Review for Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock now has it's third game, Bioshock Infinite, a game set before the events that took place in Rapture in the first Bioshock game in the 1910s. Set in a city in the sky, named Columbia, is spreading their message about America's brilliance to the rest of the world and how the rest of the world is terrible and how they're better than everyone else.

One of the many covers in the game, the Beach Boy's "God only knows" in barbershop quartet style.

You play the role of a character called Booker Dewitt, a man in his late thirties/early fourties who is on a mission to rescue a teenage girl from Columbia, and bring her back to New York. But in the plot of games, movies or even books, it's never that easy and Booker is caught up in a mess where he is treated as an Anti-Christ around a bunch of white loving, right winging religious types who are after his head.

The beginning of the game shows plenty of racism like this, and you have the choice to go against it or support it.

You begin your quest on a little rowing boat with a couple taking you to what looks like a light house. But it turns out that it's a way to get up to the city Columbia in the sky by launching a pod into the sky and crashing it into a baptist church. Similar to how you went down into Rapture in the first Bioshock game in a bathysphere.

The ultimate question to ask about this game is how does it compare to the likes of the previous Bioshock titles. Well, if I compare this with Bioshock 1, or even System Shock 2, there are some big differences, and some of which aren't for the better either. One of these is the games bigger emphasis on combat rather than puzzle and role playing mechanics seen in previous titles. One of the major things you'll notice is how there are no hacking or unlocking in this game, instead you just collect lock picks and your partner in crime, Elizabeth, the girl who you're trying to rescue, does the work for you. Which to a degree removes the puzzle solving and level upping hacking skills like you did in System Shock 2. However Elizabeth isn't all about making the game a bit too easy, she can be handy. In a gun fight, she can scope the scene and try to find med kits and ammo, and when you need it, she can throw them to you. Though this does sometimes happen outside a fight where she'll throw you a coin what feels like once every five minutes, and that dear sirs can get annoying; though it was hilarious to see her lob a coin from so far away with such extreme throwing precision. Someone should make this girl a baseball or cricket pitcher! 

The new Psy/Plasmid powers in this game, called "Vigors", aren't terribly impressive. To be honest you can actually beat the game using just two of the eight vigors made available to you. Plus the final vigor that you collect is a real disappointment as it just pushing enemies away. At least the Bucking Bronco vigor launches your enemies in the air, why do I need to "Push them away". After beating the game, I found out through websites that you can mix and combine these vigors, which is never actually explained in the game, and if it was I missed it! But I honestly felt like the vigors were there for "flashy effects" rather than deep gameplay and puzzle solving mechanics. 

As the puzzle solving is practically gone, the game really does concentrate on combat. In each skirmish, there are a lot of enemies coming after you. Which you can take as either a good or a bad thing. Good in the sense that this is the first time that a "Shock" game has thrown a lot of enemies towards you as you're now in a more open environment. Though on the bad side the combat does feel a little crazy as I felt that some enemies would take a thousand bullets before dying, turning this Bioshock into a Killing Floor game rather than an actual "Shock" game. Sure there's a lot more bad guys, but why am I wasting so much ammo on these guys anyway?

Something that I had noticed was missing the feel of suspense entering a new room. Maybe if you forgot playing Bioshock 1, or never played it before. Bioshock had it's classic enemy, the Big Daddy, a big hulking man in an aqueduct suit wielding a massive drill. Taking them out was a pain, but a necessary pain, as you needed to kill them so that you can take it's little sister in order to progress in the game. But they would appear randomly in the game meaning that they were never in the same place in each play through, meaning that you could walk into a room and "BOOM!" a Big Daddy in the room sees you and charges at you with drill in hand to turn you into cannibal curry! It's just that in Bioshock Infinite that's not there, now there is the over powered enemy, in fact there's two, the Handy Man, and the Patriot, but if you re-play the game, they're always in the same place, therefore removing any fear you have with these enemies, which I have to say is a bit of a shame.

"So is there anything gameplay wise that you like about the game Ian!?", oh yes there is dear sir! Going back to Elizabeth, she has the ability to open these inter-dimensional "Tears" where an object from a parallel universe can be brought into the game. Some places might have a few of these "Tears" that Elizabeth can open up and give you an advantage in battle, depending on what's available, you can bring in extra cover in the battle field, turrets, rocket launchers, turrets that are mounted on balloons called Mosquitoes, extra med kits, boxes of ammo, or even random people from a parallel world that can be used as distractions to the enemy. Sometimes these extra objects can be the difference between winning and losing a gunfight, which makes opening these tears with Elizabeth worth it.

As for graphics, this is something I am pleased with. Not that I ever disliked the graphics of previous "Shock" games, but it's great to see that Irrational Games are pushing the way in graphics. Be it textures, lighting, water modelling, it's all gorgeous. Bare in mind that I was playing this on the PC, which I can easily say without looking at the console versions is the best version for graphics, I mean come on, the XBox 360 is seven years old, and the PS3 is six years old, and they can't be upgraded, so that assumption has to be reasonable. Though I will suggest that if you're like me, and many others, with an nVidia graphics card, be sure to download the latest driver update to reduce the crazy amount of screen tear. But once fixed it looks absolutely stunning on my PC monitor. What's more impressive are the facial expressions on Elizabeth's face, they look really good without going into the "uncanny valley" of terrible looking facel models. Though to be honest some of the NPCs could've had better work on them.

There has been a major amount of motion-capture work used on Elizabeth's face to make her as realistic as possible.

Here's a great example of the dynamic lighting used in the game. You can see the beam cast from behind the bronze statue, not only does it cause the light to change around the body of the statue, but the bronze reacts in different ways to the reflected light, and there's great use of lens flare to add in effect that's never over done.

Going back to this picture again, the NPCs could have had more work, way do the couple's eyes look like they're about to pop out?

Now, for the Coup-de-grass of the game. It's plot, story and ending. I'll try to write this without spoiling it, because it's so worth playing this game for it's ending! As you progress in the game, you slowly start understanding the story behind Elizabeth, her Farther, Comstock, her mother and the little conspiracies and battles in the city of Columbia. Not only that, but you learn about a group of people called the Vox Populi who wish to defeat Comstock and turn Columbia into a borderline Socialist community. But you discover something very big at the end of the game with an awesome plot twist that's so worth beating this game for. For some it might be a little unoriginal, but for me I didn't see it coming. Plus you learn a bit more about these reoccurring twins that appear and disappear in thin air and about their dark devious experiments. In a similar plot to the other "shock" games, you discover that you're not quite the good guy, but the reason for why you're not the good guy is very different, but still mind blowing as you watch the final cutscene play and have your mind set in every direction and around corners!

So, do I recommend Bioshock Infinite? Yes! BioShock Infinite, even with it's slightly disappointing gameplay mechanics, rather boring vigors and bigger emphasis on combat; it's still worth playing the game for it's beautiful graphics and awesome story. The game is simply a great experience that any gamer should witness and not spoil. It's not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still a game that people should have in their collection and keep. It's a keeper! So grab yourself a copy!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Competition Winner...

So, who won my competition to get a copy of XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Steam...?

This guy!

I read @greatbitblog because of the possible Prizes!

— PogoWolf (@pogowolf) March 21, 2013

At least he's honest right? lol

@pogowolf, send me an email to greatbitblog[at]live.co.uk and give me your steam name so I can send you the game and thanks for participating!

Review for DLC Quest on PC

It's not like you find a game that pokes fun of the games industry everyday of the week. And over the last 10 years or so, the gaming scene has changed a fair bit; micro-transactions, faux money, freemium gaming, etc... But if there's something that gamers get a little annoyed with is DLC, downloadable content. So what's better than making a game that pokes the idea of DLC! Well that's DLC Quest for you! Now before you put your knickers in a twist, and/or grunt in disgust, you only have to pay for this game once, the level of satire in this game is quite high, and a lot of it is very faux indeed...

The game's story, if you even call it a story, I mean come on how many times do we hear this? At least it happens in every Mario game right? lol! But the Princess, to whom you're going to wed get's kidnapped by "Bad Guy", no I'm not making this up. And it's you're role to save the Princess from Badguy. But there's a catch, you start off only being able to move left, you don't animate, can't jump and you can't pause. You you can do is move right, and that's it! Whilst moving to the right you collect a few coins until you come across a man that sells things to you. The game's DLC.

This is where you find that the DLC you buy in the game isn't actually real money, but the coins you collect in the game. In essence, the game is pretty much a Wonder Boy/Monster Land clone, where by the shops are made to look as if you're playing a game on the iPad or Android where to progress quicker you have to pay with real money. The game itself is simply a spoof about modern gaming whilst looking like a Wonder Boy game with an 8/16 bit graphical look.

Oh yes, there's horse armour in the game! But I'm not going to tell you what it does! heh!

This game was originally released on the XBox 360 Indie games section of the Live Arcade, and now it's released on Steam through their Green Light scheme. Which is always a good thing, I do appreciate Steam's love for independent games development. But how does a game that was made on the 360 work on a PC? Well, the game does have full controller support, but using the keyboard isn't bad either. After all there's only four keys that you use once you unlock everything. Left and Right is controlled with the cursor keys, whilst Jump uses the Z key, and attacking and talking uses the X key. In menu you might have to use the Up, Down and space key, but you hardly use those in gameplay; so the game is very keyboard friendly for such a console-centric game.

The only real downside to this game is it's difficulty and ease to beat. I was able to beat the game the first time in about 20 minutes, and I got the best ending in about 25 minutes. But then I have to remember that this game did cost me less than £2 and it's more of a games industry gag than a full blown game. But regardless of it's lack of difficulty, it's still a pretty good game with laughs on the way, especially if you're like me who keeps an eye on gaming news a lot. What good about the Steam Edition of the game is that it comes with it's sequel, DLC Quest: Freemium or Die, which I have yet to play yet, but it looks promising as it looks like it has a lot more to it than it's first game. What would have been nice is to add enemies in the game that can actually harm you, yup, there's no really enemies in the game apart from a huge troll that blocks your way and Badguy. You can unlock a zombie monster pack, but they don't really harm you, but you can mow them down with the gun you earn later in the game. It would've been nice if these zombies that you pay with in-game money would attack you; or maybe it's the developer trying to say that modern games are too easy.

So, should you get DLC Quest? If you're a gamer who's been playing games for a long time, yes. It jabs jokes into the rib cage of the modern gaming industry. It would've been nice if there was some actual challenge to the game, but then again it might be better to treat this game as if it's a piece of art to display how pathetic the modern day gaming scene is with it's downloadable content and micro-transactions. It's simply worth having just to remind us that gaming back in the day was a little better than what it is now.

Win a copy of XCOM: Enemy Unknown!

Yup, I received a free copy of XCOM Enemy Unknown on Steam to give away to my readers! But how do you win a copy of this fine strategy game? Here are the rules!

Hop over to Twitter and tweet...

"I read @GreatBitBlog because..."

Finish the tweet with a good reason and you might have a chance to win a copy of XCOM Enemy Unknown on Steam!

Rules...

• You must own a Steam account, if not, set one up over here...
• Before Tweeting, be sure that the game will work on your PC, if you're unsure, click here to check out the PC requirements before submitting.
• You can only tweet the phrase once.
• You cannot enter if you already own XCOM Enemy Unknown on your Steam account.
• Tweets must be sent before 11:59pm GMT on the 29th of March.

So, have fun guys! I hope to see what you can come up with! :D

Update time!

OK, Back from holiday to Turkey, and I need to write before I get too lazy. So let me give you guys an update on a few things about me and gaming...

Turkey

About the whole CRT and LCD monitor thing I mentioned about in the previous post. I did a little research and it turns out that LCD PC monitors are out there in Turkey, but they're fairly small. According to someone who I meet in Turkey, LCD monitors larger than 17 inches are rare to find in homes and offices because they're very expensive, so if you're Turkish, and you want a 21 inch screen, chances are you'll hunt down a CRT screen, which is quite impressive considering you can't find them anywhere in the western world any more. Maybe Turkey should make an industry for CRT monitors for MAME cabs and arcades!

Whilst I was there though, when I was in Antalya, one of the biggest cities in Turkey, I found a few of these "PlayStation Cafes". Think of it like a Cyber Cafe, or a PC Bang, but you replace the monitors and PCs with a few wall mounted TVs with PS3s attached to them. Sounds like a good idea, unless you go into a bad one. Like I did... The one I went into was hardly decorated, brick wall, concrete floor, a table for a cash desk, and those white plastic chairs you find EVERYWHERE! But what's worse it that you cant just "have a look" inside a PlayStation Cafe, you have to buy something. As I was watching some guys play Pro Evolution Soccer, I had this disgruntled clerk thrust a warm can of Pepsi in my face and told me that I had to pay for it, and I had to pay 7 Turkish Lira for it, which is about £2.75! Damn expensive! Rather than cause a problem, I purchased it anyway and left, Turkey is just one of those countries whereby some places you have to buy something when you enter a shop or cafe, it's just how they make money...

Me in my the British IBM shirt!

the British IBM

So yeah... the British IBM had a gig in Cambridge, and it was pretty good. Bit of a shame that the other bands were a bit naff, maybe they were trying to make the British IBM even more awesome. Plus there were a few laughs between tracks such as bar-codes and why I shouldn't win any more prizes. Plus I got to listen to their new track, so it was all awesome!

Steam Early Access

Here's a cool service, Steam has introduced something called "Early Access" where by you can play games before they get released. Think of it like playing a game's Beta. But unlike Beta testing where you're only playing about 60% or so of the game, you get to play the whole game, but you can put you're own input into the game's final development, such as how to make the game better, or point out any bugs in the game. Think of it like playing gold release games before they're technically gold.

My Latest Game Obsession: Guns of Icarus Online

I really need to keep up with my blog writing! I haven't written anything is ages! So let me tell you about one game I got into after purchasing it from a Steam Daily Deal.

Gun of Icarus Online

Guns of Icarus Online is the Player Vs Player online game sequel to Guns of Icarus, a cooperative game about manning an airship in a fantasy steam punk world. This on the other hand is still cooperative, but as I mentioned it's the PvP version, meaning you're up against other teams of people in airships rather than bots like in the first game.

Before you go out on your epic quests of glory in the high skies, you select one of three classes, Gunner, Engineer, and Pilot. The Gunner is quite obvious to describe, he or she takes hold of one of the many guns and cannons that are on the ship to gun down the enemy team's ships. The Engineer frantically runs around fixing parts of the ship as it gets gunned down, and the Pilot steers the ship, positioning it right to avoid enemy fire and shot back. I picked the Engineer class, mainly because it gets me moving a lot, and I can buff any part of the ship to give it an edge in the skies. Shown above, here's me fixing the pumps and the balloon as it got shot down pretty bad. You have to use what's called a "Rebuilding Tool" that allows you to rebuild any part of the ship that reaches zero hit points, then you have to use a "Repair Tool" afterwards to raise it's hit points. There are three tools the Engineer can use, there's the rubber mallet, the adjustable wrench and the spanner. They can all be used for rebuilding and repairing, however they have different qualities. The Rubber mallet can repair at 200 hit points per cycle, but has the slowest rebuild time, the spanner only has a 30 hit point repair per cycle, but has the quickest rebuild time. The adjustable wrench on the other hand delivers about 110 hit points per cycle, and has a rebuild time somewhere between the two other tools, making it a good all rounder for fixing parts of the ship, no need to carry two other tools. Well, you need to bring 3 tools into each game, so I bring the wrench, a buffing hammer and a fire extinguisher. The buffing hammer is vital to give each part of the ship that extra boost, applying is to rotor can make the ship move faster, apply it to the guns and they can cause more damage, and applying it to the engine and hull gives the overall ship's hit points an extra 15 percent more than it original did. The fire extinguisher is important to take out fires, as fires will quickly destroy the ship, it's vital to get fires out quick to prevent prolong damage tot he hull.

I have yet to play any of the other classes yet, though there's other to prevent you from grabbing the guns or the helm. Though you're a little out of luck as Engineers can't use more than 2 different kinds of ammunition, or use more than one of the special piloting items. Each class basically handles more items based on their skills. So more tools for the Engineer, more ammunition for the gunner, and more items such of telescopes and rocket fuel for the pilot.

So far I'm really liking the game, and trying to level up my Engineering skills. However I have had a few failures that involved me being in teams that like to do their own thing, or not quite understand what to do. I mean fair enough to noobs and what not, but when you have a level 4 pilot, you'd expect he can actual pilot the airship well rather than crash it into other ships or cliffs. Plus I've had a few arguments with other engineers on my team who have their priorities a bit skew-if, where they'll be trying to fix the rotors that have half their hit points left, but the hull and engine is on fire and I can see ourselves burn and fall to our deaths. I could never see myself getting angry with strangers on an online game like this, but when I have fools around me it does tick me off, and I begin swearing especially when my team isn't quite on track.

Guns of Icarus Online is a pretty fun online multiplayer game. It feels like an FPS shooter when it isn't, and has a very big emphasis on team work. You can't just have a team of gunners, who would pilot the ship and who would maintain it? It's pretty balanced in that respect and that's what I like about it. The Engineer might sound like a boring job in this kind of game, but the Engineer is vital to the ship's survival, so that's why I picked it. However there is a slight issue that I have with it, and that's it's price. At a price tag for £14.99, I think it's a little steep considering how little is in the game. It would be nice to maybe see a few more classes and maybe a boat load (Hah! Pun!) of different maps. But in my opinion, £14.99 is a little too much considering what this game provides content wise, I mean heck there's micro-transactions for customising the look of your character! It's the kind of Steam game you purchase when it's on offer, and that's what I did when it was on offer for £5 on the 22nd of February.

So here's hoping that it'll go down in price so that it might encourage more people to purchase and play it, because it's a great little online multiplayer game!

UPDATE: I didn't realise this until I had a better look on the Steam store page, but you can get this game to run on Mac and Linux too! Good to include multi-format gaming!

Steam Consoles!?

So...  If you're not aware, I'm a co-host on the Stalking the Retro Podcast, and on episode 22 we talked about Steam's "Big Picture" and how I believed that Valve is making a console. One: because the "Big Picture" is controller friendly, and Two: Valve possess patents towards a unique Valve branded controller with interchangeable sticks and buttons.

Well... CES is here, and even a day or two before CES, there's now more than one piece of kit that can get your Steam games on you TV without the need of building a Mini ITX PC.

First is the NVidia Shield.

Sorry NVidia, this is fugly...

And then there's the Xi3's Piston.

I swear there's more ports on the back of this thing than my desktop PC! :o

In short, the Piston is more of a PC crammed into a tiny box, more of an actual Steam Console, that's really just a tiny gaming PC, and the NVidia Shield in essence is an XBox 360 controller sized portable with a flip up screen that runs android and features a Shield exclusive software that can stream the video from a PC running Steam and play PC games on the Shield's screen, or output it to a TV via an HDMI output.

Seriously though, seeing pictures of the Xi3 Piston, and it looks awesome! I'm amazed how they crammed so much in it. And of course it's built out of more than one board that builds up a complete motherboard with more than on board and shaped into a small cube. If this was a Mini ITX PC, it'll be made of a Motherboard, a graphics card and a PSU, which would be A LOT bigger than this. Plus I would like to know what kind of graphics chips they use in this thing. The only downside of this little machine is that it's price tag is estimated to be a whopping $999! Now, building your own Mini ITX gaming PC would be cheaper than this. However Xi3 have stated that they're going to make the system upgradable and that you can take it apart and replace it's 3 boards that come with more RAM and faster processors. But with it's $999 price tag on it, yeah... I'll leave this for people with more money thank you very much!

The NVidia Shield on the other hand is pretty much an Ouya crammed into a 360-like controller with a flip up screen, and features video streaming from PCs that have Steam running on them.

So it's a two-in-one deal here, it's a Tegra enabled Android tablet, so you can play your existing Android games on this, but with real buttons. Plus it has the function to stream Steam games onto either it's 5 inch screen or out from it's Micro HDMI output to a TV screen. There's no price estimated for this, but I can't see this costing the same price as the $999 Piston. I just hope they can change the design of it to make it look a bit more sleeker, I bet the designer was a huge fan of the original XBox!

Review for Hotline Miami on PC.

OK, sometimes there's a game that I glance at, slightly ignore it, buy it on the cheap, and discover that it's the best thing since sliced bread, the last time I experienced anything like this was with Bethesda’s Fallout 3. I had no real interest in the game, and I bought it after seeing a cheap deal on Cheap Ass Gamer, and after leaving it in shrink wrap after a day or two, I put it into my 360 and was spell bound by it's awesomeness! Fast forward to the present day, the Steam Black Friday deals come up, and I purchase Hotline Miami on a whim as it was cheap; you can't beat cheap right? Well technically free is better than cheap, but I'm losing the point here. A few weeks after leaving Hotline Miami in my Steam list, curiosity began to kick in and I double click the game to run it, and POW was I in for a surprise.

The game began with a title screen in Cyrillic and I wasn't even sure if I was even playing Hotline Miami; it doesn't help when you cant read Cyrillic. But as the game began, you get thrown into a typical tutorial where it teaches you how to knock out, kill, and shoot your enemies, the agents in white suits. But after the tutorial, you're thrown into the game and realise why you needed the tutorial, because you're going to die, over and over again. Not just because you're not quite used to the controls, but because you have to self teach yourself the techniques and strategies of each level. Fortunately there are unlimited lives, and this is good thing, because I once died twenty five times in one level over the space of ten minutes, and that's the beauty of this game, no matter how many times I died in this game, I was never once frustrated, I always felt that the reason for why I died was due to making a bad move, not knowing what was up next and/or not timing things right. But in the same ways that Super Ghouls and Ghosts masochistically makes you want to play the game again even though you miserably failed, Hotline Miami does the same thing, you just WANT to beat the level, so you'll do it over and over again, planning out new routes, thinking about how to take out your enemies and what weapons to use. Even though this game is a top down action shooter that feels like what would happen if the original Grand Theft Auto played like Smash TV, but the game has a nice balance of stealth, and strategy too without it being too much of the other. It's not overly stealth-like on the lines of Metal Gear Solid or Hitman, and it doesn't use too much strategy like XCOM or Red Alert; you can pretty much treat the game like a full-on action game, but without knowing what's coming up next you're bound to get killed, so a little strategy and timing will help a lot on getting through those levels that you're so damn eager to beat!

The graphics are very reminiscent of the original Grand Theft Auto. Everything is seen in a top down look, and there's plenty of pixelated blood on the floor when you smite your enemies with a lead pipe or a machine gun. However unlike GTA, you don't drive. Each level is a building whereby your object is (nearly) the same in every level; kill everyone. Killing in this game isn't just a case of going on a shooting spree, you have a variety of weapons of both melee and fire arms. Melee weapons ranging from knifes to katanas and firearms ranging from a basic un-silenced hand gun to an over kill Scorpion Sub Machine gun. But it's all to do with how you kill off each white suit claded enemy is where the real game play comes in. The game features a scoring system similar to the likes of Devil May Cry and Bullet Storm where by putting variation to your kills you score you bigger points rather than doing the same thing over and over again. This is where strategy kicks in, you look at the screen and see the enemies in each room and think about how you can pick them off to earn more points so you can unlock new weapons in the game. For example in one level, you might kick a door down that's near an enemy, which makes him fall over, you pick up the knife he was carrying, pick him up and slice his neck with it. Walk into the next with said knife and throw it towards the next victim and take his shot gun, then put some holes in the chest of the next two or three enemies, this will grab attention as it makes noise, so time to grab that semi automatic off floor and hide behind the door and pump some lead into the unfortunate fools who creep into the room and create a pile of bodies in middle of the room and so on. You could just knife everyone, but by doing the example above will give you more points than just knifing everyone.

The next cool feature is the masks, the character you play, simply called “Jacket”, due to his high school prep jacket that he likes to wear, has a selection of rubber masks that he wears over his face in each level. Each mask is a face of an animal, and each animal mask gives Jacket a perk. You start with a Chicken mask, named Richard (of course, got to have a name for each mask you know), which doesn't give you a perk, but as you beat each level, you earn a new mask such as Rasmus the Owl mask that gives you hints for secrets in each level, or Tony the Tiger that allows you to cause instant kills by punching enemies with your bare fists, my favourite mask by the way! You select a mask before you enter a level, hiding Jacket's identity, not that Jacket really has an identity, sometimes you can see his face as he becomes un-masked from a death, but the sprites are not that well detailed anyway, but you get the gist. Experimenting with the masks will help you find out which mask you like better, though you can't change masks after getting yourself killed in a level. You can only select a mask as you begin a level, not after each time you restart a level, which does give the game an element of challenge as you try to figure out how to beat a level with a certain mask, though I have found myself having to quit the level and starting it again to use a different mask that takes away the challenge a bit, then again removing the quit option would make the game suck from a user interface side of things. The only issues I found with the gameplay was the slight problem with point blanc shooting. When I was early in the game, I found this weird little bug where I would try to shoot a guy with my shot gun, to find out I shot the guy behind him, as if there was a magic gap between the point of my shot gun, and the spray of the shell. The guy in front of me killed me off with a lead pipe. From this point on I decided that point blanc shooting was a terrible idea in this game and that for close range combat I would only use melee weapons.

As controls are concerned, a game that has twin stick like game play works amazingly well with the keyboard and mouse. The problem I've had with other PC twin stick shooters is that their mouse and keyboard controls aren't really that great. But what makes Hotline Miami good is the fact that Jacket is (nearly) in the middle of the screen at all times. There are times where Jacket might be a bit off from the centre of the screen, but never enough to make the aiming with a mouse a chore like on PomPom's Mutant Storm. The Game does provide support for the 360 controller, though there are issues if you don't have the latest drivers for it, but when it works it works, but I found out that as much as the 360 controller is fine, I still preferred the mouse and keyboard controls, but I can see how people might prefer to use a 360 pad if they're more in tuned with console gaming.

The sound track in this game is simply awesome! It has an 80s action film feel to it from a collection of different artists such as Sun Araw, M.O.O.N. , Jasper Byrne, El Huervo and many others that make up a great selection of tunes that give the game it's gritty, “over exposed film” feel, it's as if it feels like a 70s Grindhouse movie, but based in the 80s, and it totally fits into it's ultra violent theme. You can listen to the awesome sound track free on SoundCloud. https://soundcloud.com/devolverdigital/sets/hotline-miami-official

The story itself is minimalist, yet feels like the kind of plot you get from the likes of Fight Club. As you go through each level, you sometimes come across other mask wearing characters that ask you questions about why you go out killing, and it then turns into a quest to find out why you're doing the killing sprees that the person on the phone is asking you to do. There's even a scene where you find yourself in an out of body experience where you see yourself in a hospital bed in a coma. The story is very mysterious, trippy, and not told very well, but leaves you asking questions that you so want to ask Jonatan Söderström, the developer of the game, all the juicy details about the plot that’s missing from the game.

To conclude, I loved this game a lot! Out of all the games I got this year, this game that got released fairly late in the year is by far my favourite. Compared with games such as Dark Souls, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and The Walking Dead, this proves that a low budget indie game can become more impressive and enjoyable than mainstream games. As I repeat to other people on forums and Youtube videos, indie developers will bring a spark into the games industry that will make games a lot more interesting than seeing yearly sequels to Call of Duty and sports games. It's time for the video game lovers to show how games should be made rather than men in business suits!

You can purchase Hotline Miami on Steam or GOG.com for around $10/£7.