Fantasy roguelike Dead Cells is being invaded by indies again. Weapons and outfits from six games are making their way into the game with today's free Everone Is Here 2 update: Terraria, Hotline Miami, Shovel Knight, Slay The Spire, Risk Of Rain 2, and Katana Zero. There’s also new lore rooms based on locations from these games, which is where you’ll find the weapons stored. You can watch some of the costumes and weapons in action in the trailer below.
]]>Hotline Miami inspired a lot of topdown, ultraviolent copycats, most of which failed to replicate its propulsive action. Midnight Mercenaries does it better than most - while also being a free fangame that mixes that Hotline Miami structure with characters and weaponry from Team Fortress 2.
]]>Everyone loves a good action game. It's the driving force behind so many of our favourite PC games, but only a few can lay claim to being the best action games of all time. That's why we've compiled this list - to sort the pulled punches from the bestest biffs that PC has to offer. Whether it's the joy of pulling off a perfect combo, riding the wave of an explosive set-piece or the hair-raising thrill of dodging enemy attacks in slow-motion that gets you going, there's an action game here for you.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>What have those scoundrels at Devolver Digital gone and done now? Oh look, it’s Devolver Bootleg, a mixtape of the Punk IPA publisher's classics that someone left in their jeans pocket before a wash and now the musics all fuzzy and the track list is garbled nonsense. Also it’s one percent off, yeah, because screw…discounts?
So, is this a delightful slice of performance-art-as-consumer-product brilliance? Or have Devolver, in their mission statement to point a funhouse mirror at the game industry’s cynical marketing, done a big old cynicism themselves?
]]>While I've my issues with Amazon's global mega-monopoly, I can't deny that the monthly sack of games that Twitch gives out to Amazon Prime subscribers is an oft-impressive bunch. This month more impressive than most - it's a bundle of Devolver Digital's best, including Broforce, both Hotline Miami games, Strafe (much improved by updates), Crossing Souls, The Swords of Ditto and recently lauded ninja platformer The Messenger. You can grab a month of Prime (even the free trial) and once it lapses you get to keep the games, to be launched through the Twitch desktop app.
Update: Until December 31st, Twitch Prime also gives you the SNK Bundle, Hacknet: Complete Edition, Smoke & Sacrifice and Poi, all of which you get copies for yourself to keep and a spare to give to friends. The Devolver pack doesn't come with extra gifts, but is available until January 31st.
]]>I’ve never been myself, but if games have taught me anything about the 80s, it’s that they were wild. Big hair, big clothes, big music – it was all there. If you were to use Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as a sole reference for the period, you’d assume that everyone was constantly walking around to the beat of their own pulsing, synth-infused soundtrack. When 80s-inspired games come to mind, you’re probably reminded of excessive action, neon-laced landscapes, and other stylised sensibilities. The games industry seems to be obsessed with this flashy, bitchin’ decade – or, at least, a version of it. Point being: it doesn’t have to be like this.
]]>What Works And Why is a monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game or mechanic and analyses what makes it good.
Games about one player character against hundreds of enemies generally have to give you some kind of unfair advantage. In action games, it's usually resilience: getting shot in Call of Duty covers you in jam for 3 seconds but leaves you otherwise unharmed, gunshots in Wolfenstein can be fixed with chicken dinners, and in Doom 2016 punching a demon feels so good it physically mends you.
Stealth games need a different solution, because the fun part is generally over by the time you get shot. That's good - they don't need jam vision or dinner magic. Instead they need a crutch that helps you before things get that bad. And in games about hiding from everyone, that's usually intelligence. Information is power. To evade improbable odds, you need to know more than you reasonably should.
]]>As an assortment of Halloween sale events grind to a halt now that we're officially in November (the month of Black Friday deals), a few more rise up to bridge the gap. So here's a handy-dandy look at a bunch of them. Are you sitting comfortably?
]]>“Top-down puncher Hotline Miami had brutality and baseball bats, but you know what it didn’t have? Teleportation.”
↑ That is how I imagine most videogames are created. Just one man in a tie who is approached by developers like an oracle and who says: "do X but with Y." Mr Shifty [official site] is about smashing through crowds of people while using a blink-like teleporting skill to dodge bullets and blows. It’s out today and, like its masked mate from the 80s, it’s all viewed from above. It looks hectic, but you can see that for yourself in the trailer below.
]]>GOG Connect is a pleasant little scheme from the DRM-free digital distributor, letting people who own certain games on Steam get GOG versions too for free. Now it's back. GOG today launched another round of GOG Connect, with another seventeen games for Steamers to redeem. Because, y'know, it's nice to have a DRM-free backup without buying a game twice. The lineup this time includes Hotline Miami, The Last Federation, the Shadow Warrior reboot, X Rebirth, and Teslagrad.
Oh, and GOG has launched another big sale too.
]]>Living as we do, deep in the Age of Nostalgia, it’s easy to see why an old-school beat-em-up would appear out of the blue, complete with all the classic features – waves of enemies, four player co-op, destructible cars, weapons to pick up and throw at the bad guys. But, despite adding a few tweaks to the formula, Mother Russia Bleeds [official site] sticks so closely to the game design of the arcade that it also replicates all the obvious mistakes. It’s less a reimagining of the left-to-right brawler than an outright resurrection. But this is just wot I think.
]]>It seems so familiar now, with a sequel and several imitators behind it, but at the time Hotline Miami was so exciting. What a mix of things! A superb soundtrack, lightning-speed precise controls, a built-in rythym powering the action, a palpable sense of disorientation, breathlessly nasty violence and a throughline of rare subversion.
]]>The chance to make your own Hotline Miami 2 [official site] murder-mazes has been a long time coming - it was "pretty close to completion" seven months ago - but now it's had a release date stuck to it. Well, a beta release date. Folk have been making their own Hotline Miami 2 maps via a half-shut back door for ages, but come December 10 it all gets official.
]]>One day I'll write a Desert Island Discs about the games I'd keep with me until the end of days, given a choice of ten. It'll no doubt be a Desert Island Digital Downloads given the absence of physical media in my life. I live with the ghosts of entertainment.
Rather than compiling the list of games I'd take to the Vault with me though, today I'm aiming to put together a collection, one from each genre, that I'd use to introduce those genres to a PC gaming newcomer, or a lapsed gamer. A friend inspired this particular bundle of joy, someone who grew up with an Amiga but developed other interests and hasn't touched a game for more than a few minutes at a time, either console or PC, for over fifteen years. A recent illness has left him unable to engage in his usual outdoor hobbies and games have filled the gap.
]]>Update: So, it did hit its Kickstarter goal with days to spare, and now a bunch of people have pulled their funding and so it's back under its target again. Huh! That's odd.
Original story:
12 Is Better Than 6 [official site] is a beautifully hand-drawn, gun-toting, poncho-sporting undertaking into what seems like the perpetually acrimonious world of the wicky-wicky-Wild West.
Although grossly different visually, its top-down, blood-fest aesthetic might remind you of Hotline Miami, and the fact that it takes place in 1873 might remind you of Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Needless to say, we'd win hands-down in a shootout, but I suppose 12 Is Better Than 6 deserves some credit for its recent Kickstarter success.
]]>I have just booted up Half-Line Miami [official site] - a mashup of Hotline Miami and Half-Life as created by student Thomas Kole.
As someone who has never really played Half-Life 2 or Hotline Miami (I did about one level of Hotline Miami at a demo booth one time and apparently own it on this here PC - who knew? As for the Half-Life games, I played the original until a bit where you have to climb into a ceiling vent which you reach by dragging a box over. I'd killed something directly below the vent and their corpse became an immovable object so I couldn't put the box in the right place to climb up. After trying all the solutions I could think of I gave up rather than restart at my last save which was ages away. I tried the second game as part of the Orange Box on XBox 360 and got as far as Water Hazard.) I feel well placed to explain Half-Line Miami.
]]>Ah man, this one's pretty good. A while back the producers at ComplexTV flew out to London to interview the reclusive developers of Hotline Miami [official site]. You can watch the results below: A just-about 30 minute-long documentary telling the tale of how two Swedish hipsters created one of the greatest indie games of all time. One of the guys cries in it, so you know it's good.
]]>Adam's already run his review of Dennaton's sequel to neon-hued tactical murder party Hotline Miami, but while he's a big fan, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number hasn't been met with universal praise. Alec, more cautious about the game, joins Adam to discuss what may and may not be deliberate about its design choices, its bewildering story and its bugs.
]]>Live. Die. Repeat.
Live. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Die. Repeat.
Hotline Miami 2 [official site] is wonderful.
]]>I've been a fan of lovely game-related tat in oversized boxes for some time, so here's a thing that's cool to me. RPS allies Gamer Network have announced a service for helping independent developers to create AAA-tier collector's editions called Gamer's Edition [official website]. They're partnering up with Idea Planet Collectibles to allow devs and their fans to set the specifications and then crowdfund a one-off production load through pre-orders. The first games to get the GE treatment will be Papers, Please and a double pack of Hotline Miami and its sequel.
]]>It's difficult to accept that Hotline Miami - the sound of the future - was three long years ago. It's more difficult still to accept that there might not have been anything which put quite such a fire under me since. This foul-mouthed 'guide' is one of my favourite things I've ever published here, and I'd love to know how to commune again with the part of me which made it. I can't see Hotline Miami 2 [official site] doing it, because despite controversial content the surprise factor probably isn't going to be there. I'm sure it will be an interesting evolution of HLM's rhythmic brutality, but can it manage OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS again?
Anyway, there's a free prequel comic out on Steam. I probably should said that to start with instead of picking fluff from my navel.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
The second game in this hyper-kinectic retro-violence series keeps making headlines for all the wrong reasons, and I'm not at all willing to make any sort of judgement about all that until I've played the thing. What I do want to do is flashback to when Hotline Miami, Dennaton's hallucinogenic Drive-like stealth-murder game came out of nowhere rather than was any sort of known quantity. I'd so love to be able to play it again with knowledge or association, to be back in that 'what the hell is this / this is incredible' mindset.
]]>This makes sense. Co-operative bank robbery manshoot Payday 2 is getting a new piece of DLC which is themed around the propulsive, topdown, ultra-violent manbeat Hotline Miami. It's called Payday 2: Hotline Miami, and there's a live-action trailer below which contains little detail, followed by some further sentences which contain similarly little detail.
]]>I'm not sure if Mother Russia Bleeds will set the world on fire, but it sure looks cool. It's a beat-'em-up that I can verify with utmost certainty contains Russia and sloshing, spattering gallons of blood. Maybe there are mothers as well, but I can't say for sure just yet. What I do know is that this one looks stylish as all get-out and violent as all something else, because they already used up every last drop of get-out on the style. The Hotline Miami influence is pretty overt, what with all the drug usage, psychedelic imagery, and adoration of the color pink. Impressive (and frighteningly violent) trailer below.
]]>Sometimes all you need is a headline.
A headline, and a death wish.
]]>Oh my god, it's a mirage, I'm telling you all it's sabotage. Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" is apparently a big inspiration for LA Cops' overall attitude/look, but I'm even more pleased that it describes the top-down shooter strategy's moment-to-moment gameplay. Inspired by Hotline Miami's gore-spattered thrills and (classic) Syndicate's cold strategizing, this one puts you in control of two hard-boiled eggs law enforcement professionals at any given moment. Positioning is key, but so are split-second smarts and reflexes. So you might, for instance, use one cop as bait and then run them right into a bullet firehose - aka, your partner. SABOTAGE. This looks like one to watch, and watch it you shall in a pair of videos below.
Though the name might suggest a pulsating, acid-hazed version of Oregon Trail, that's not quite what I had in mind when I said "opposite." Shame, but Hotline Trail is nonetheless sublime in its simplicity. The infinite biker takes clear aesthetic inspiration from Hotline Miami (or perhaps the same sources as Hotline Miami), but its immediate vibe pulls an engine-roaring 180. Instead of ratcheting up the stakes and drowning the proceedings in schizophrenic chaos, Hotline Trail's soothing electronic soundtrack and voiceover encourage you to find a groove and lose yourself in it.
]]>I think I might be very easy to please. A simple parody, a few jokes, an old music video, some great games made cheap. It's Forkstarter, in which Devolver Digital CFO Fork Parker pitches to gamers as to why they should "contribute to the phenomenal wealth of Mr. Parker and usher in a new age of extravagant spending and unmitigated opulence the likes of which the video game industry has never seen."
I am pleased. Also, Hotline Miami is only £1.74.
]]>This is probably the most exciting game-related anything I've seen in months. And yes, as the headline suggests, it's entirely bonkers. Remember Zineth developer Arcane Kids' Tribes-meets-Tony-Hawk thing Perfect Stride? Well, it's just one of 30+ games (23 of which are already finished and playable) that'll immediately be yours if you hand LA Game Space a pithy 15 of your bacteria-and-filth-ridden Human Dollars. Experimental Game Pack 01 also includes entirely new projects from the likes of Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, Adventure Time (yes, the TV show) maestro Pendleton Ward, Hotline Miami madman Cactus, Kentucky Route Zero devs Jake Elliott and Tamas Kemenczy, and sooooooooooo many more. I'm not even going to pretend to be impartial on this one. Buy it. Buy it because duh.
]]>BOOM. Stop. BOOM. Stop. BOOM. Stop. That was the entirety of my Hotline Miami fan fiction. Do you like it? Personally, I think it falls apart a bit in the third act, but I suppose I am my own harshest critic. The reason I mention it, though, is that I imagine there'd be quite a few more BOOMs in the mix if multiplayer were part of the equation. And since some kind of divine sequel mandate writ large upon the holiest of Dorito bags demands that it show up in all games with numbers higher than two in their titles, I had to ask Dennaton's Dennis Wedin if he and Cactus were feeling the pressure with Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. His response? Not even a little.
]]>You know, I never really thought about it before, but I think Proteus and Hotline Miami are videogame inverses. One's about languidly strolling around a neon-bubblegum dreamscape paradise while the other's about blink-and-you'll-be-on-the-receiving-end-of-it murder in an entirely different kind of neon-bubblegum dreamscape "paradise". They are one anther's bizarro twin, eternally opposed but forever intertwined. Also, they're in the latest Humble Indie Bundle together, which is neat. And neater still? Probably the fact that they're joined by Little Inferno, Awesomenauts, Capsized, Thomas Was Alone, and Dear Esther. Yeah, eight is pretty great. Or something.
]]>RPS's own wayward ronin word master Cara Ellison, during a post-convention victory dinner, put it best: "GDC is where we first hear about all the stuff everyone will be talking about next year." Maybe it's a trend-setter, or maybe it's just a megaphone for gentle tickles of trends that are already in motion, but the point remains: GDC tends to be pretty indicative of where we're at. People often view E3 in that light, but the fact is, it's a dinosaur wreathed in fireworks, frilly undergarments, and little else. E3 is a projection. GDC has evolved into its opposite: introspection. We look inward, and then we discuss. And this year - thanks to things like the renewed prominence of PC gaming, a focus on indies, and the #1ReasonToBe talk - I came away quite optimistic. That warm feeling does not, however, come without some rather glaring caveats. Same-y looking "next-gen" games. The IGDA's insulting use of scantily clad dancers. A worrisome gulf between triple-A and indie. For each positive, there was an ugly negative.
This year's GDC in one word? Contradiction.
]]>Music man David Valjalo follows-up his exploration of the big-budget orchestral soundtracks in the mainstream games industry with a look at the other end of the scale - the super-low-budget, ultra-catchy, sometimes kitschy scores of indie darlings. He rounds up the men behind Hotline Miami, Sweden-based Dennis Wedin and Jonatan Soderstrom, two of the soundtrack artists they hand-picked, US artists M.O.O.N. and Scattle, and FTL composer Ben Prunty, to get the scoop on making music for small games and, quite often, small change.
]]>I dove back down Hotline Miami's blood-slick Slip 'n' Slide of utterly blissful brutality this weekend, and now it's all I can think about. It's a testament to the sheer refinement of its systems, I think, that it can so thoroughly hook me time and time again. But nothing is perfect - not even when it's really, really close. So Cactus and co are charging forward with a full-blown sequel. Will there be more breeds of dog? More types of dudes with cat-like shotgunning-your-face-off reflexes? Cats? Um, well, no one's really sure yet. Oh, but it will have music! This has been - as we say in nigh-impenetrable videogame parlance - confirmed.
]]>Hotline Miami now allows players to throttle their flatmates with controller cords. Either that or it's actually possible to play the game with a controller but that seems unlikely. That's not the only fix/addition that the update brings and there's also a native Mac version in the works. Important additions: new environmental graphics, a bonus stage unlocked when the campaign is finished, "more gore with the Jones mask" and "the pot of boiling water has been updated". We should compile a 'patch note of the year' list just so that the pot of boiling water can win some sort of trophy. The update should already be live on Steam.
]]>ADAM SMITH / ALEC MEER / CARA ELLISON / LEWIE PROCTER
GO
]]>Part of me objects to the very concept of expanding Hotline Miami - "IT IS A PURE AND PERFECT SHINING DIAMOND OF FLOW, CONTROL, MOOD AND BRUTALITY LEAVE IT ALONE" - but most of me just wants to play some more Hotline Miami. Devs Dennaton have quietly revealed that DLC for the game of fluid murder is in the works, as well as ongoing patching for the buggy old dear, proper joypad* support and more "secret" things.
]]>If you can't beat 'em, well... that's not actually a phrase that exists in the world of Hotline Miami. It's either beat (with a colorful assortment of bats, drills, pipes, and katanas) or be beaten black and blue and red and neon pink. There is, as Yoda says - presumably as a result of some LSD-induced hallucination - no try. Hotline Miami's creators, however, are nothing like that. They, perhaps better than much of the rest of the gaming industry, understand the art of compromise. So when pirates started peddling a slightly glitchy version of Hotline Miami in the Internet's seediest alleyways, Jonatan Soderstrom - aka, Cactus - decided to offer them a helping hand.
]]>Dennaton's HOTLINE MIAMI has the style of Drive in a fever dream, the look of GTA 1, the tone of American Psycho, the presentation of 80s video nasties and the combat of a strategy game running at 100x speed. It's out now. Here are some words about it.
]]>Hotline Miami sure is a game. A game that's going to kill you. And in the game. It's out in only three days, so I grabbed the chance to speak to publisher Devolver Digital's Chief Financial Officer and all round PR expert - Fork Parker - for a hard-hitting interview.
]]>IT IS OUT ON OCTOBER 23. YOU CAN PREORDER IT NOW FOR LIKE SIX QUID.
IT LOOKS LIKE THIS
THIS TRAILER IS NSFW, AND NOT FOR YOUNG
YOU'RE GONNA DIE
]]>The Eurogamer Expo 2012 approaches at frightening speed - I'm measured it with my Velocitometer, and it's headed towards us at exactly 81.7 terawatts per nanoclick. Like I say, terrifying. If you've been holding off from attending due to its apparent focus on hiss-spit console games, you may be cheered to hear that its One True Format contents have increased exponentially. Avuncular DayZ bossman Dean 'Rocket' Hall will be holding a talk, and now EG have taken the wraps off the Rezzed PC and Inde Games Zone, an attempt to recreate some of the delightful amicable, laid-back mood of last month's lovely, RPS co-headlined PC-only Rezzed show in Brighton.
]]>Hotline Miami will eat your children, and then you will ask to marry it. I have a new preview build on my PC, but I'm almost too intimidated by its brutal wonder to play it. While I attempt to gather courage, you could play it yourself if you're attending GamesCom. Or, if you can wait a little longer, you'll be able to buy it via Steam. That's today's announcement for Dennaton's neon-hued odyssey of top-down sadism, though sadly it is not accompanied by a release date. You'll have to make do with watching the new trailer below, featuring one of the best bits of the game's soundtrack, and wishing Hotline Miami would somehow materialise on your hard drive.
]]>Level 4 is not the hardest level of Dennaton's neon-hued orgy of sado-masochistic violence, and RPS' official Best In Show at Rezzed, Hotline Miami. Oh, not by a long shot. It's just the one that, once I finally beat it, made me feel like a god. I had a plan. I made that plan work. Every single action I took, every single movement I made, was with surgical precision. A dozen men died, and their little dog too. I never knew their names. I never cared to know their names. I didn't even know why they had to die. I just knew they had to die.
They died. I didn't. That's my story. The greatest story ever told. I will tell it to you with pictures and swearing.
]]>Drive, the ultra-stylish Ryan Gosling biopic, had been set in Vice City and starred a psychopath, it might well have looked like Hotline Miami. Cactus, creator of many weird and wonderful things, is working on the game with graphic artist Dennis Wedin and it looks brilliantly deranged. Devolver Digital clearly think so as well as they're publishing the top-down carnage simulator.
Hotline Miami is a gritty homage to the 80s, with a storyline as bizarre as it is emotional.
The debut trailer is gritty, 80s and bizarre. Perhaps curiosity and mild discomfort are emotions? Let's see.
]]>
