Top-down puncher Hotline Miami had brutality and baseball bats, but you know what it didn t have? Teleportation.

That is how I imagine most videogames are created. Just one man in a tie who is approached by developers like an oracle and who says: “do X but with Y.” Mr Shifty [official site] is about smashing through crowds of people while using a blink-like teleporting skill to dodge bullets and blows. It s out today and, like its masked mate from the 80s, it s all viewed from above. It looks hectic, but you can see that for yourself in the trailer below. … [visit site to read more]

GOG Connect is a pleasant little scheme from the DRM-free digital distributor, letting people who own certain games on Steam get GOG versions too for free. Now it’s back. GOG today launched another round of GOG Connect, with another seventeen games for Steamers to redeem. Because, y’know, it’s nice to have a DRM-free backup without buying a game twice. The lineup this time includes Hotline Miami, The Last Federation, the Shadow Warrior reboot, X Rebirth, and Teslagrad.

Oh, and GOG has launched another big sale too.

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It seems so familiar now, with a sequel and several imitators behind it, but at the time Hotline Miami was so exciting>. What a mix of things! A superb soundtrack, lightning-speed precise controls, a built-in rythym powering the action, a palpable sense of disorientation, breathlessly nasty violence and a throughline of rare subversion. … [visit site to read more]

The chance to make your own Hotline Miami 2 [official site] murder-mazes has been a long time coming – it was “pretty close to completion” seven months ago – but now it’s had a release date stuck to it. Well, a beta release date. Folk have been making their own Hotline Miami 2 maps via a half-shut back door for ages, but come December 10 it all gets official. … [visit site to read more]

One day I’ll write a Desert Island Discs about the games I’d keep with me until the end of days, given a choice of ten. It’ll no doubt be a Desert Island Digital Downloads given the absence of physical media in my life. I live with the ghosts of entertainment.

Rather than compiling the list of games I’d take to the Vault with me though, today I’m aiming to put together a collection, one from each genre, that I’d use to introduce those genres to a PC gaming newcomer, or a lapsed gamer. A friend inspired this particular bundle of joy, someone who grew up with an Amiga but developed other interests and hasn’t touched a game for more than a few minutes at a time, either console or PC, for over fifteen years. A recent illness has left him unable to engage in his usual outdoor hobbies and games have filled the gap.>

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Update: So, it did hit its Kickstarter goal with days to spare, and now a bunch of people have pulled their funding and so it’s back under its target again. Huh! That’s odd.

Original story:

12 Is Better Than 6 [official site] is a beautifully hand-drawn, gun-toting, poncho-sporting undertaking into what seems like the perpetually acrimonious world of the wicky-wicky-Wild West.

Although grossly different visually, its top-down, blood-fest aesthetic might remind you of Hotline Miami, and the fact that it takes place in 1873 might remind you of Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Needless to say, we’d win hands-down in a shootout, but I suppose 12 Is Better Than 6 deserves some credit for its recent Kickstarter success.

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You probably like action games. But which ones should you like best?! We’ve narrowed it down to 25, and then put them in the unimpeachably correct order. Read on for details of the best action biff-zap-collect-me-do gaming you can stuff down your trousers.

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I have just booted up Half-Line Miami [official site] – a mashup of Hotline Miami and Half-Life as created by student Thomas Kole.

As someone who has never really played Half-Life 2 or Hotline Miami (I did about one level of Hotline Miami at a demo booth one time and apparently own it on this here PC – who knew? As for the Half-Life games, I played the original until a bit where you have to climb into a ceiling vent which you reach by dragging a box over. I’d killed something directly below the vent and their corpse became an immovable object so I couldn’t put the box in the right place to climb up. After trying all the solutions I could think of I gave up rather than restart at my last save which was ages away. I tried the second game as part of the Orange Box on XBox 360 and got as far as Water Hazard.) I feel well placed to explain Half-Line Miami.

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Ah man, this one’s pretty good. A while back the producers at ComplexTV flew out to London to interview the reclusive developers of Hotline Miami [official site]. You can watch the results below: A just-about 30 minute-long documentary telling the tale of how two Swedish hipsters created one of the greatest indie games of all time. One of the guys cries in it, so you know it’s good.

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Adam’s already run his review of Dennaton’s sequel to neon-hued tactical murder party Hotline Miami, but while he’s a big fan, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number hasn’t been met with universal praise. Alec, more cautious about the game, joins Adam to discuss what may and may not be deliberate about its design choices, its bewildering story and its bugs.

… [visit site to read more]