Hotline Miami thread

Can we discuss why such a simple fun game was more complex and memorable than any "modern" game? Also can we discuss why Jasper Byrne makes such good OST's, because this and lone survivors were amazing holy shit.

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No, it's fun because it does a simple concept very well with only the necessary components, so there's no bullshit between you and the core game. Modern open-world shit is schizophrenic and has to do a hundred mediocre concepts. This game nails simplicity. Why do people still like retro and retro styled vidya? Because the good ones nail a simple concept to near perfection.

Debatable.

Literally just git gud. I did back when I was S ranking the game. The real problem was when the fucking floors would start with an enemy or enemies immediately fucking you, so you'd have to memorize some complex maneuver for the start of every attempt. I'll always remember the one army stage where it starts with you getting flanked on both sides at the entrance by several enemies. THAT IS FUCKING HORSESHIT.

It's not a matter of whether or not you can overcome said bullshit through repetition and rote memorization of enemy placement, since that's obviously the case. It's more about how they appear to have ran out of ideas to creatively ramp up the difficulty, instead heavily relying on off-screen enemies, windows, and fatties.

I understand why they did it, since if they followed HLM1's difficulty curve, veterans of HLM1 would have torn through the game in one sitting with nary a level reset, and then promptly thrown a bitch fit that it was too easy. I just disagree with what I see as a really lazy and artificial way of ramping up the difficulty, rather than utilizing clever level design and enemy placement.

Far look, fire safety shots if you can't see far enough
Adds to challenge organically and can be used to advantage if you're good
Fucking please git gud

These aren't valid complaints, user.

I never got this criticism. I thought it made the game pseudo-strategic, if not downright more like an RTS. If you play like an asshole, and go too fast, you die. And I know, you're supposed to play fast, but I play for fun. Fuck the rank.

The glass windows were good, the fat fucks were excellent, the prison levels were cool, and even the soldier missions were worthwhile.

Screeching "git gud" while posing as the arbiter of what does or does not constitute a "valid complaint" by your entirely arbitrary standards isn't going to result in quality HLM2 discussion. Carry on, shitpost-kun.

>>>/Reddit/

You fucking suck at video games and you'd rather bitch about them being hard than learn to play. Fuck off.

As you play the game over time, you gain more awareness, you grow more balls and know which risky maneuvers work, you move faster and more decisively to dodge gunfire and take enemies down. If it was just rote memorization, my gained skills wouldn't extend to custom levels I've never played before. tldr get good

Oh the irony.


Very nice, fellow gamer :^)

It's fast.
It's free-form.
It's got style.
The music is awesome.

It's because white people made it.

Kill yourself. I'm not even joking, please stand in front of a moving train. You're the kind of hive-mind faggot who gets antsy when anyone breaks rank.

The epitome of >>>/Reddit/

weebs btfo

You mean nearly half of the floors in the game?


That's because a lot of the more popular custom levels are actually well-designed.

Almost nailed it!

Nah, it's such a bloatware. The controls are unnecessarily floaty, the stylization is disorienting and puke inducing, and the music sucks. Also, this "mc has one health" meme has to stop. The AI is pretty good though.

What's your fucking point? All of that stuff is part of imageboard culture. If you don't want to be called a faggot, don't post like one.

I'd like you to go back and read my posts, and then your responses, and bask in that truly delicious irony. I don't think it really needs to be said, but you're trying way too hard to fit in. Polite sage since there's been enough OT already.

No, just a few. Unless you count, say, the dude at the beginning of stage 1 in the entrance with a weapon as part of this. In which I disagree. It's good when a floor has an easy to kill enemy or two who you can kill to get appropriate gear to start the floor immediately. It's shitty when you're getting gangraped right when you walk in and you better have brought gear from the last floor to survive. But it really wasn't common in the game, it just sticks out in my memory because when it did happen I was annoyed by it.

How's the Weather in Tel-Aviv, Schlomo?

You haven't contributed a single piece of actual discussion, all you did was be shocked that I disagree with the common criticisms of the game. You could still try and refute what I said with reason, which would make me respect you more.

Hot a problem with HM1

The problem is not just that everything else in the game screams 'go fast, restart fast' but that HM2's new gameplay elements limit available playstyles: you have to use specific weapons and paths to deal with specific enemies/level design. The multiple characters nonsense fed into that since you didn't have masks as an option. Also there were a few levels where entering without a gun/without sufficient ammo basically guaranteed failure, one of the army faggot's stages halfway through with windows both sides of the starting corridor for example.
The way windows clash with 'gotta go fast' gameplay is annoying, the way windows, poor starting locations, character spam and 'gimmick-enemies must be killed by x weapon' limit playstyles is downright unforgivable.

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I liked how it was set-up. With "x enemy can only be killed by y weapon", I liked that you needed to plan, and you were challenged. I also liked how the force you out of your comfort zone; it shouldn't matter what weapon they force on you, if you built your skills up. You're right, some of the soldier missions and others fucked you on ammo, which was downright cruel. I guess I looked at it as having more variety, even if it's artificially placed.

As far as "encouraging you to go fast", it does somewhat. If you just play, you get a D rank, or maybe a C. Part of the fun for me was replaying each level and going faster and faster, using Windows and far-off look to my advantage. This really helped with custom levels. It's kind of like StarCraft or CoH, where the campaign is shitty, and serves to prep you for the multiplayer.

I'm looking for that webm posted on a thread here recently with Deep Cover playing over it. You know which one I'm talking about

I had no problem completing it difficulty-wise, I just didn't like having to complete it in the one specific way. 1 game you the freedom to do whatever as long as you came in at the right score and didn't fuck up, 2 felt more like 'you must act in one of these set ways' and that is much less fun.
Again though you ended up locked into one (or if you were lucky 2-3) more or less predetermined paths to get an S rank compared to the first game that let you do whatever. Also the first game, more or less, worked on the correct principle of difficulty: if you were skilled you could theoretically complete even a maximum difficulty level without having to trial-and-error it. 2 was much more reliant on simply learning by rote since you're likely to get fucked by something you simply couldn't have foreseen.
Not relevant to the content of the base game. Also took them years to release the fucking level editor.

2 in general kinda feels like they were trying to pull something along the level of MGS2 as if they were aware of the issues in gameplay and story screaming "we really dont want to continue with this franchise fuck off"

In other words the changes to gameplay aren't inherently bad, it's just that it contributes to a feeling of it being more of a puzzle or tactical game with only a set number of solutions than a gotta-go-fast do whatever you want as long as you score enough murderfest. Hotline Miami's general feel (atmosphere, music etc) lends itself more to the latter than the former, also faggots expected that style from the sequel since that's how 1 played.

The "game is hard and nothing like the first" complementary faggotry here on cue? Anyone have any interesting level editor campaigns to recommend? I felt like that fad died fast.

Tbh i played it and i sucked, however the art style and music convinced me to watch Sips play through them both.

The theme, violence, surreal story and retro graphics were also pretty good. It shouldnt be idolized however it was a damn good game.

The seconds story didnt sit right with me, but it was still a decent sequel.

What is HM1's soundtrack? It's not quite synth but some of it's synth, but some of it's something else. A lot of synth sounds the same to me and uses the same instruments. HM1's soundtrack was uniqe.

as somebody who played HM2 first and s-ranked every level (except for take over, casualties and demolition which were only a-rank) HM1 seems a lot more difficult. the enemies are far more random in the original – sometimes they see you if a wily dick hair goes past the door, sometimes you can kill a whole room without them noticing you're there, which makes the HM2 style of 'plan the route, execute the route' a lot more difficult

HM1's mechanics are also a lot more sloppy and less tight than HM2, i've had weapons phase right through motherfuckers on a number of occasions

I'm waiting for somebody to remake the 1 levels in 2 so I can experience the game with a better soundtrack and more polished gameplay

I've heard the theory that they wanted not to make any more, hence the game's ending. I mean you can see HM2 as them explicitly not wanting to make a sequel and so changing the level design/enemy design around too but the problem is the new gameplay style still sitting in a game that is very much set up otherwise to work like the first game. You get this strange clash of the everything down even to the fucking music encouraging you to play one way and the level and enemy design enforcing an entirely different playstyle. It's not a bad playstyle in and of itself and sure, you can learn how to do it but it feels like it's been ripped from a different game perhaps the game the developers really wanted to make? and it is deeply unsatisfying if you wanted something comparable to the first game.

Synthwave?


I wouldn't say 1 is more difficult, just a different playstyle. It's very much not supposed to be 'learn this one route' and instead have some degree of variety to each attempt. There's also more emphasis on improvisation either if a plan goes tits up or just if you didn't bother to think ahead at all, 2 is more or less 'plan has to go well or it's time to die and try again'.HM2 is about making a plan and executing it, HM1 follows the old saying about no battle plan surviving contact with the enemy. The problem, as I've said at excessive length already, is that 2's level/enemy-design encouraged planning doesn't fit with the way the rest of the game is set up (from broad gameplay to story themes to music/art-style) in addition to being a departure from how 1 does things.
Can't say I experienced it often but definitely an improvement (when it did happen it was annoying as shit). I have noticed 2 is less reliable with sound alerting and particularly' with door-knockdowns not being as predictable (they were pretty crazy in 1 too but not quite as unreliable). Neither is common enough to be a real issue but it's there.

Also as a new note: HM2 is actually a bit bloated, it could have easily been maybe 1/5th shorter without losing anything much. It never exactly felt like I was playing filler and I'd have to sit down and go through each level (and each screen of each level) to tell you exactly what could be dropped but it did feel a little repetitive at times. Granted the first game was a little shorter than I'd have liked but it's generally more memorable/focussed overall.