THE HONG KONG MASSACRE

Your Hotline to action

Picture the top-down, fast-paced gameplay of Hotline Miami attentively intertwined with all the trademarks of a Hong Kong action flick. The final product: an adrenaline-raising pick-up-and-play.

Days and specific times act as levels, where you must eradicate all enemies in brisk combat encounters without taking a hit. 1 Fail in this, and you’ll be greeted with the infamous “Dead” screen, a sight you’ll no doubt get well-acquainted with as you’re bested by the early stages of the game. However, learn from your mistakes and you’ll feel a profound sense of accomplishment nonetheless. Stars earned by beating levels and completing challenges can be exchanged for new weapons and upgrades, allowing you to pack more of a punch. It’s a simple yet gratifying progression system that ensures you match the game’s steep difficulty curve.

The Hong Kong Massacre certainly makes you feel like you’re in a Hong Kong movie, with its cinematics (lacklustre compared to the real thing), 2 quintessential settings, and, of course, its defining feature: the ability to slow time. Sliding into rooms and tapping p will truly have you feeling like an action hero. You dodge bullets in rooftop showdowns and glide across the floor pumping enemies full of lead; brittle condos tear apart as flimsy wooden doors and windows are splintered and flung skyward in high-octane action sequences backed by a cheesy soundtrack.

At a first glance The Hong Kong Massacre appears to be nothing more than a Hotline Miami clone. However, beneath its samey exterior the game differentiates itself with some quirky mechanics that make it a real blast to play. Nicole Hall

FOOTNOTES1 The top-down perspective makes judging options for cover difficult. 2 Cinematic cutscenes are blurry, vague, and feel redundant. So, not like a Hong Kong action flick in that respect.