Hotline Miami

Console: PS3 (via PSN store)

Genre: Top down 3rd person shooter/brawler/puzzle game

Story: You play a man with amnesia who receives messages on his answering machine to accomplish certain jobs. The gameplay makes it seem clear that these messages are coded instructions to kill armed people at certain locations. You have to find out who you are as well as who is behind the phone calls you are receiving. Or maybe you are just insane?

Graphics: My first console was the N64, and the graphics on this predates the image quality on that console, even though it is a new game. So, not sure of the right label for the graphics...8 bit? 16 bit? 32 bit? In other words, it's very primitive looking character models and level models. I think my TV signals that the source is 1080i when I load the game...but the graphics still look the oldest school.

Sound: Old school (think pre PSOne consoles). Alright. Fortunately this is a game where you can turn the sound down and listen to whatever you want without any negative impact on the game play. At times characters do speak in the game but there is no sound in any case and you can read the characters' comments.

Gameplay: Each "mission" starts in your character's lounge room, with a message left on their answering machine. You take your car to the location mentioned then enter a building swarming with thugs with melee weapons or various guns/rifles. Utilising stealth or gung ho tactics you have to kill all the thugs in order to complete the chapter and receive your score. Some buildings only have one level, but others have 2 or 3 floors you have to clear. You can kill thugs whilst unarmed or you can use weapons you knock from the thugs or once you have killed them. Later in the game you will have to deal with attack dogs. Then you get "mini bosses" in chapters, followed by a few chapters of full on boss battles, which are markedly different from the usual gameplay. Earning high scores for chapters sees you receive masks for your character, which you can wear to future missions...they act as power-ups at times. E.g. one mask will allow you to start a chapter with a knife whereas the default starting situation is that your character is unarmed.

Good about the game:

Even though you can die often in a chapter, at times this can be fun, as you try and go about things the right way to finish the chapter. The game therefore has repeat play value.

Bad about the game:

* You can die a lot in some sections of the game and this is really frustrating and exasperating and just kills the fun out of this game. Mainly I have some of those few boss type battles in mind. Even though I did complete the game, for some of those chapters it just felt that I lucked my victory so there is no sense that I came upon a solution to the problem of that boss fight...although with more replays, that lessens. Finding those solutions does seem a matter of luck too.

* If this was a true "pick up and play" game, it would be a lot of fun, but if you find that you must quit the game for whatever reason before you have completed a chapter, then when you resume at some later point, you will have to start the entire chapter again, which can be extremely annoying if just getting to that final level in a chapter meant having to conquer a really tough previous level in that chapter. So, you can find yourself having to spend more time on a chapter than you would if it really was "pick up and play"/"dip in and out".

* It's frustrating that you can die in a chapter due to not seeing a thug because the graphics are so low resolution...they don't stand out from the corpses that you put there previously.

* Combat ideally should have a rhythm to it in this game but early on especially I felt that juggling the combat features was too confusing, even though there aren't a lot of controller buttons to use...e.g. locking on to a thug to take them out and then locking onto another thug to repeat the process...once you get a few thugs racing towards you about to gank you, it's easy to forget what button to press to do such and such.

* Probably the biggest negative for me is that is one of those games that you will have to go on to You Tube or on to Forums in order to finish the game 'properly'/solve the Puzzle that the game offers. I replayed the game equipped with the mask for revealing Secrets (presumably which help you solve the Puzzle which allows you to get a score in the final chapter of the game proper (which I have not yet done)...yet have not found all the pieces to the Wheel Of Fortune like letters you need to presumably solve that puzzle. It's probably the low resolution graphics here again...Puzzle pieces not standing out from the background or from other non-Puzzle pieces. Once you need to You Tube or look up answers to complete the game, that becomes a big negative for me...I have a life you know! My toenails aren't going to cut themselves!

General observations:

This game reminded me of the Metal Gear Solid: Virtual Missions bonus disc for the PSOne, which I bought when I was playing the PS2. However, it's more complex and complicated than that game...which came across as a negative point for me.