Hotline Miami

It's a simple game with lots of charm, that I enjoyed for a fair time. It's cheap, it's easy to pick up, you are up to have a pleasant time.

The theme is nice, over the top violence with gratifying finishers. Weapons are fun to use, but controls are so ludicrously demanding and the margin for missing is basically non-existent. You fail, you die. Failure means restarting from last checkpoint. No fuss about that. Winning always feels like luck. That or I lack the superhuman reflexes needing to play this game right. I don't see stealth or strategy having any worthwhile impact. Just run through the level and hope to murder everyone before they manage to kill you. Winning a level doesn't feel like any form of accomplishment, except for being lucky. Too difficult to be truly good. No easy mode, I get the impression it is basically aimed at gaming elitist who want to feel superior and shun casual gamers. Interestingly, the way it handles violence and repetition and how you get used to it, even embrace it as part of the setting truly has remarkable potential. Your get numb and tired even though the whole game is one flashy gory trip to hell and beyond. Excellent style, promising idea, nice atmosphere, poor choice of difficulty and control, so sadly lacking. Almost sorry I can't rate it better than 3 Stars, but the "hype crowed" already gather and took care of that anyway.

One of the best indie games period.

After playing through it I have mostly positive feelings but the sweetness doesn't come without salt. Combat is tight and challenging. 1 shot and you're dead. Gameplay is incredibly fast and when everything clicks it has high badass factor. As I understand game was made by 1 guy with little previous experience. Unfortunately this shows. Load up time is around 10-20 seconds which is weird for such a lightweight game and worse I had several problems with game crashing. Yet if you can look past these technical difficulties it's clear the project was made with passion. Gameplay nitpicks: I am a bit disappointed how easy it is to abuse AI by standing behind doorways waiting for them coming to slaughter one by one. The bosses are also more about trying to find exploits rather than straight up fights. Graphics are... unique. Overall though game was enjoyable. Probably will not pick it up again anytime soon but while playing I had fun.

I've never been a massive fan of top down games, but Hotline Miami broke this trend for me. the weapons are meaty, the kills are as gruesome as the sprites will allow and the huge number of unlocks and approaches you can take to each level gives strong replay value. This game was my first purchase from GoG and I can honestly say that I'm glad I got it.