Do you like hurting other people? Official site • Steam page • Good Old Games page Currently available via Humble Indie Bundle 8, if you pay more than the average. And I did find a thread relating to this, but it's several months old and it was just to announce the PS3 release, so I figure this warrants a general thread of its own. When this first came out, I knew nothing about it, never saw any trailers... I had no idea what to think of it. At first it didn't seem like my kind of game - With the title and color scheme, I figured it was some kind of campy 80's cop show throwback or something like that. Then reviews started popping up, and they were glowing. Praising things like creative, frantic combat and... a deep and intriguing minimalist plot? Whoa whaaaat. Well, I finally got it with the Bundle, played it through, and it's a ton of fun. It's a 16-bit top-down brawler, and when I say top-down, I mean tippy top; the view is directly over your character's head, which can be disorienting at first but takes little time to get used to. But be warned if you're after it: This game is brutal. I'm talking feral serial killer murders his way through room after room of faceless thugs with ruthless efficiency, leaving every dive he visits with a shiny red paint job. The protagonist has no voice and no apparent motive; spurred on by messages from a mysterious caller, he goes on a brutal rampage through Miami, FL, hiding his face behind various animal masks. If you can get past the wanton slaughter, the actual mechanics of it are brilliant; you're dropped off on a floor full of baddies, tasked with slaying every last one, and you can do so however you please, as long as it leaves you alive and them dead. Areas are set up such that there are multiple paths through every floor. A large variety of weapons are available to you on any one map, from crowbars to shotguns to beer cans and a pistol-grip drill; you can find some of these lying on the floor, and loot others off of your victims. Each weapon has its own unique properties and kills, and some enemies are easier to kill with (or can only be harmed by) certain weapons, which means you'll frequently be switching weapons on the fly. The animal masks I mentioned before are a mechanic in and of themselves. You choose one to wear before starting a level, and each one grants you a different boon. You may find a tiger mask that makes your unarmed attacks lethal, or a dog mask that keeps any dogs on the current level from attacking you. Some masks apply a penalty rather than a benefit, and are thus better suited to challenge runs - e.g. a mole mask that applies a dark, murky filter to your view of the map. (Some of them are tied to achievements, so try 'em out every now and then.) While the mooks always appear in the same spots on the map, their held weapons and movement patterns are procedurally generated, so no matter how many times you run a particular level there's always something that can catch you off-guard if you get lazy. That, plus the fact that there are a small handful of secrets, collectibles, and special achievements scattered across the levels, means an arseload of replay value - which is good, because a first play-through can take you less than six hours. The plot is about as extensive as the summary I gave briefly above; you are a nameless, faceless, voiceless nobody who begins receiving mysterious calls urging him to visit different places around Miami, whereafter you kill everyone inside and go along your merry way. The game rarely if ever stops your progress to tell its story, and most of your time is spent on these inexplicably violent outings. But to say there's no story here would be an out-and-out lie; mysteries abound surrounding the origin of these contract calls, the presence of other killers like you prowling around out there, and a couple of brief, possibly hallucinated chats between the protagonist and the masks he wears. It makes you curious, makes you want more, by leaving a trail of bread crumbs instead of forcing whole loaves down your throat. The only strike against it is the dying. You will die, a lot, no matter how good you are - and don't get me wrong, that's not inherently a bad thing. You can hit R to respawn lightning-fast with the room reset, for one. Short games are better for being difficult, because you get more out of the experience. But a solid chunk of your deaths will come not from making genuine mistakes, but from fiddling with the controls or falling victim to RNG. There are also some levels that suffer an absurd difficulty spike if you don't equip just the right mask for the occasion, which can be frustrating; I recall one level where you're spawned right off in a room with two dogs and no weapons (You can't kill dogs bare-handed). Vibrant, beautiful environments, an eclectic soundtrack with some severely oh-god-I-can't-get-it-out-of-my-head beats, a plot like a David Lynch film, brutal, unforgiving gameplay, and a formidable amount of postgame content including an epilogue, bonus stage(s), rankings, secret ending, and some pretty crafty achievements. I was so wrong; this is definitely my kind of game. As cheap as six bucks in the Bundle, and worth every cent and many more if you ask me.
I got it in the Humble Bundle about a week ago and am currently putting off installing it because I've got other games that I need to finished at the moment. After reading this review, though, I'm definitely looking forward to playing it.
Responding to this here because it's definitely worth some postcountable discussion What level are you stuck on? I can probably give you some tips, not for a guaranteed A+ (yet) but at least enough to pass.
Ooh, sexy filter. Likin' the slight film grain. The leaderboards would drive me nuts, haha. I've been trying so hard to A+ some of the levels, and seeing the high scores would just demoralize me.
Ooh the Russell gives the game a nice retro like feel to the game. Though I'm not sure if I will buy this on the PS3. I already own it on the PC and already beaten it.
This, Lone Survivor, and Journey were actually the reasons I just bought my PS3. I'm very interested in it. Hopefully it translates well to consoles.
I was really confused at how the control scheme would work, but apparently people are liking it. I guess it presents some advantages, like smoother lock-ons.
