10 Things You Didn’t Know about The Hong Kong Massacre

The Hong Kong Massacre is a new indie release for both the PC and the PS4. Like its name suggests, it is a top-down shooter meant to invoke Hong Kong revenge movies. On the whole, the reviews suggest that while the release’s storytelling might not be the best, its action-oriented game-play might be worth looking into by interested individuals. Here are 10 things that you may or may not have known about The Hong Kong Massacre:

1. Minimalist Storytelling

The Hong Kong Massacre has a pretty minimalist style of storytelling that consists of cinematics and barroom conversations. It is somewhat interesting to note that each level serves as a flashback to earlier events from the perspective of the story’s “present,” but that is about all that can be said about it.

2. Revenge Story

Given its source of inspiration, it should come as no surprise to learn that The Hong Kong Massacre boasts a revenge story. To be exact, the player character is an ex cop who is out for revenge because his partner was killed by members of the Triad, which works well enough because it is simple, straightforward, and serviceable.

3. One Shot Kills for the Most Part

The player character can be killed with a single shot. Likewise, most of the enemies can be killed with a single shot as well. There are exceptions to this one-shot kill, but those would be the bosses.

4. Minimal Room for Error

Since there is a one-shot rule, there is minimal room for error on the part of the players. Instead, if they want to make good progress through the game, they are going to need to memorize the positions of the enemies in each level so that they can plan ahead for the best results. On the plus side, when players manage to pull off a perfect run, that can make for very cinematic scenes that should prove very satisfying for a wide range of individuals.

5. Minimal Restart Time

In this, the player is helped to a considerable extent by The Hong Kong Massacre’s minimal restart time. This is important because this makes playing through each stage that much less frustrating, which is crucial when most players can expect to die a few times on the harder stages to get a good sense of where everything can be found.

6. Slow Motion Is In

With that said, The Hong Kong Massacre isn’t wholly merciless, as shown by the fact that it includes a slow motion feature. Granted, the slow motion feature runs on a timer, but since it recharges relatively fast, it isn’t too punishing. Besides making each level that much easier to play through, the slow motion feature is one of the elements contributing to the cinematic nature of perfect play-throughs.

7. Dive Button

Speaking of which, The Hong Kong Massacre boasts a dive button as well. Besides being very useful for players seeking to move out of the way of bullets, this is one of the other elements that serve to make the game’s source of inspiration very clear.

8. Context-Sensitive Dive Button

Interestingly, while a dive is the most common response to the pressing of the dive button, there are other possibilities as well because the dive button is context-sensitive. For example, its pressing will cause the player character to crash through windows in certain circumstances. Likewise, other situations might result in the player character cartwheeling over the top of furniture, thus making for fast and frantic action.

9. Simple, Smooth Controls

The controls are a very important consideration for any game with minimal room for error. Luckily, the review suggest that The Hong Kong Massacre boasts a simple and smooth set of controls that are very intuitive in nature, thus enabling the player to pick them up with relative ease.

10. Recycled Elements

There is some replayability that can be found in The Hong Kong Massacre by going for a higher score by improving accuracy and avoiding the use of slow motion. Unfortunately, one of the game’s downsides is that its levels recycle a lot of elements, meaning that one level can look very similar to the next. Even worse, the boss fights are more similar to one another than they should be, which is one of the biggest factors that lower the overall play experience.

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