OTXO (pronounced oh-cho) is a stylish black and white roguelike shooter in the vein of Hotline Miami. It’s fast, it’s intense, it’s got soul, and does just enough to set it apart from being another Hotline Miami clone and allows itself to breathe and stand alone. OTXO is a good game, maybe even a great one to many (see the glowing Steam reviews) but I’ve come to find out finally that this genre just isn’t for me.
That said, I can look at what a game does well and understand what it does within its given genre. I’m no fan of visual novels, but I’m smart enough to understand when I’m experiencing a good one. OTXO is much the same. I know this is well-designed action roguelike, I’ve just come to understand taht they aren’t for me after not loving Hotline Miami either. Still, I do find it pretty interesting that while Hotline Miami felt more stylish than fun (I found it hard to keep coming back), OTXO had me having quite a bit of fun in short spurts and coming back after I’ve ended my review time with it.
Sure, I’m not going to be investing dozens of hours in OTXO in a single sitting, but I sure as heck will be using it as a palette cleanser between other games. This brutal, and dark roguelike stayed in my mind during the week or so I’ve been playing and that means something. I always was happy to jump back into it to give it another shot, slowing making it just a little bit farther each consecutive run. To me it’s not a fun experience as these sorts of games feel more like homework, or like being back in early morning practices. Nobody loves the work but when gameday rolls around you can at least appreciate it.
That’s how I see OTXO. I see it as hours and hours of practice until you get that perfect run full of even more perfect drops as you work your way through an insane mansion on your quest to find your taken girlfriend and unravel the pretty interesting story. The shooting is the core experience, but it’s all the little mechanics surrounding it that kept me engaged in the experience. Trying new guns to see how they, unlocking weapons to add to a runs arsenal, and experimenting with the drink/powerup system to find what works best with your current strategy is a blast. It’s really important to understand how good OTXO is because of how it manages to cut through my dislike of the action roguelike genre.
It’s what helps shape OTXO that kept me coming back. I’m a Pokémon sort of person and the idea of unlocking or collecting something trips something in my brain. I had to collect every Riddler trophy in all the Arkham games, I need to catch every Pokémon in a given title, I have to reach every tower in an Assassin’s Creed game, and so on. The fact that OTXO features 100+ abilities trips the same thing in my brain as those other games. Will that next drink totally alter how I play? Will that next weapon make a run easier, or, more interesting to me, how can I change my strategy on any given run with the tools dropped in front of me. Being able to find the setup that works best, or unlocking things that encourage experimentation is always great.
But it’s more than the perks, weapons, and abilities. It’s also the slow-mo mechanic that changes this sort of game and sets it apart. Pulling of Max Payne moves is a lot of fun in action. Being able to dodge bullets, bullets that would otherwise end you, never stops being a good time. But it’s not endless and racking up combos not only gives you more money but helps build your slow-mo meter faster that it’s non-combat sloe pace. The game encourages you to go fast, but having the slow-mo meter allows you to slow things down if you haven’t grown up with these types of games. Moments where you enter slow-mo only to run out of ammo and kick an enemy dead and pick up their weapon before you re-enter real-time to blast another enemy turning the corner is awesome.
OXTO is a blast and the designers have done a fantastic job in creating a game that even someone who doesn’t like the genre can have a lot of fun with. Add in the fun of these massive boss battles, something that sends me right back to the old-school 8-bit days of the NES, and you have me wanting to come back in order to see what’s next. But while OXTO is a blast and fans of the genre are going to lose their minds over it, it isn’t without some issues that take a little away from the experience.
Playing with a controller in nightmare and even when playing on a mouse and keyboard setup, things feel a bit clunky. The tutorial does the player no favors and only served to confuse me. It also leaves out some important techniques that are vital the deeper your run goes. Thankfully, the PC lets you remap everything and I finally found a setup that works best for me. It’s just weird having multiple kick buttons and learning I can kick while holding a weapon was a real gamechanger. The difficulty also ramps up to some pretty extreme levels where I found myself losing interest and the pesky homework analogy popping up. Still, that’s more a personal thing and these types of games are intentionally designed to be this way.
I like what OTXO does for the action roguelike genre, enough to recommend the game even if I’m not a fan of said genre. It’s slick, stylish, and with its mechanics makes me feel like I have a fighting chance, unlike Hotline Miami and other games of that type and style. If you love the genre definitely pick this one up, if you are on the fence about trying an action roguelike pick this one up too. OTXO is only $15 (on sale to $13.49 at the time of this writing) and that’s a good deal for the amount of content and loop-based gameplay on offer.
“OTXO takes on Hotline Miami and adds enough around that core idea to make for a pretty slick action roguelike”
Final Score:
“A review code was provided by the publisher”
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