izigame.me

I've been hyped for this game since John Wick 4 came out but honestly, some of the mechanics here just absolutely suck:
- Movement isn't very responsive and it has this kind of thing from Rockstar Games where the main character follows his legs instead of the precise directions that the player presses. A weird decision in this kind of game and you keep getting stuck in corners or hard-to-see furniture you didn't even know you were moving towards.
- The camera moves way too far away from the player when looking around. I keep losing track of where I actually am, and combined with the previously mentioned issue that the main character does not move exactly in the directions that I press... you know.
- The white crosshair just disappears on bright backgrounds. And you have a lot of bright backgrounds with this amount of bloom and light VFX. You can change the crosshair color, but at least the default color sucks and it's annoying that I have to try out different colors myself to see what works for this game.
- It's sometimes difficult to distinguish walls, windows, and doors. Also, enemies sometimes see you through windows, sometimes not. This also means that sometimes they break the windows (which block bullets), sometimes not.
- Generally, there is too much RNG. You restart a level and enemies will walk to completely different locations. Some enemies can dive to dodge your bullets and sometimes they do that, sometimes not. Again, a weird decision in such a game, especially since it tracks your best times in each level and there are challenges related to beating the levels in specific par times. Some enemies in Hotline Miami moved randomly too, but it is much more noticeable in Hong Kong Massacre. If you die in HM, you have the wrong strategy or bad reactions; if you die in HKM, you usually fell victim to RNG.
- The other 2 level challenges are simply antithetical to the overall gameplay. Slow-motion is one of the coolest mechanics and the dev clearly knows that since the trailers run almost entirely in slow-motion. So why on Earth do I need to completely ignore this core mechanic that I bought the game for if I want to unlock everything? The third challenge is "Finish the mission with 100% of your bullets hitting enemies" and it just doesn't make sense because some enemies can literally dodge your bullets (RNG!) and you sometimes need to wait for enemies to break windows (RNG!).
- And besides the whole RNG thing, there are no indicators for anything. There's no proper feedback when you hit an enemy, which becomes frustrating when you're surrounded by enemies and one of them dives to dodge your bullet. There's nothing indicating that slow-motion is activated (it is a gradual effect), no indicator that slow-motion has recharged, and there is not even an indicator telling you that you can dive again which is as important as shooting in this game. There are no sound effects except for gunshots, so there's also no way to tell if an enemy is approaching, whether a door got destroyed, or whether your gun is empty. There is so much guesswork going on at the core of this game it's almost funny, but it just makes the gameplay loop an annoying series of trial & error instead of being a skill- and strategy-based game like Hotline Miami.
- I only finished 2 of 4 chapters, but their boss fights were boring and exactly the same.
Maybe I'll just ignore the level challenges from now on and rush through the remaining missions so I get at least that. But so far, I'm tending towards a refund. I love the aesthetics of Hong Kong Massacre but it feels like a Hotline Miami clone that completely misses what made Hotline Miami fun and does not understand its own strengths.