The snippets of the world anecdotally show off a dystopian future with evident class separation, and your squalid apartment shows how bad you have it. The setup alone is intriguing enough, and Katana Zero does a good job of peppering the gameplay with cut scenes that deepen the story around The Dragon and provide some shocking narrative twists. By night, that same psychiatrist provides you with a target who you need to kill - without leaving behind any witnesses. By day, you go to your psychiatrist, who tries to help you cope with your visions and administers a drug to supposedly make things normal. Though a mostly silent killer when on the job, you are a long-suffering soldier from an unknown future war with constant nightmares that you can't quite interpret. You play the role of The Dragon, an assassin who dresses up like a samurai and uses a long-reaching sword. The minute you boot up the game, you're treated to a menu with an option screen that looks like a VCR, so you know that you aren't going to experience a normal tale.

Katana Zero is compelling for those same two reasons. There was some room for error, but each level in the game asked you to be near flawless, and the one-hit kills meant having to start over and try the level again until your muscle memory executed everything effortlessly. The second reason was because the game demanded perfection.

The first reason is because of the story, which does a great job at manipulating players' expectations and providing a narrative that got odder as things progressed. Hotline Miami was an influential game for many reasons, and there are at least two reasons why the game was so fondly remembered, beyond just being fun.

Katana zero story