The Hong Kong Massacre is an action movie fan’s dream played out in stylish slow-motion.

Drawing obvious inspiration from the works of John Woo and Hotline Miami, The Hong Kong Massacre is a top down shooter that tends to get repetitive, but offers intense action and great challenge.

It’s a very intensive and addictive experience – although it doesn’t get in your head as well as Hotline Miami, nor has it comparably good soundtrack. It’s a game put together from other people’s ideas which simply go well together. [03/2019, p.80]

The Hong Kong Massacre is a game with a specific goal--to capture the feeling of an over-the-top John Woo-style slow-motion diving kill shot, and it succeeds. The game's faults are washed away whenever you leap out of the way of a bullet and quickly take out the person who fired it. It's a game that sticks with you when you're not playing it, as you think through different approaches to the room you died in last time. You'll fail frequently, and the repetition can wear you down, but it's hard to resist the temptation of bursting through a window and perfectly lining up three kill shots.

The Hong Kong Massacre is fun to play at its core, but there’s no progress or evolution and soon the shooting becomes tiresome. Other causes of acute disenchantment include bland boss fights, lack of weapons and infuriatingly accurate enemies.

There is fun to be had with The Hong Kong Massacre, but I don't believe it lives up to the years of hype following it. With some finer tuning and better balance, this could be a real contender for the Hotline Miami clone crown. As it is, this is an okay time that wears out its welcome well before the end credits start rolling.

A lover of Miami-like games can safely acquire it, aware of finding a series of playful patterns not easily pursued in other genres, but as regards the various elements of the work (from history to aesthetic choices, through the variety of enemies and possible interactions), we are faced with a concentration of banality.