Review: Party Hard (Steam)

It’s 3am. Your neighbors are having a loud party. Stop them. Party Hard.

Pros:

• Pixel graphics.
• Excellent soundtrack covering Drum and Bass and a bit of techno techno.
• Full 360 pad support.
• Steam achievements.
• Gameplay: Murder everyone at the party and try and do it without being seen or arrested or even killed!
• Hide bodies within the level by putting them in dumpsters, Throwing off balconies, burning the body in a BBQ or even just burn the room down to hide all evidence.
• If a body is spotted and someone see you then the cops will turn up and chase you. You can evade them by running away, Hiding or using a special ability like change of clothes or smoke bombs.
• You can kill police but doing so will trigger the FBI to hunt you down.
• Every time you evade the police they get stronger and faster.
• You can listen to people talking and also doing this acts as a way to see all interact-able objects within the level.
• Find hidden routes and rooms to help getting around.
• You can dance! Do it to annoy people and make them move.
• Unlock new characters by obtaining certain achievements. Unlock a Ninja for example who has a sword and is an expert at hiding and moving fast.
• Mario clone guy turns up if you use a shortcut to evade police and barricades it up rendering it useless.
• Twitch integration to make streaming easier.
• You can find briefcases in a level that contain a powerful tool or a guy may give you a item. Items range from bombs to smoke bombs to change of clothes and even poison.
• Phone: You can use the phone one time in a level and it will do something. It is random but it can be things like Swatting, Strippers turning up and concealing you,Pizza guy who can help lure people away, Guys with gas bombs who kill a set amount of people and many more.
• Cameo appearances from a group of cloned characters. Mario is one but there is many more for you to find.
• Score and death count out of how many is always shown on the minimal HUD.
• Your latest score and time taken is shown on the level select screen.
• Story is one of a cop tasked with bringing you to justice, Its hilarious as it is dark.
• Combo counter that triggers after a few kills in a row and jacks your score up.
• You can carry bodies but they will drip blood as you move.
• Controls are simple: Run,stabby stab, pick up and drop bodies and interact with things in level.
• Everything in the game is randomised from the position of items to the actual existance of items, How many people you have to kill, what the phone call brings you, placement of interact-able objects and even what objects are in the level.
• So many hours can be ploughed into this game its crazy.
• It is easy to pick up and play and you can attack the level anyway you see fit.

Cons:

• No checkpoints or ability to save mid level.
• Music track never changes in level and instead just loops back on itself.
• You can die so easily from a quick punch from a Bouncer to a tap by a policeman.
• Stamina drains so quickly and takes ages to return and with no clear bar to tell you when its back, It can be messy.
• No online leaderboards.
• Mouse cursor stays on screen when using a controller.
• Being wanted can feel random at times as just being in the wrong place can sometimes make you wanted.
• Difficulty spikes through out the game mostly due to the random nature of level layout.
• Little replay ability outside of achievement hunting.

Party Hard is the game you never knew you wanted to play. It lets you act out that anger you get when a house next door decides its going to have a party until 4am and you cant do anything. Here you get to stalk prey, Stab people in bathrooms, Cram bodies into an ice cooler then dance with a hot blonde on the dance floor….Only to stab here in the face behind a rubber tree plant 5 minutes later as you don’t like her smell. Bouncers attempt to keep it all in check but what they cant see cant be stopped. A quick manipulation of the power output on a speaker and you have yourself a bomb. Aside from all the killing and killing you get to visit a variety of locations from BBQ parties to a cruise ship to Miami beach. It is a tidy little game that is actually a cleverly concealed puzzle game under the guise of a murder simulator. Plan your killings and leave no witnesses or evidence, Its all very intoxicating and addictive. That said later levels do start to take the mick and ramp up the difficulty with less hiding spots, no way of disposing of bodies and only a luck item roll can save you. Its the randomisation aspect that is the true enemy. Get a good layout and items and its a cake walk, Get a bad roll and you are already dead. Its just part and parcel of the game mechanic but when you are stuck on one level for 3 hours it can start to feel like you are in fact killing yourself with stress! I still, even after this cannot say a bad thing about the game, Its just too much fun and you owe it to yourself to try it out!