The game is a classic with quite original mechanics. I had it on Dreamcast as a kid and it was a pleasure to replay it on PC. It has a lot of flaws however, some of which cancel eachother; for example the game can be finished in under 10 hours but that allows it to stand out as a unique experience and you can forgive the repetitivness of some sequences. I'd say my biggest grief with this game is that it half-assed some critical gameplay elements and that the end game is a mess of a level design. My biggest praise is that it's a 10 hours adventure that doesn't feel boring overall, with no surprise but still some quality ambiant that make some chapters very pleasant. Pros: - Nicely prerendered backgrounds, which aged very well. I'm still impressed at the quality of some maps and how immersive they are. - Every line of dialogue is voiced, and the actors are pretty fitting in their roles. - You can visit the whole world, no World Map chicanery. This adds credibility to the world, at first. - The gameplay is pretty original. - Rain is a very iconic city to me. Cons: - 3D models look blocky and low texture, which creates a weird constrast with the fine backgrounds. The rigged animations are very good though. - The whole world is very small, you only have one big city then some very isolated countryside parts. - The story sounds like a parody of classic RPG scenario. Orphan boy raised by grandpa has to save his kidnapped girlfriend by finding 8 magic orbs. - The way you move around from one quest to the next lacks something. To me it feels more like a Doom-Like game where you see a lot of closed doors, get a key, which gives you another key, etc. - Endgame is boring! Maps get too big and intricate, enemies get annoying powers like teleporting when you get too close, and your teammate's IA can't handle it. - I've crashed around 6 times in my last session of the game. It's very annoying when the game has very specific save points. - The magic system is not fun sadly.
So here it is, the successor or Hotline Miami, that might actually suffer from the comparison. People hate it, people love it, I took the time to read quite a few reviews coming from one side or the other, and felt the need to add my own stone to this doddering edifice. Like many people who bought the game day one, I was very excited to see what our little french studio Le Cartel could do to revive a genre that died last century. I wasn't expecting anything revolutionary, just a great homage and a game that I would gladly go back to once in a while to get my shot of adrenaline and stupid pixelated violence. Well, the violence is here. The game has a good feedback, something essential in fighting games in general. I played it with some xbox 360 controller and it vibrates nicely when charging, beating, head crushing or getting your own ass kicked. The sound effects are simple but efficient : bam goes the punch, bim goes the kick, kaboom goes the loaded fist, BONG goes the metal bar on the head, JSHDFKJSDBGK go the brain cells on the ground. The controls are pretty simple. A punch that can be charged, a kick that can combo with normal punch, a grab that allows you to punch, charged punch or throw your target on other foes, and a jump that allows air kicks and anti-air-kicks. You can also dash or run, which mostly allows you to tackle your enemies back to the center of the screen or to aggressively put them on the ground to, once again, punch/charged punch their head until it explodes. The big mechanic of the game is that Nekro thing that you can drain randomly from convulsing enemies and can be loaded up to 3 doses. Each dose can be used either to heal yourself or to turn into a raging, bloodthirsty berserk gypsy. Regarding the graphics, they are as promoted in the trailers. It's a bit messy and you need some imagination to understand some animations sometimes, but overall I like it like that. Now, the big pros and cons. First, I personally really like the atmosphere of the game, and it's in my sense how the game really revived Beat them ups. The genre was really linked to the 80's/90's, with dem punks and dem prostitutes you had to show the ways of justice to. Nowadays, it seems a bit out of date of plainly ludicrous. I guess society evolves and what was supposed to be the big deviant thing back then doesn't feel so threatening now. So MRB turn the tables and puts you in the shoes (if any) of some dirty gypsy who ended up as guinea pig in some sort of secret governmental experiment. You will wander through depraved places, from the -oh so original- sewers to some pretty fucked up night clubs, and up to the classic tower of the bad guy. The story doesn't really tell what the experiment was for, but you don't like it and you want to kick some ass, plain and simple. Or that's how I'd like it to be. But the game wanted to have a scenario. Well, fine, fine, I don't mind going through some dialog boxes and more dialog boxes and... okay I give up, start to skip, thanks. Took me some time to actually skip the dialogues, but they felt a bit generic. Especially your revolutionary friends that explain you the detailed plan. I already know what the plan is, damnit! My goddamned AI allies are going to die and I'm going to kick asses or die trying, there is no sublimity
