As other reviews have stated, this game has some nice looking aesthetics, but it's spoiled by very average, frustrating and forgettable gameplay. +The main character is actually fairly well developed and has an interesting backstory which is supplemented by missing diary pages which you find, that reveal missing parts to the story. I found this mechanic to be interesting and kept me wanting to play through the game. -However, the rest of the story seems quite boring and generic. The other characters really aren't developed enough and overall the actual events of the game are forgettable and not that interesting. -Main issue I had: Controls are unresponsive and clunky. I played with a keyboard rather than controller so not sure if this had something to do with it. - I had two gamebreaking bugs where I had to restart the game, one of which was in the final chapter of the game. - The levels in the game are forgettable and frustrating at times. There weren't realy any levels that stuck out as memorable. -The zombies aren't really that much of a trouble as I'd hoped they would be. There aren't enough games that make zombies an actual threat, and this isn't one of them. Ammo is limited but you're rarely faced with a situation where zombies are the actual problem, it seems like the environment itself or clunky controls are more of a difficulty than the zombies. -Music is barely there and really lackluster. +Voice acting is actually decent apart from a few characters. +Sound effects are just okay.
This game feels completely nonsensical. Playing it for the first time feels like i've somehow started playing on somebody else's savefile. There's very little disposition for what's going on. A game doesn't necessarily need an explanation if the things in the game don't need that much of a backstory or explanation. But in this case, the game feels unfinished. You're thrown into a new game with an extremely brief "tutorial" (which doesn't explain the controls until you've already figured them out, so what's the point of the tutorial). This gives the smallest amount of a backstory and explains a little bit of the characters' backstory but hardly explains why you're there. There's an unnecessary amount of enemies that you'll run into straight away, literally within the first 2-3 rooms, which makes no sense for the structure. There's absolutely no reason for this, it's not even explained why the enemies are there- they just are. The game has GBA style music and a pixellated art aesthetic (which feels oddly higher quality than the style the music is going for). It doesn't feel like this aesthetic is needed to improve the atmosphere of the game in any way. Controls are floaty and it feels like a bad PC port with the layout of the controls being all over the place. I like the tower upgrading system and how it actually effects the design of the tower in the upgrade screen. The attributes system is interesting and it seems okay but underdeveloped.
I wasn't expecting to like Wuppo as much as I did but it's actually pretty great, just let down slightly by one or two flaws. The world feels alive. It has this aesthetic which may seem simplistic but it works so well and the first few hours of the game really help to immerse you in the world and help to build up a history of the environment and a sense that everything belongs in it. The collectables seem like like they actually have a purpose, although they do somewhat fall into the gimmick of having some be very difficult to get without looking up a guide. The music is fantastic and really helps the upbeat atmosphere of the game, it helps to make the world in the game seem alive. The controls are tight and feel very responsive, they work well and the combat works quite well, though there's one or two problems which i'll cover later. The characters are all quite charming and the dialogue is funny and works well, it's believable. The different races in the game seem to be mostly made up gibberish but for once i feel that it actually fits the cartoony, childish aesthetic of the game. Negatives: Though the game felt well designed and fun, there's one or two things that stopped it from getting 5/5 for me. The first problem is that the first few hours of the game in the forest seemed to involve a bit too much aimless wandering around- I had to waste a bit of time going back and forth before finding out where I had to actually be. Kind of felt like it was almost supposed to be the middle of the game rather than the beginning, like I was missing something. The boss battles are mostly fun and challenging, but there's one certain boss which climbed ceilings and was just irritating to fight because it was hard to hit. The game involves grinding and lots of literal waiting, doing nothing, for trains to arrive. I feel that this could have been better designed so that it didn't involve too much downtime where there's so much backtracking and wasting time.
Glitchy, broken AI, sup-par voice acting, stiff and clunky controls, music that sounds good but doesn't always fit in, and a pixellated aesthetic that looks nice but is unnecessary. - Random events seem to be a thing in this game. I'm not entirely sure, because a minute into the first level, I witnessed a room of people dancing who decided to start killing each other for no reason. The police were called, and they started to kill people randomly too. Similarly on the third level, the SWAT showed up and started knocking people unconcious for no reason. - Police and civillians don't act normally. If somebody spots you killing, the police will be alerted, but the police will only chase you for a few seconds, apparently get bored, and leave. Even if you're in front of them. -Police don't bother to do any investigating, they'll just show up to remove some dead bodies (they might get distracted and forget about a few, which the civillians will keep getting scared by), and then leave. Police are constantly coming and going which feels odd instead of staying. -The extent of civillian behaviour is that they'll walk around into completely random rooms (like security rooms and kitchens), then run away if they see a dead body. They also somehow know you killed someone by poisoning food if you just happen to be there when they die- even if they're in a crowd of people. They'll walk onto the streets and get run over. Police, firefighters and ambulances will often run pedestrians over. - Most 'traps' in the levels seem useless, yet there's no other way to quickly get more than one kill at once. -Movement feels pretty stiff and incredibly slow. The sprint is literally ~1 second long and worthless. I also completed levels and it didn't register so I had to redo them. Some levels seem reused. -Pixellated aesthetic is okay but there's no reason for it to use the pixellated look. Music is good but some tracks don't fit in with the levels they play in.
Really wanted to like this as platformers + physics games are my favourites. Unfortunately some sections of the game are frustrating, which spoil some of the better points. I'll talk about the positives first: - The aesthetics of the game are great for the most part and match the mood well. - The ability to customise your character is a nice and fun addition and i think it works quite well. - The level design for the first few levels is actually pretty clever and it does a good job of hinting where to go next with a few clues of how to get there. It also makes use of the entire level so you see parts of the level from a different perspective, which is a nice touch. It does a good job at making you feel like you're exploring the environment rather than going through a level. Some of the puzzles give a good feeling when you manage to solve them. - The music is actually pretty good and each piece has a nice melody to it. That said, the negative points: - Level design quality worsens by sixth level (Castle) and completely goes downhill in the final level (Aztec). Midway through 'Castle', the level design becomes less clear about where the way forward actually is and a few times it felt like I was going into a dead end when it actually wasn't. Aztec feels like an afterthought as almost every section seemed like a dead end, it was also the buggiest level for me- Objects got stuck in the map, my character got stuck twice requiring a restart, and I spent 30 mins trying to open a door that just didn't open the first 4 times. In fact, It took ~9 hours to complete this game- but the first 4 levels only took 1 hour. The last 5 levels took ~8 hours because of the confusing level layouts. - The controls are sluggish, walking is slow. Jumping is a little unresponsive & feels like you're barely moving. You'll sometimes need to walk across thin platforms which is fiddly. - The music seems to kick in at random points, where it doesn't really make sense.
In some ways, Hotline Miami 2 is better than the first in some ways, but worse in other ways. The first game featured fun, fast paced gameplay with a unique aesthetic that you don't really see too often, and was (sort of) done well. However, I felt quite uneasy playing it due to the 'Drug trip' aesthetic being too overbearing. It felt like the game was giving me a slight headache/nauseous feeling, coupled along with the music (everyone said that was a strong point of the first, I disagree slightly) which had some good tracks but mostly sounded too disorientating. It also had that damn ending stealth sequence which let the game down for me. Conversely, Hotline Miami 2 improves on the aesthetic for me. It feels like the "Drug trip" aesthetics are still there but toned down so that the game is much more playable, only being deliberately intensified when they need to be. The music for me in the second one seems to be more down-to-earth than the first game which sounded too much like one long drug trip. In general, it made me not experience the same feeling of uneasiness and it feels like the game is actually more playable as a result. Oh, and there's no horrible stealth section. Aesthetics are improved. What killed the game for me was the story, which feels much more forced on you. I managed to follow certain parts of it but for the most part it's constantly skipping between the timeline which didn't really make sense and I lost track of what was actually happening while playing. There's quite a few characters but none of them were really memorable or had very interesting personalities. There's not really a massive improvement over the first game. The AI occasionally bugs out (which I don't remember happening in the first one) and gets stuck on objects. There's not really any huge additions or new weapons. Dodge mechanics felt pretty useless. Aiming without Shift seemed sluggish. Not bad, not a massive improvement either.
I enjoyed the first game so I figured I'd try out the sequel, so bought it when it was released. I never actually finished this game because It starts to get frustrating and the setting just wasn't interesting enough. This game essentially takes the first game, changes the environment to be outdoors but doesn't improve on any of the issues that the first game had. Positives + The aesthetics are well done and especially the textures look really nice. + The game actually being set outdoors is an improvement over the first game, + The game rewards exploration, and has secrets to discover. Negatives - The game gets frustratingly difficult later on and it seems like you have to have a certain class setup for your party or else you will struggle later on in the game, unless you have played the game already. -The open-endedness seems to be a downfall of the game. This may be a personal opinion but it suffers from an issue of having an open world but not giving you a good enough sense of direction or a good enough idea of where you should be going. Same issue that Dark Souls has, it has the impression of being open-ended but actually expects you to go down a certain path according to your level or else you'll struggle too much. It also doesn't really make the paths clear enough and I found myself swimming down a river at one point for a while only to figure out i was supposed to go somewhere else. - The puzzles are an interesting addition but it feels like the game is a bit too reliant on having you solve the puzzles, and some of them are very cryptic. - May be a personal opinion but the whole story and setting of the game seemed to get less interesting the further you progress through the game. At first it's nice to see the outside world environment and the elements of mystery, but then later on i found myself getting bored of being in the same massive, sprawling dungeon for a long time.
