Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami is challenging and very fun when the level design allows it, but unfortunately it fails when it tries to ramps up the difficulty in all the wrong ways. Rather than making the game harder with creativity and ingenuity, the developers' idea of "making harder levels" simply consists in hiding enemies with guns in the distance, so that you can get shot from outside the screen sistematically. This terrible mistake has the side effect of killing your freedom to approach the level in a creative way, and forces you to play using trial and error and repeating successful patterns until you finally make it after a couple tries. At this point playing the game becomes a chore, and you find yourself using always the same masks and doing the same things over and over again, wasting the enormous potential offered by the plethora of available weapons, masks and enemies. This is even more evident when it comes to the boss fights, which can be won only using a single, monotonous hit and run strategy, preemptively killing any freedom of approach. In conclusion, Hotline Miami not only nailed perfectly the aestethic and the soundtrack, but also had a very promising engine with great potential to bring a breath of fresh air in the stealth genre, but decided to waste it all because of a lazy or rushed level design.

I went into Hotline Miami expecting a good game, but not expecting it to live up to its hype. I was so wrong. This game is fantastic. Never has killing pixelated thugs felt so raw and satisfying. It is violence to the point of excess, which fits perfectly within the setting and timeframe of the drug fueled 1980s Miami that is depicted. Everything is seen through a dreamy, neon haze that is reminiscent of the visual style of Nicolas Winding Refn, with a narrative that pays homage to the works of David Lynch. At times, it's hard to tell whether you are really killing all these people or if it's all happening in your head- the lines between what's real and what's not is constantly blurred. In what plays out like a mescaline-induced psychadelic fever dream, you play a murderous psychopath with an affinity for animal masks. I won't go into details about the story, although there isn't much in terms of story - the focus is placed on the superb gameplay mechanics. HM is a tough, but fair game. If you walk into a room you best come prepared; not every situation can be solved with a shotgun alone. Get used to dying. However, when you die, you're immediately respawned to the floor you were on, and you can keep trying until you finally succeed. It's addicting. Even when things got frustrating and I kept getting slaughtered, I couldn't stop. Just one more try. One hour later, I've died about 300 times - just one more try. It's virtual crack. A genuine time eater. Hotline Miami is a brutal, white knuckle, incredibly satisfying exploration into the darkest parts of the human condition. It taps into our rawest, animalistic emotions, enticing players to kill with reckless abandon, using a combonation of weapons and attacks at a blistering pace to rack up big points, in an effort to pick up masks to improve the ways we can murder more thugs, with more efficiency and ruthlessness, and obtain more points to unlock more weapons and thus the vicious cycle continues. Buy it now!

The story here is simple: you're a guy who finds himself performing attacks on the Russian mafia after receiving mysterious phone calls. Upon this premise, Hotline Miami manages to build a strange but enticing story, that deals with themes such as loneliness and violent impulses, while also deconstructing action games in general. It's full of plot twists, environmental storytelling that is easily missed on a first playthrough, and the art direction lies somewhere between “acid trip”, “pixel art” and “twisted cartoon”. The gameplay is simple, organic, and excellent: you play in top-down perspective and have to kill tons of hostiles using whatever weapon you can get your hands on - mostly powerful firearms that run out of ammo and attract enemies, or silent melee weapons that force you to go full contact. Oh, and be careful, every single foe can kill you in one hit. Mastery of the gameplay and environmental awareness are the keys to a successful run: it's a challenging game, but rarely a frustrating one, since dying only means losing a few seconds before getting back in the fight. Part of what makes HM so great is its replayability: most levels can be approached in a variety of ways, using different weapons and fighting styles, being stealthy and tactical or bold and brutal... The scoring system encourages you to be and fast and efficient in your rampage, but also creative, using executions and unusual arms to dispatch your foes. Plus, weapon spawns and enemy behavior are sometimes randomized, which forces you to adapt accordingly. It's a pleasure to test all the ridiculous ways to can think of to complete levels! Hotline Miami is not 100% perfect: it can seem a bit janky and unfair to a first-time player, and I find the two or three firearms-based levels to be kind of uninteresting. But trust me, you'll get past that as you get better – which you undoubtedly will. It's an incredibly addictive, fun, and creative title which I would recommend to pretty much anyone!

This game entrances you. It has a great balance between tactical approaches. Guns or melee weapons? Which way do I proceed through the level? What bonus mask do I want for this level? It's all important because Jacket (as the protagonist is called) dies from any damage. You become so focused on the minutiae. Absorbed in every small meaningful decision to overcome the odds. How does that enemy patrol? How can I ambush this guy? Should I go loud or risk running up to this punk? Then you kill the last enemy. The fantastic synths cut off. You walk back through all the carnage you just caused. Go grab some pizza or a movie. Go home then do it all again. You start to question what's going on. Why am I killing these people? Is the protagonist sane? What was my stake in the story? It provides a near perfect amount of hard answers and ambiguous facets for you to fill in. With tact Hotline Miami becomes one of those artsy fartsy stories that deliver its message through well-tuned mechanics and short but profound intermittences. I have a collection of minor grievances. Trying to pick weapons out of a pile is a hassle and will result in some unfair deaths. Toward the end there's a few too many off-screen deaths. Suffocating L. Shift becomes a bit too annoying. Also, for as simultaneously free but tense as Hotline Miami's gameplay approach is, the final boss is frustratingly strict. This is all overshadowed by how fantastic the game is. Hotline Miami provides several adrenaline pumping levels and a hospital. Then (with subtly and substance) invites you to ponder why you did any of it.

The over-the-top violence in Hotline Miami might turn those of you away who don't like violent games but if you're able to stomach it, you'll notice there's actually more to the game than meets the eye thanks to its stealth/puzzle elements. You'll need a combination of wits and lightning reflexes, and you'll often find yourself cursing at how frustrating the game is at times, but with great difficulty comes a great sense of achievement when completing the levels. Combine these qualities with an awesome soundtrack inspired by music from the 80s and 90s and you'll want to keep playing this game to the end.