An astonishing work of hubris. Imagine a young aspiring game dev, playing something as instantly totemic as Hotline Miami, thinking "Yeah pretty good but it would be way better as a cyberpunk ninja 2d platformer game made by me." Then they just do it. Askiisoft is a fucking boss.
Despite the new perspective, he keeps most of HM's surface level intact. Level design, presentation, and soundtrack are all present and accounted for. None of the imitations are too close for comfort, all are impressive. I'm not usually the kind of guy to be bothered by inspiration this direct. But the connecting thread is so thick as to be always visible, and the comparison only serves to hurt this game. HM is fertile ground but sometimes this game is too content to repeat a trick. "Oh my God, the level wasn't actually over yet? No fucking way!" is not what I said. I said, "Oh, haha like in Hotline Miami that's kinda cool." I liked it all more the first time, which isn't helped by how slow Katana Zero is to get going. But the moveset here is that good shit. Maybe the slowdown mechanic is a game ruiner, I don't know, I barely used it. The combat is too baseline fun to notice its imperfections. On the gameplay front, this is entirely its own beast. Zero comes alive in its back half, giving me great hope for the (free, God bless Askiisoft) DLC, which, should it continue the base game's upward trajectory, could be something incredible. When push comes to shove, your brain will fire electrons at unprecedented speeds. I just wish this didn't feel like flashy imitation so frequently.
Then the bells and whistles quiet, and we all sit by the campfire to hear Askii tell a story. Then he takes a shit on the campfire. But it's, like, cool shit. And then the shit hits the fan.
Askii supplants Miami's surrealist political commentary / open-ended metanarrative with a fireworks factory. He smashes the Vietnam War into samurai tropes into gangsta flicks into Robocop into intensely disturbing existential horror involving being trapped in an infinite internal time loop and on and on. It doesn't work. I believe how you tell your story is more important than what you tell, and the hows here are sick, but I have my limits. For the first time in a while, I had to step back and wonder. What am I being told? The bells and whistles are cool, and the 'glitchy' (spoilers averted) moments are better executed aesthetically than in HM, but to what end? For the amount of downtime this game takes for its story, for as lizard-brain awesome as it is, the sum is mush. It's not even uncompelling, it's unsure of what is even trying to be compelling. Should I be invested in his relationship with the quasi-fictional little girl with 4 minutes of screen time? Should I feel anything on the final reveal of his identity, which is both overtelegraphed and meaningless? Is that actually a cosplay? Who knows! It's telling his piss-take April Fool's evil spirit version of the game makes fun of a (bad facsimile of) a relatively normal martial arts film plot. Askiisoft laughs in the face of your blandly functional story! This man is insane. Literally who the fuck are the mask guys, are you trying to insinuate that the Chronos is responsible for genuine time travel and not just some kind of pre-cognition? The government made this but STILL lost the war? Askii, what are you fucking talking about? This isn't even maximalism anymore, that insinuates an intention to do anything other than smash every little-kid-brain 'cool' genre together. This is 5 hours of narrative malpractice. But on that level, it is undoubtedly successful. I love that he throws the gun. The whole game throws the gun. If there's anything to the semiotics of this game, it's the gun.
Just so we're clear, I think this means I liked it. I'm not sure.
Video games are dope. No other medium of art facilitates individual sickos to do this. We get a couple of these every year. This is not nearly as bananas as a Pizza Tower or whatever, but the only real barrier preventing it is a small sheen of self-seriousness, a slight grounding of its inner gonzo. If my games are going buck wild, I want them all the way in. And not to reinject actual criticism into whatever this is, I do have genuine problems with a fair number of levels, I do find the first act a drag, and I do find the aesthetic similarities to Hotline Miami distracting. But once you're deflecting bullets with your samurai sword to knock down a helicopter you're pursuing on the motorcycle you just stole, it's hard to say this isn't working. The best mouthful of Skittles I've tasted this year, with the promise of an even tastier portion of sour Skittles to follow, which makes it an instant recommendation.
Speedrun this if you're sick in the head. You'll love it.
Despite the new perspective, he keeps most of HM's surface level intact. Level design, presentation, and soundtrack are all present and accounted for. None of the imitations are too close for comfort, all are impressive. I'm not usually the kind of guy to be bothered by inspiration this direct. But the connecting thread is so thick as to be always visible, and the comparison only serves to hurt this game. HM is fertile ground but sometimes this game is too content to repeat a trick. "Oh my God, the level wasn't actually over yet? No fucking way!" is not what I said. I said, "Oh, haha like in Hotline Miami that's kinda cool." I liked it all more the first time, which isn't helped by how slow Katana Zero is to get going. But the moveset here is that good shit. Maybe the slowdown mechanic is a game ruiner, I don't know, I barely used it. The combat is too baseline fun to notice its imperfections. On the gameplay front, this is entirely its own beast. Zero comes alive in its back half, giving me great hope for the (free, God bless Askiisoft) DLC, which, should it continue the base game's upward trajectory, could be something incredible. When push comes to shove, your brain will fire electrons at unprecedented speeds. I just wish this didn't feel like flashy imitation so frequently.
Then the bells and whistles quiet, and we all sit by the campfire to hear Askii tell a story. Then he takes a shit on the campfire. But it's, like, cool shit. And then the shit hits the fan.
Askii supplants Miami's surrealist political commentary / open-ended metanarrative with a fireworks factory. He smashes the Vietnam War into samurai tropes into gangsta flicks into Robocop into intensely disturbing existential horror involving being trapped in an infinite internal time loop and on and on. It doesn't work. I believe how you tell your story is more important than what you tell, and the hows here are sick, but I have my limits. For the first time in a while, I had to step back and wonder. What am I being told? The bells and whistles are cool, and the 'glitchy' (spoilers averted) moments are better executed aesthetically than in HM, but to what end? For the amount of downtime this game takes for its story, for as lizard-brain awesome as it is, the sum is mush. It's not even uncompelling, it's unsure of what is even trying to be compelling. Should I be invested in his relationship with the quasi-fictional little girl with 4 minutes of screen time? Should I feel anything on the final reveal of his identity, which is both overtelegraphed and meaningless? Is that actually a cosplay? Who knows! It's telling his piss-take April Fool's evil spirit version of the game makes fun of a (bad facsimile of) a relatively normal martial arts film plot. Askiisoft laughs in the face of your blandly functional story! This man is insane. Literally who the fuck are the mask guys, are you trying to insinuate that the Chronos is responsible for genuine time travel and not just some kind of pre-cognition? The government made this but STILL lost the war? Askii, what are you fucking talking about? This isn't even maximalism anymore, that insinuates an intention to do anything other than smash every little-kid-brain 'cool' genre together. This is 5 hours of narrative malpractice. But on that level, it is undoubtedly successful. I love that he throws the gun. The whole game throws the gun. If there's anything to the semiotics of this game, it's the gun.
Just so we're clear, I think this means I liked it. I'm not sure.
Video games are dope. No other medium of art facilitates individual sickos to do this. We get a couple of these every year. This is not nearly as bananas as a Pizza Tower or whatever, but the only real barrier preventing it is a small sheen of self-seriousness, a slight grounding of its inner gonzo. If my games are going buck wild, I want them all the way in. And not to reinject actual criticism into whatever this is, I do have genuine problems with a fair number of levels, I do find the first act a drag, and I do find the aesthetic similarities to Hotline Miami distracting. But once you're deflecting bullets with your samurai sword to knock down a helicopter you're pursuing on the motorcycle you just stole, it's hard to say this isn't working. The best mouthful of Skittles I've tasted this year, with the promise of an even tastier portion of sour Skittles to follow, which makes it an instant recommendation.
Speedrun this if you're sick in the head. You'll love it.
CustomEpicness
2 months ago