OTXO

My background for OTXO is someone who has played Hotline Miami for it's A+ ranks, and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number for all S ranks, and top 100 leaderboard positions on several levels.

Let's start with what is *in* the game, the gunplay is flawless, the game controls excellently, the fodder enemies are perfectly tuned and the improved AI over it's muses is welcome. The music is not quite on the level of HLM1/2, but it is still phenomenal.

If you compare everything in OTXO to that which it has a direct counterpart in HLM1/2, OTXO wins by a landslide - with the exception of the soundtrack - it executes better on everything it's inspirations do, be that snappier more consistent controls, better AI, more consistent firearms, or best of all, consistent doors.

The issues arise with what OTXO adds to the formula, adding roguelike elements to a Hotline Miami game is not a bad idea by any means, but OTXO doesn't execute on this premise as well as I'd hoped. Having beaten the game twice I can tell you I don't remember many of the drinks, although dual-wielding was a standout. Another thing OTXO loses due to integrating roguelike elements that was seemingly inevitable is the planning element HLM1/2 had, which was a big part of those games' appeal for me.

Another personal issue with how OTXO executes on it's premise is it's addition of a health-bar and slow-mo, I agree a decrease in difficulty was necessary due to the levels now being randomly generated, but it leaves the game in an odd spot where normal mode feels too forgiving and hard mode feels just right with the exception of boss fights, which - from someone who was not memorising boss patterns - feel like an incredible difficulty spike that kills hard mode runs past the first boss encounter.

Additionally the slow-mo feels slightly undercooked, not Katana ZERO levels of "the game can be beaten in it's entirety without this mechanic", but it still feels like a semi-last-minute addition to lower the difficulty for less skilled players. I would've liked a button to disable slow-mo, removing all it's related drinks from the drink pool, giving me a higher likelihood of receiving a drink I'd have made use out of, but it was not that big of an irritance, and High Roller did make for a nice change of pace sometimes.

Overall, OTXO is an enjoyable - if inconsistent - elaboration on the games which inspire it, it perfects all the core mechanics, but slightly underdelivers on/disappoints with some of it's additions. A very worthwhile play for fans of Hotline 1 who thought the sequel was too difficult and relied too much on memorisation.