Party Hard (2015)

(Played a lot via Remote Play)

Party Hard is a great game in which you are fed up with the partying of your annoying neighbours and choose the obvious route to resolve this irritation. By burying a knife between their eyes.

You go undercover to different parties (levels) and try to blend in with the party people. You place various traps and wait for the right opportunity to rob someone of life. If your deeds are discovered, the cops, or even a S.W.A.T. team comes in, looking for the murderer. You then need to hide until they leave and then do it all over again.

You can trigger various environmental hazards that help you wipe the floor and sometimes a random bear or shark does all the foul work for you.

The art style of Party Hard is gorgeous. It is a mix between 8-bit NES and modern cell shading. I love it.

The sound effects and constant party techno music is well done and give you the feeling of a certain cover, while you casually shank everyone.

I like the strategy element of this game, and it is even more fun to play with friends and see who can last the longest. Carefully planning who to wipe next, set off traps at the right moment, and the tension of escaping the cops, it is just a genius piece of game design.

In the end I can only praise this game and would recommend it to everyone.

Entertaining, easy to pick up and drop in again without feeling like you've forgotten how to play and need to start over when you come back to it. The plot, if predictable, is still entertaining, and is the game's theme gives a fun outlet for frustration with various life annoyances (primarily annoying party people, drunks, and neighbors who listen to their music too damn loud).

The gameplay gets a little bit stale after a while, with a few standout levels and a few repetitive/uninteresting levels.

Party Hard starts out a bit rough, but once the systems set in and the game showcases its array of wacky variety, you have a mix between hectic stealth systems and entertaining gimmicks that works out.

Playing as a serial killer who just wants to get some sleep, you have the option of a few characters that you can unlock over the course of the game who set out to kill 40-60 partygoers at a party. It's a dizzying number, and can be very daunting to get rid of that many before getting caught by police or beat up by bouncers. Luckily, an array of traps that can dispatch foes along with other devices such as hidden passages and phones (call them! See what happens!) give a wide amount of options. Given the sheer amount of people to dispatch, the player must use them all most of the time.

The stealth isn't the most perfect, but luckily gets the job done once the player knows how the game flows. The player has a listen function to see who can detect kills, a dance function to disperse crowds (you're not a great dancer) and items that can turn a wide gathering into a bloodbath. Most of the time if you're not near a partygoer and they see a corpse, they will call the cops but not point you out as long as you stay away. The player may even use passages (that get sealed up after a chase) or traps to get rid of police if they're hot on their tail. Unless glitched, the police will always capture the player, and it can be frustrating to figure out the best way to evade police the first few levels.

The level count is satisfying, with 11 main levels, 7 remixed levels, and 1 free DLC (note: the paid DLC is not part of this review). Ranging from simple BBQ and pool parties to alien spaceships, surreal monsters at Woodstock, or fighting the forces of evil in a dark castle, the game flexes all kinds of kooky and colorful scenarios, with pleasant palettes to push past the unimpressive pixel characters.

The story might as well not exist, as it's a one-man band of an investigator (on the EDGE) tracking down the killer unsuccessfully, lazily patching level to level. It's not compelling but we're not here for the story - the killing can be hectic, the levels diverse, and the tactics settling into a solid system once the player understands what's up.

Interesting but kind of painful to play. Despite a lot of cool ideas it's not so well polished, and generally not fun to play unless for the sheer challenge of it...

I saw a movie called Spring Breakers and that is kind of the story line of this game. Essentially it plays almost a bit like a mix between a Hitman type stealth game and The interactive enivornment of The Haunting. some of the interactive objects are a bit random and each time you play it isnt the same. I guess it looks/sounds a bit like hotline Miami but it doesnt play that way at all. It's actually a really unique game and concept and plays more like a sim or management type game where you think of every move. Does that sound cool? Well...

The game is quite hard and almost punishingly painstaking in how long you must wait. It is also easy to get stuck into walls when running from police. the AI is a strange one, but you begin to learn some ways to play the AI and hope to exploit it. Still...

The challenge and replay of each level is fun to an extent but at some point the game becomes frustrating, cruelling, almost sadistic to the player due to it's strictly 'all or nothing' progress system. Oh and the maps are long. I would compare the game more to a Darkest Dungeons kind of experience than a Hotline Miami one, however, you have no way to pace yourself, or make progress really. This is a big fault in the game and it doesnt seem to reward the player ofr even trying due to the 'all or nothing' approach.

The maps are just increasingly harder and you can't play them in any super careful manner that makes them easier. The difficulty is enhanced by the 'stickiness' of the scenery and some controls issues (later updates allow you to change the keybinds, but still there are to many keys imo). There's also a million things taht can just go wrong in the maps and result in various 'gotchas' that make the game frustrating to play. The Katie level is esepcilaly hard do to switching the controls/attack methods a bit.... Katie can't do an outright stab. Katie has to kick and then stab. It's little things like this that after clearing out a map of 52 out of 62 enemies you are running the risk of a single screw up or mishap that will cost you all your progress. Ugh...

Still the game was a fun idea. The story in it is atrociously bad. I mean wow. Who wrote these lines? (the art in the cutscnese is pretty impressive pixelated stills though.) Some of the maps are kind of boring, and some seem to more or less be the same as previous ones. I like the idea of a character protognist who goes crazy and homicial because he can't sleep. Tha'ts a winning idea (an idea worth stealing/repeating elsewhere) That and the art style of the game made me decide to try it.

One thing I found out (didn't experience) is that the game has special features for Twitch. Apparently people watching you play it can initate events onto ths treamer. I guess to screw them up (maybe help them, but given the game being so sadistic i'm assuming it's to screw the streamer up, or disorient them) That may deserve a higher score rating because that is a unique idea i haven't seen anywhere.

I wasn't able to finish this game, I admittedly gave up on it after one evening but watched some lets plays of later levels. yes i would never make it far in this game. Some people (such as the one i watched, NerdCastle) are incredibly good at it. I can see some people liking it. It's a somewhat unique game and kind of a fun concept, and it's actually pretty stylish. But I found the certain elements which increase the difficulty to be a bit of a dealbreaker for my own enjoyment. Such elements are not really seemingly deliberately done, are just there and must be worked around. Some might like that even (i can understand) but i'm not one of them. I see value in the game but ultimately just not for me. But it was fun for a few hours.

This is a game maybe just not for me as I lack the patience required here. (or rather the frustration of making a single mistake that wipes) and there's no middle ground for failure.

8/10

Great music, kind of a Hotline Miami type of game where you go to a party (because you can't sleep) and you try to kill people in interesting ways. It's like a slasher horror flick where you play the villain, but it lacks the style and great story of HM. The sandbox-y nature of the levels make them interesting, and there are tons of options. On top of that, the levels are procedurally generated so what worked before may not work again. It's a little unfair to compare HM to this, I guess, since HM is more like chess and this is just chaotic. Fun game, doesn't offer anything more than it is but that's okay.