HOTLINE MIAMI REVIEW

Gangsters are splattered across a disco floor, the DJ is bumping to the limit, and you've just knifed 3 fucks in the face. You're playing Hotline Miami.

Normally in a review, I'd talk about all the different aspects of the bla bla bla, but holy shit this game is awesome. You can see the neon screenshots in this post, but you can't see the colors fade in and out of every color of the rainbow and a few that are too beautiful to even describe in words but that will surely bring tears of joy to your ugly face.

If this game is making me hostile, then "fuck you" who cares. Pa-pow! You'll go crazy too because of how crazy awesome this shit is.

I saw someone playing this game on twitch yesterday. Immediately I downloaded it from GOG.com, but I could have got it on Steam. If it ever goes on sale on Steam I'll buy it there too just for the Steam achievements and to show everyone that I'm playing 400 additional hours of it.

It's $9.99 on any platform, and well worth every penny. Actually, if you are a Playstation Plus subscriber, you might already have free access to it. I know a friend of mine does, and when I'm done with this "review" I'm going to send him belligerent text messages about it. Not that it's very usful information, but it is perhaps interesting: the game was developed with Game Maker and the Phyre Engine, tools that are pretty easy to get your hands on. Game Maker is only 50 bucks, and you could publish a Steam game with it.

The world of indie video games has obviously entered a Renaissance. Hotline Miami and the masterpieces of our era, but it all started with Cave Story.

But fuck Cave Story we are talking about slaughtering Russian gangsters in 1989 Miami, and it's never been as cool. In terms of storytelling, most gamers will tell you they don't understand it. Well fuck those people, use your brain and it's not hard. Obviously there is a little room for interpretation, but the sequel (Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number) should shed even more light on the drug-fueled adventures of the dude in the Jacket.

Hotline Miami owes a lot to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and that's a good thing. I've seen a lot of GTA-bashing surrounding this game, but that's all horse shit. Maybe GTA stories are too serious, but Vice City wasn't fucking serious at all. It was just scarface, the wackier, cooler video game.

Hotline Miami is more like a David Cronenberg film than a Brian DePalma; it's dark, it's smart, it's a mindfuck and roller coaster ride. You can't afford not to play Hotline Miami.

Risk of Rain Streaming Tonight!

The old school action continues with another new game: Risk of Rain. It's a sidescrolling action platformer roguelike. If that sounds like a lot to handle, it is. However the game was on sale this weekend for 3.39 USD, and I picked it up along with about a million other gamers. With all these roguelikes in the mainstream, it's hard to believe people used to gape in awe when I talked to them about NetHack. 

Risk of Rain is hard like NetHack, but the UI pains that plague many ASCII games are being washed away in the modern generation of games like TOME, FTL, Binding of Isaac, and Risk of Rain.

The game is awesome. The music kicks ass, the sprites are tiny, and the action is huge. Classes are varied and uniquely fun. You can play as a commando, bandit, engineer, mutant, miner, and 5 other equally cool classes as you battle through hundred of enemies in your quest to survive the horrors of the strange planet. Each class is very different. The bandito relies on trigger-fanning shotgun blasts and nimble dodging while invisble. Acrid the Mutant, however, requires you to get up-close and personal as you stack poison on mobs of mobs.

Want to experience the awesome? Then come check it out tonight on www.twitch.tv/Robot2600 or check out the embedded video at the end of the post.

Risk of Rain is brutally difficult, and the longer your game lasts the more difficult it gets. After 40 minutes of action you reach "HA HA HA HA HA" and "I'm coming for you" difficulties in which all good manners are forgotten. I managed to make it this far last night, and I'm hoping to beat the game tonight. I made it to the last level but couldn't take the heat and died in the kitchen.

On top of all this, you can play with up to 4 people in truly epic co-op. The server-side stuff is a bit complicated (I hosted a game and then my computer decided not to allow a second game despite the fact that I changed no settings in the interim). If you want to play come drop by the twitch channel or post a message here. You could be on (twitch) TV! Wow! You'd be totally famous and popular.

Anyway I'm off to a place where there is a risk of rain in space. For great justice and adventure!

Watch live video from Robot2600 on www.twitch.tv

The Binding of Isaac Hi-Res Wallpaper and First Impression Streaming Now

First, enjoy this hi-resolution Binding of Isaac wallpaper. Second, come check out the game itself, a roguelike-Robotron-Zelda hybrid made by Team Meat, the guys who made Super Meat Boy. Basically, I think the idea is that you have to delve into randomly-generated Zelda 1 dungeons to defeat the horror that lurk within.

I've heard a lot about this game and I'm pretty pumped to play it. While I'm typing this up I'm buying it on steam and getting the DLC as well. For 8 dollars I'm sure it's going to be worth it.

I'll probably get some Steam trading cards out of this also...

Check it out now, LIVE at www.twitch.tv/Robot2600

ONIKEN First Impressions Streaming Now!

I just picked up Oniken on Steam and it promises to be a wild ride. Something like a modern 8-Bit Ninja Gaiden. I live for this shit.

Come check it out tonight on twitch.tv/Robot2600

Watch live video from Robot2600 on www.twitch.tv

Steam Is Down

Steam crashed for everyone today. At about 12:15 in the afternoon (Central Time), just about everything associated with Steam crashed. This includes Team Fortress 2 (published and maintained by Valve), the game I was racing home from work to play. This can cause huge amounts of frustration for players who spend legitimately time, money, and energy into games only to get blocked out at an inopportune time.

No one knows what is causing the problem, although I suspect it will be something rather mundane like a power outage or coffee spill. These kinds of massive site-outages (Youtube and Yahoo! I'm looking in your directions) are usually associated with high traffic, but noon on a Thursday seems an unlikely time for such a rush.

If you look at the Team Fortess 2 player stats (http://steamdb.info/graph/440/) you can see that there was a small (30 minute) disruption of service about 1 hour before things went totally black. Whatever the problem, it appears that it was not fixed in time, or perhaps the instability is all the result of some deeper issue. In any case, the last time Steam was down like was in October.

When I started writing this article only some chat and community functions are up, as well as the Steam Store. Now, everything is down except the database
.

You can check the current status of steam services at http://steamstat.us/ and http://www.issteamdown.com/

Super Meat Boy Wii Not Canceled!

UPDATE: Super Meat Boy for the Wii was totally cancelled.

Super Meat Boy is a great DLC game for the XBOX360 and Steam, and the plan was to release if for the Wii as well. However, recently the game was canceled because of file size requirements on Nintendo's WiiWare Service. Developers must make their games 40 megs or smaller because the Wii has the storage capacity of a 10 year-old digital camera.

But Team Meat (the devteam) recently tweeted this:

"the news we hope to have by GDC effects the wii version and pc version of the game"

http://twitter.com/SuperMeatBoy/status/27997359031984129

This probably means that Super Meat Boy will be available as a disc for the Wii, but will Wii gamers be willing to shell out even $30 for a game that costs $10 via XBOX Live and $3.75, recently as a promotion, over Steam? Not me. $15 would be a nice price-point, as long as the manual is sweet as hell.

Now, check out this rad cutout.