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