The Henchmen

Henchmen is a GTA topdown styled game with some influence from Hotline Miami in it's combat. While this sounds like a match made in heaven, the game can feel rough around the edges, having a lack of polish or depth. Enemy AI can be pretty dumb and shoot at walls or there own cars, cars themselves feel like they catch on fire from a mild breeze alone. Police AI feels unpolished, with the best strat being leaving your car and going on foot, as cops will be glued to your bumper if seen and can destroy your car within seconds. The story feels lacking so far, without much depth or presentation to keep things memorable. However the game isn't all bad, Missions can branch into multiple paths, with different outcomes depending on what you choose. The mixtape feature allows you to play an original OST at any time. Secrets and powerup's are hidden around the world and make the game alot easier when collected. The combat itself, while sometimes jank, has a good flow to it, with killing enemies with melee to recover ammo for your weapon and the generious health regen balancing some of the tougher foes in the game. if you can push past some of it's jank, Henchman can be an enjoyable time for what's it worth. If you like GTA topdown styled games and want to support the genre and the developer. I recommend this.

Will update after spending some more time with it, but love the graphics and the car handling so far. Im excited to get more into it!

Local split screen co-op is perfect for my non existing friends. 10/10

Second I saw the page for this game crop up I got super excited - and it was very much worth the wait!

Awesome GTA 1 style action game, drive, shoot and dodge your way through a top down crime story, runs nice and fast, fun combat, you use both melee and firearms, and melee kills unlock a slide where your shots do critical damage, awesome music, the graphics immediately took me back to 97 playing GTA1 for the first time, interesting story too, recommend picking this up.

So far so good!

Molto divertente e stimolante, un tuffo nella nostalgia per chi ha bisogno di respirare un po' di sana aria retrò in un mondo videoludico che sta perdendo la sua essenza. Gioco sviluppato con passione, trae ispirazione da GTA e GTA 2, anche se a livello narrativo strizza l'occhio a GTA VI, se non altro per l'aspetto dei protagonisti. E' un modo per cavalcare l'onda, mantenendo uno stile ortodosso, cosa che a me sinceramente non è dispiaciuta. Degna di nota la colonna sonora, molto evocativa. Altro punto a favore è la localizzazione in italiano, meritevole di sottolineatura di questi tempi. Fa piacere sapere che qualcuno caga ancora il nostro paese (sì, lo so, ma a loro non conviene, in Italia si vende poco, impara l'inglese e bla bla). Promosso a pieni voti.

The Henchmen is the love child of a top down shooter, an open world crime sandbox, and the aesthetics of the original GTA. But while its influences seem more than apparent, it’s definitely its own beast, especially in 2 player co-op - which is transformative if you and an equally chaotic partner join forces to ram coppers off the road (and into walls, and pillars, and each other, and other cars)…..