Platform: PC

Hotline Miami is an ultraviolent, fast-paced arcade-style game that owes a lot to Smash T.V. and Berzerk. Although it uses both analog sticks, I wouldn’t quite call it a twin stick shooter since you are using the shoulder buttons to fire and swing weapons. These controls are not easy to get used to, but eventually I got a handle on them. Yet even near the end I was still dying because I would accidentally throw my weapon rather than target an enemy.

The game is pretty spastic and unforgiving. You are rewarded for speed and recklessness but a lot of times you will get killed without warning by a thug who is out of your range of view. Success comes from memorization of the levels and repetition. You need to plan your attack route using a mix of stealthy melee kills and well-placed (but loud) gun shots.

By the end of a stage the screen is filled with bloody puddles of pixelated henchmen. The violence can seem be a bit unnerving and excessive at first, but the lo-res graphics, Scarface themes and dreamy tone keep it from becoming too icky like Postal was.

I really wanted to like Brütal Legend. but once again Doublefine has created a game that is a triumph of style over substance. The story concept is there: Jack Black as a concert roadie who saves heavy metal music from obsolescence through the power of rock. There are so many great ways that this tale could have been told. How about a parable about commercial, corporate entities are watering down great music? Or how with so many entertainment choices, kids just don’t care about being in bands any more? Nope. Instead we are taken to what amounts to your standard D & D fantasy world with a sheen of Eighties metal album cover art direction laid on top. If not for the fact that your magic wand is actually a guitar, the game-play doesn’t build on the music themes that are set up in the premise.

I would be able to look past the story direction and just play in a fantasy world where I could join Lemmy, Ozzy and Rob Halford in battle, but the game mechanics range from dull to infuriatingly not fun. In the case of the former we have standard button mashing hack and slash segments, and as for the latter there are the much bemoaned real-time strategy battles. Those RTS portions are terrible. The controls are awkward and there’s no minimap to help you command troops. You can’t tell enemies from friends so, when you join in the fighting, you are just randomly swinging at everything. Such a mess.

On top of all this, it’s an open world, mission-based game too! That usually mean lots of little side quests to fill out the map and encourage exploration. Over and over your side quests are an ambush battle, a gun turret battle, a mortar strike battle and a race. Of the game types, only the racing is fun (especially the segments where you are shooting enemies while driving). Otherwise it all felt like an excuse to look at pretty art and listen to crappy metal music that holds no nostalgic value to me. I hope Broken Age does well, because Doublefine needs to concentrate more on pure story driven games and less on standard console action game tropes with an artsy paint job.

This sequel is an improvement over the original Borderlands. The basic shoot everything and look for loot game-play remains, but the level designs and weapons are far more interesting. There is a much greater emphasis on verticality, cover and movement. The first game seems flat and empty compared to this.

Multiplayer co-op is still the way to go because the story, although a bit more focused, is still a bit of an after thought. At least you are given a villain to pursue even though you really don’t care why he is doing what he is doing.

In the above scene from Memento Mori you are supposed to trick a little, abused girl into thinking she’s your friend. The only thing that’s missing is the white panel van and sick puppy dog. Fortunately, the rest of the game isn’t quite this creepy.

Memento Mori is a relatively easy 3-D point and click adventure that feels a lot like Broken Sword. You control two characters, male and female, as you try to unravel a mystery of stolen art, ancient monastic sects and murder. The plot is slow to develop and has much the same Christian treasure hunting vibe as The Da Vinci Code. The final twist is almost worth the slow journey. Some better pacing, snappier dialogue and richer characters would have helped a lot. As it is, it is just a mildly enjoyable way to pass some time if you have a couple bucks to spare. 

I understand that this game was originally a Nintendo 3DS launch title. So, by the standards of portable gaming, this is not a bad game at all. However, here on the PC it seems a little behind the times and blah. This criticism is mostly about cosmetics. Unlike the bright and diverse levels of Resident Evils 4 & 5 the game seems really limited to the samey-looking hallways of a dingy cruise ship’s interior. While you would think that they could use this environment for all its worth by, say, including the listing of the ship, bursting portholes, and other aquatic mayhem. Instead it’s your standard FPS hallway levels with a little swimming here and there.

Not to say that the game isn’t fun. Although they have toned down the gore quite a bit since RE4, the tried and true over-the-shoulder shooting mechanics, wacky plots and dialogue, and weird and horrific monsters are all still there. Also, they have thankfully gotten rid of quick-time events and tetris-style inventory management. As an aside, a genetic mutation that makes your heart protrude outside of your chest does not seem very evolutionarily viable?

Billed as a first person shooter RPG, Borderlands focuses on collecting loot over story. There a lot of superficial similarity with the recent Fallout games: large open world to explore, quest-based goals and a little bit of humor thrown in. But the world of Borderlands is barren and devoid of interesting people and stories. You just get your quest marker and then go and shoot everything in your path. All the while you are hoping the next gun that is dropped will be slightly better than the one you are holding.

The game’s saving grace is its emphasis on co-operative online multi-player game-play. I played through the whole game with a partner’s help. It may have felt more like an enjoyable pastime rather than a challenging game, but as long as chat was on it was pretty fun just grinding through the cell-shaded levels with a friend. We have already moved on the Borderlands 2 (which is a much better game).

Over the past few years I have had a love/hate relationship with The Walking Dead T.V. show. Unlike most of the trash in the zombie sub-genre being released these days, the pilot episode was simply one of the best zombie stories ever filmed. However, as the series progressed, it has sunk in quality where at times it just feels like a bad soap opera filled with characters who make the most unrealistic and stupid decisions. The fact that there is a zombie apocalypse going on has little or no bearing on the plot most of the time (you can just replace “zombies” with “earthquake” or another major disaster and you would have the same show).

The video game adaptation is different because now you can make the stupid decisions! Rather than a standard point and click adventure, Telltale has created a system that is essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure audio/visual experience’like Dragon’s Lair except your choices actually effect how the story progresses. Most of these choices occur in dialogue interactions as a timer ticks down waiting for you to pick your line. Choose to be a rational human being or a dick, it’s all up to you.

If I may go on a bit of a tangent here, I’ve noticed that most end of the world stories assume people would all just become horrible to each other and betray their fellow survivors just to gain a modest advantage. I really doubt this is how things would unfold. I think 99.9% percent of people are good and humans would be resourceful enough to team up and rebuild. My anecdotal experience with neighbors helping each other with snow shoveling this morning is what I am going on, so that that with whatever grain of salt you want.

Anyhow, back to the game: There are points where your choice is between rescuing character A or character B and those are the moments that supposedly can really change the story. I went back and replayed the first episode picking different options and the changes aren’t that huge. The key plot points remain the same. In theory, this should make for an awful game, but The Walking Dead is saved by its engaging story which avoids most of the melodrama of the television show. Because I was the one making the crucial choices, I was even more invested in the characters than I could ever be if I was passively watching the show. Maybe not a great “game” per se, but definitely a great piece interactive fiction.

Clocking in at 31 gigabytes of disk space needed, Max Payne 3 is a monster of a game. I would have bought it at launch, but my old computer just would not be able to run it. The Max Payne series has been one of my favorites for a long time. I love the cheesy noir narration, gritty environments and, of course, the insane slow motion gun battles. The third installment retains all of these elements and gives the game a beautiful audio-visual overhaul. Most notably, the comic panel storytelling device has been replaced with your standard in-game cut scenes. Lots and lots of cut scenes that, at times, interrupt the flow of the game play. You just want to burst through that door guns blazing but then you’re forced to watch Max slowly creep his way into cover while explaining that the room was “full of goons.” I guess I didn’t mind the kill-to-cut-scene ratio too much but it could get pretty annoying if I ever go back and play again.

The real reason you play this game is to experience the incredible Bullet Time™ gun battles (So, apparently Bullet Time™ is a trade mark of Warner Bros. Studios?). You can really pull of some amazing kills where you are flying backwards down a staircase, shards of glass exploding all around you, blasting away goon after goon then haphazardly landing on your back only to finish-off the rest lying prone in a pile of ruins. It’s a great game with a good story (although not as interesting character development-wise as Max Payne 2). Max is as cranky as ever and he looks a bit like Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs.

I’m on a bit of a tear here finishing off games. I guess after that last Winter Steam sale I had about six different games going concurrently. Anyways, I just finished the Rise of the Triad remake and it was pretty much what I expected: a technological upgrade of a mid-Nineties FPS shooter. The developers were pretty clear that outside of the better graphics, sound and controls there were not going to be any big game play changes.

This is a pure run-and-gun shooter. There is no plot, the voice acting is crap and the art direction is pretty incoherent. Like the original (seen below)…

…the joy comes from the powerful weapons and crazy power-ups. “God Mode” from the original remains the best power-up from any game, ever (grow to eight feet tall and become “moaning with power” as you launch cosmic death orbs!).

As fun as this reboot is, it is still a bit behind the times. There are glitches galore, the AI is mediocre at best and the boss battles just suck. But it’s short and cheap and there are lots of fun little touches like the mission briefings and insulting death taunts.

I had hoped that when they adapted the Web version of Surgeon Simulator into a full game they would have added a funny story line ála Trauma Center. Instead they have just expanded the original game by adding two more procedures and a couple more environments. It’s still much the same game: purposely horrible game controls, inappropriate tools for the job, painfully hilarious physics interactions and general surgical mayhem.

Most of the fun of the game comes from unintentionally butchering your patient. Tools are flying everywhere and your calculator watch will inevitably fall off into the patient’s chest. All the while you have to watch that blood level. Get a little too aggressive with your hacksaw and you will have a flatliner on your table. The challenge is mastering ridiculous the 1-button-per-finger hand controls. Back in the Atari 2600 days, mastering awkward controls was actually part of the game design too but, thankfully, that has faded from game design. Who would have thought such a bygone, horrible design choice could be revived in a way that is actually fun. Maybe it’s not worth full price, but Surgeon Simulator 2013 is worth trying out a few laughs.