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Miami '89
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Guns are useful, but can summon a host of trouble.
Six guards. A and B patrolling the main room, C and D in the kitchen, E in the study and F in the bathroom. I've run this scenario about a dozen times already, and I've got everything mapped out in my head. I slam the door into B, slice up A and finish B off. Use B's shotgun to eliminate C and D, and when E comes to investigate I chuck the gun at his head and finish him off. F's the easy target, I rush in and slam his head into the toilet. From there I move upstairs and face my next challenge.
I take a deep breath, wait a beat, then execute and immediately fuck up. I mistime my swing and am met with a hail of gunfire. I respawn and try again.
Eventually I do it, I nail the perfect run. Everything goes perfectly and I escape unharmed. A man in an rooster mask asked me if I liked hurting people. In Hotline Miami, I really, really do.
The Miami Connection
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The masks, each one holding a different way to kill.
It's difficult to quantify Hotline Miami. On paper it's a top down, twin stick shooter. But that places it in the same vein as games like Smash TV or Zombie Shooter, neither of which is anything like HM. Ok, so it's a fast-pasted 2D action stealth game, but that makes it sound like it's Monaco or Stealth Bastard which, again, it's nothing like. The fact is that Hotline Miami is only truly like one game, and that's Hotline Miami. It's a fast-paced, blood-soaked, neon nightmare, dredged up from the 80's and formed form a combination of cocain and dance-funk. And it's a hell of a good time.
The story is that you are a nameless hitman, given random missions by telephone, which you then carry out by adopting a persona through a rubber mask. Each mission sees you killing people in excruciating violent ways, systematically moving through the building till everyone is dead. After each mission you retire to grab a pizza, get a drink, or just rent a movie, all of which are provided by what appears to be the same guy, and it's always "on the house". Every once and a while you're treated to an interlude of three masked individuals yelling at you and questioning your humanity.
What's great about HM is how it manages to form a plot without actually telling a story. There's character development and even a twist, despite you never really know what's going on. This fits the game's frenetic, cocaine fueled pace perfectly, and it rewards multiple playthroughs if only to figure out what the hell is going on.
Bloody Good Time
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Play right and no one will be able to withstand your onslaught.
Gameplay in HM is fast, furious, and absolutely insane. It controls like a top-down twin-stick, similar to older GTA games or the aforementioned Smash TV. At your disposal are a variety of attacks. Your own fists are potent enough, but finishing off enemies often requires more time, so your best bet is to grab the nearest blunt object or sharp implementation and go to town. When you can, there's also guns, which can't be reloaded, but do allow for ranged take downs and can draw enemies in with loud gunfire. Everything can be thrown at enemies to knock them out which requires a brutal finishing move to finalize.
You'll spill blood by the buckets in HM, made all the more brutal by the animations. It's a pixelated game, and played top-down, but smashing in heads or squishing eyes out of their sockets is brutal as hell. You'll leave a trail of bodies in your wake, all of them a challenge.
HM is a difficult game, requiring precision and rewarding fast reflexes. You die instantly, be it a golf club to the face or a hail of gunfire. It's nearly impossible to finish a level on the first try, and restarts are quick and often. Like Dark Souls though, death becomes education, as you refine your strategy with each failure. You memorize patterns, figure out how to proceed, and learn how to adapt. The game requires recklessness, yet demands precision, and it forces you to think differently about every encounter.
Splatter Punk
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Only a trail of bodies will mark your movements.
Hotline Miami's madness extends to it's graphics. It could almost pass for a long-lost SNES game, and it's pixel animation is smooth and flawless. It's vibrant too, with tonnes of neon colors strewn about to create a facsimile of 1980's nightlife in Miami. Everything is well drawn and easy to pick out, even despite the myriad of things on-screen at once.
The real attraction to Hotline Miami might be it's soundtrack. This might be the best, most fitting soundtrack ever assembled in a game, and it fits every moment perfectly. The cool chill of Sun Araw's "Horse Steppin'" over the main menu, the intensity of MOON's "Hydrogen" and "Crystals" as you slice and slam your way through bad guys. The almost calming beat of Jasper Bryne's "Miami" in the quiet moments, and the tension and horror portrayed in the twisted guitar strains of CoConut's "Silver" as you converse with ethereal beings. Hotline Miami's soundtrack never once disappointing, and it remains one of my favorite soundtracks ever released.
Hotline Miami is a quick breath, a wave of blood soaked neon madness that defies explanation. It's a moment away from the norm, a short burst of crazy-awesome injected straight into your eyeballs. It's a shot of cocaine, with a vodka chaser and quaaludes in morning. Most of all it's a game that deserves to be played and experienced, since there's nothing else quite like it.
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