Talk:Hotline Miami/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 22:01, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

In progress. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 22:01, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Comments as follows:

• Prose:
  • Prose is generally kind of rough throughout. As an overall thing, I would take a look at every instance of would and see about removing it, e.g. Despite the game's challenging development, the developers would stayed in contact with other teams [...] Devolver Digital would contacted Dennaton, offering to publish the full game. Past tense is a much more natural way to write an encyclopedia article, especially with events that don't recur and we aren't staying in the past to talk about anything else.
  • On a day in 1989, redundant with the date given in the setting section.
  • If the whole Jacket-Biker thing is contradicted within the game itself, I'm not sure why it's necessary to bring it up in the plot section. It doesn't seem super-important to the summary.
  • While the developers did not want to have a large amount of dialog and cutscenes in the game, prioritizing gameplay first and foremost, the developers added the game's masked personas to try and push an anti-violence message and prevent real world massacres I think this needs more elaboration to explain how a bunch of shadowy masked figures push an anti-violence message.
  • The game was released for OS X on 19 March and 19 September 2013. It was released twice?
  • When asked about the possibility of an iOS port, the developers rejected the idea, further commenting that the controls would suck This is not encyclopedic.
  • Hotline Miami released to generally positive reviews. Metacritic calculated a score of 85 based on 51 reviews for the Windows version,[41] 87 based on 19 reviews on PlayStation 3,[42] and 85 based on 27 reviews on PlayStation Vita.[43] The exact numbers are in the side template, and the number of reviews is high enough that telling us the number isn't necessary. Just summarize the scores.
  • Reception needs work. You have multiple topics covered in the same paragraphs, and sentences that don't seem to relate to what came before (especially the quoted lines.) Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer praised all parts of the gameplay and the atmosphere and then the next paragraph starts talking about the atmosphere again, and then the end switches to the music and soundtrack, where it feels like it should be another paragraph.
  • Hotline Miami has been considered one of the greatest video games ever made, one of the most influential indie games ever made, and has amassed a cult following I think something like "one of the greatest video games ever made" needs something stronger than two publications listing it on a top 100 list.
• Media:
  • The fair use rationales of all the non-free screenshots need work justifying their use per WP:NFCC. I don't think even if you tried beefing them up the rationales for File:Super Carnage (Hotline Miami, 2012).png or File:Hotline Miami Interrogation.png will fly (they're currently being used in a decorative way, and there's not critical commentary about them that requires their presence.)
• References:
  • The setting/characters section I think goes beyond content that's probably just fine implicitly cited to the game itself and needs explicit sourcing, such as the Jacket name, that some of the characters are modeled after the developers, etc.
  • References inconsistently formatted; websites are sometimes wiki linked, sometimes not, sometimes accompanied by publishers, sometimes not.
  • Why is there no source for the character's name, and why is the explanation for the character's name not given when discussed in the gameplay section but only in the plot?
  • Youtube and non-text-based, longform content really need timestamps and/or quotes for verification purposes.
  • Spot-checked statements attributed to refs 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 20, 21, 26, 28, 48, and 52.
    • Ref 2 doesn't seem to adequately cover the opening sentence (doesn't mention stages, or the premise and directives.)
    • Ref 3 doesn't seem to mention the Richard mask or where they are selected.
    • Ref 4 doesn't seem to cover the hidden animal masks or finding them on the bodies of previous killers, or that you start every stage unarmed on the perimeter.
    • Ref 5 doesn't adequately cover the information about enemy types or the execution mechanics.
    • Refs 6 and 7 are used to cite that Soderstrom worked on 150 prototypes, but it's clear from the language that it's a very rough estimate and shouldn't be given using precise figures in the Wikipedia article.
    • The two would go on to create a promotional game for the band Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf the game was called Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf, the band is named differently.
    • Ref 8 doesn't seem to adequately cover the GameMaker/Dennaton Games elements, nor the timeframe for the rename.
    • Ref 17 doesn't seem to mention the total kickstarter cost.
    • The text says the PS3 version was released on June 24, but the citation says "today" and has a date of June 26.

Given the issues with sourcing in the gameplay section especially and the prose issues, I'm failing the article at present. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:04, 5 September 2023 (UTC)