each purchase adding a new section onto their castle, then they can use whatever money they saved to purchase items like new armor and swords or enchantments that give the player bonuses like a double jump or finding more money from various people outside where you enter the actual game. Unfortunately before you can proceed into the game Charon the gatekeeper (in a nice reference to Greek mythology) demands the rest of whatever money you spent.

The actual game takes place in a randomly generated castle that changes each time the player goes in as a new heir. The game has 4 bosses for the 4 different environments in the castle that can be defeated in any order but due to how the game plays out are usually fought in a specific order.

The enemies in the game are easy to fight alone but grouped together they become quite a challenge. The enemies vary from skeletons and evil spirits to poison spitting plants but the variation unfortunately mostly ends there as many of the enemies have similar attacks and behavior patterns so the combat formula never strays off the beaten path (this could be viewed as a pro rather then a con to some though)

Rogue Legacy is a really fun light-hearted platformer that shows Cellar Door Games really has potential to become a major developer as long as they keep making games like this!

I'll upload my own gameplay at a later date but i'm currently bogged down with a lot of work and don't have the time