Hotline Miami has started a wonderful trend in the gaming world where incredibly difficult, top-down gameplay that is driven by a violent theme. Basically, your characters are put up against incredible odds and the point of the game is to strategize the best way to get through what can only be described as 80s-like enemy gunfire (see the ending to Commando for details). Difficult? Horribly. Fun? It can be, if it is done properly. You could probably call it the ‘Dark Souls’ of top-down-esque shooters. Not a lot of people can say they’ve perfected this type of gameplay as much as Hotline Miami’s Dennaton Games. Whatever magic they use to make the Hotline series interesting, it’s working and leading the way.
But there can be some improvements made with the series and Modern Dream. has shown those improvements in a similar title called…wait for it…L.A. Cops. You could say that it’s a game that wants to be Hotline Miami, though it doesn’t get quite to that level that Hotline achieves. To completely say it’s a clone of Hotline Miami with a different face would be highly unfair. Set up by a shallow narrative (sometimes humorous), L.A. Cops sends you in a maze of rooms to take out enemies, while attempting rescues and/or destroying drugs. You can have two police officers at a time (you choose who to bring based on certain attributes) with the missions, which already provides longevity to what normally would be short stints of gameplay.
And that’s the first big thing that L.A. Cops adds to this style of gameplay. It proves that you can have two players in the mix (both controlled by a single player) and survive the onslaught of drug dealers, petty thieves and crime bosses. You can switch back and forth between players, which pretty much acts as a ‘second life’, if one guy/gal should perish before the mission is done (and you can revive them with a med kit, if you can get it to them). Think of it as the two-player option as your crutch, someone to fall back on when you get caught in the crossfire. It’s a good idea, if not only to act as a safety rail for your certainly steep trip up the violent gameplay stairs.
Outside of that ‘second life’, there isn’t a lot of use for the second player. They hang back and wait for you to switch over to them with the Y button. You can position them to be in certain areas and possibly set them up to help out when you need it, but honestly speaking they’re good for only saving your butt on tough missions. They are not NPC controlled, rather completely player controlled. In short, they are not moving until you move them, thus the ‘second life’ assignment.
With that said, the game isn’t bothered by that pro and con. It doesn’t need you to control two players at once to progress in the game. It’s there to make sure you don’t get frustrated quickly, which is the motivating factor in a game like Hotline Miami.
Another L.A. Cops positive add-on to this type of gameplay is the ability to move and rotate the camera. Since the game is in an isometric viewpoint, the ability to rotate the camera allows you to see into parts of rooms that you may not be able to see in without moving your cop forward into them, which can be a dangerous thing. This also helps out to find enemies before they find you. Knowing what’s at the edge of the screen and rotating (using the LB/RB button) around the screen to see it better will help to deflect some of that frustration that games like Hotline Miami are known for having. This, in my opinion, is a huge technical plus.
Outside of these technical aspects of the game, the gameplay action is pretty much spot on Hotline. You carefully target enemies using the X button (even if they’re in a different room), burst into doors and unload on them before they unload on you. When you clear an area, either the story for that particular mission ends or you move onto another level on the mission. There really isn’t a lot more than that to the game, which is fine. It does what it is advertised to do and pretty much does it in a slower and little less clunky fashion. And readers don’t get me wrong, I love Hotline Miami, but it does have its moments of clunkiness to it.
What’s not clunky about L.A. Cops, and probably one of the more impressive parts of it, is how the weapons react to the enemies. The smaller weapons take a while to kill an enemy, while the bigger weapons (like the shotgun) can kill in one swift shot. Modern Dream did a good job with creating a healthy differential between guns, which adds some intrigue to decision-making when it comes to players and weaponry. This is a huge plus, though the arsenal of weapons isn’t enormous.
Overall, the gameplay for L.A. Cops is either close to or at least on par with that of Hotline Miami. I felt like the biggest difference between the two, outside of the narrative style, is the speed of the game. Hotline Miami wants you to ‘go-go-go!’, while L.A. Cops wants you to sit back and just relax a bit before destroying shit. The paces are considerably different, which could be a huge turn-off for some gamers.
Shifting gears slightly, the visual style of L.A. Cops is more of a flash game from Adult Swim, rather than something stuck in the 80s. Cel-shaded animations that are artsy-bland actually feed some personality to the game. It also helps make the shallow narrative stand out just a bit. The levels are the same way, as they are constructed colorfully, though simplified by the lack of details. Again, it all visually works for what Modern Dream was trying to do with the personality of the game (by the way, all the cops could be from the Beastie Boys video Sabotage), so I don’t have any complaints in that department.
I do have a complaint with the bland music, though. This might be my biggest issue with the game, though I might have to blame Hotline Miami for spoiling me with a great soundtrack that motivates me to keep killing. Yes, it’s sadistic, but in a cool way. L.A. Cops really doesn’t have a compelling soundtrack that makes the game feel cool and fun. It just has music that is ‘there’. Again, it’s bland. Games like this need all the motivation they can create to push players forward and keep them going. L.A. Cops just doesn’t have that, and that’s too bad. It feels like a missed opportunity.
Anyway, at the end of the day, is the game fun? Yeah, the game is fun. It lasts just as long as it needs to last and it pushes players to do better and up the ante with the difficulty. Is it worth the $14.99 when compared to games like Hotline Miami? That’s a tough call, especially since the newest Hotline is the same price. If I had to pick between the two, I would have to go with Hotline with the main reason being speed and feel to the game. If this game was $9.99 or lower, I would jump on it and Hotline without blinking an eye.
