Hotline Miami

I don't want to recommend this game But God damnit it's fun. Hotline Miami [HM] has all of the elements of the single worst game ever made but, it pulls up its visibly soiled pants and walks about like a king. Early advertisements of HM showed itself to be a homage to old school top down GTA. What I wasn't told was that THIS version of GTA was oxygen deprived, exposed to category X drugs in utero, and dropped onto its head post-partum. This game is a frustration evoking, slap dashed mess; with graphics that are pixilated finger smears surrounded by MS Paint 16 colours cycling in repeat, and controls that are lifted from a cerebellum damage simulator. I have played graphing calculator games with more effort put into them. In Miami, sometimes bullets matter; other times they don't. Sometimes walls matter; sometimes they don't. Sometimes AI can't see you in the same room; other times the AI stalks you from the other side of the map, with you never seeing them, and murders you with a single off screen "hit". Inventory: why bother Line of Sight for the player: they forgot it Health bar: they forgot it too (you die on first contact, even if someone flicks a booger at you) And yet here I am, begrudgingly giving Hotmess Miami my recommend because it is fun as hell. The story is twisted and mischievous, and the soundtrack is killer. I hate that I love you, 7.5/ 10 (Review transferred from steam account; 17.2hrs of game play on record)

This is a damn good game with interesting mechanics and a unique sense of style. It's also broken. I'm maybe halfway though and I can't finish the game because it has developed the infamous "Error defining an external function" issue. I've tried everything that was mentioned in support threads, including all manner of arcane voodoo involving seemingly unrelated system services and reboots and updates to support libraries. Nothing works. To still have known issues of this magnitude entirely unaddressed so long after its release is unacceptable, even for indies.

You'll get a few hours out of this. It's a fun game that unfortunately turns frustrating in the last levels, meaning you finish the game in a bad mood rather than a good one. I recommend it only at a cheap price; there isn't enough content or gameplay to warrant spending more than £2. It's also a cool way of seeing what games would be like if the Mega Drive and SNES were 80s consoles.

This game has too many bugs to recommend wholeheartedly. Within the first 10mins of gameplay I had two crashes - within the first hour I had 3. Things seemed a bit more stable after that with only about 4-6 more crashes for the remainder of the game but it was enough to dampen my enthusiasm - especially when it happens towards the end of a difficult level you end up needing to repeat. As someone who is not a fan of exceedingly difficult games I found the gameplay fun even though there is a lot of death and repeated effort. There are only 2 spots in the entire game (towards the mid-end sections) that I felt were a bit too harsh due to the level design starting with a few enemies that make survival luck of the draw. Aside from this, I didn't find the game frustrating or boring. I was engaged and felt rewarded when finally finishing off a level. I would recommend this for anyone as it is broadly appealing. I really didn't think I would find much to enjoy in a retro top down action game but the gameplay and soundtrack proved me wrong. Again my biggest complaint is the outstanding issue of bugs causing crashes. Given the success of Hotline Miami there's no excuse for the sloppiness of code that allows this problem to continue to be an issue. Had the technical problems been resolved by now I would have no reservations about picking up the sequel now that I've finished the first game. However due to the bugs in this game and the likelihood I would face something similar or worse in the sequel I simply can't justify paying full price in good conscience. If you're interested in Hotline Miami you'll probably find it worth picking up just be prepared for some random crashes.

So far enjoying the game. Annoyed by it "missing a DLL", and having to manually google and install the "OpenAL" redistributable. Then game crashes after some minutes of play. Guess I have to restart the whole level. No saving at checkpoints only whole levels...