Run. Swing. Swing. Run. Throw. Finish. Pick up. Shoot. Drop. Swing. Throw. Pick – you’re dead! Press r to restart. And you will restart, because you want to beat this game! Hotline Miami is an action/arcade game in which you play as Jacket, a man receiving mysterious phone calls. The calls are thinly veiled instructions – ‘Got a few kids that need to be disciplined here. I’m at East 7th Street.’ You drive to the specified location, don a mask and proceed to kill everyone before moving to the next floor. It’s one hit one kill for your enemies, but also for you, so you have to plan carefully. When you finish the level, Hotline Miami does not change to a cutscene or any other such convention. Instead the game deploys the brilliant touch of requiring you to backtrack to your car, traversing the piles of bloodied corpses. The electrifying music of the level is replaced by a sombre drone, forcing you to think of your actions. One of the characters asks: ‘Do you like hurting people?’ How appropriate; killing enemies is fun – bright neon colours and excellent game mechanics make for addictive gameplay. Soon you will adapt a rhythm in your movement and actions, almost hypnotised by the beat of the music. Death for the player is frequent, but rarely undeserved or punishing. You simply start again from the floor you were on, then adapt a different strategy. Since enemies always start in the same location, the game is like a puzzle. Progression through each floor becomes an elaborately choreographed dance of carnage, with bonus points for style and swiftness of level completion. Utilise various weapons to achieve success. Kill or be killed depending on your split second reaction timing. All the while pondering the questions provoked by the game: Who are the masked personas that visit you at different stages? What are they? Is any of this real? And most of all, are we becoming desensitized to violence? Actually, don’t worry about that. It’s just a game, one of crudely rendered, pixellated bloodshed that can easily be distanced from reality. Just a game. None of it’s real. Hotline Miami brilliantly evokes a hellish nightmare of violence and retribution, thanks to its minimalist, abstract storyline and intense gameplay. Additional masks with bonuses grant replay value as different strategies can be tried. However, even without the masks I would play this game many times over. Highly recommended.
It was meant to be a routine experiment. You run the project, open a soft drink can and take gulps from it, waiting for the experiment to initiate. Suddenly lightning strikes and for a split second it seems that you have been blinked out of existence. You look around and instead find yourself in a place you have never been. You must fight your way past poisonous slugs, armed guards and spike traps to have a chance of ever emerging from this alien and inhospitable environment. Welcome to Another World. Beautifully rendered graphics capture the vast, cold atmosphere of this planet that the physicist Lester Knight Chaykin lands on through a freak accident. Gameplay is challenging but not so much that overcoming the obstacles of the game feels impossible. The player can relate to Lester since we are not told any more than he is; there is no health bar, hint button, map or list of objectives. Instead we must figure out the strange rules of this planet for ourselves. Sometimes shooting and running are the best solutions. Other times the answer lies in a subtler approach, such as using switches and walls to make enemy grenades backfire. Boasting groundbreaking cinematic sequences, enjoyable platforming/shooting elements and a heartfelt conclusion, Another World is an essential experience for young and veteran gamers alike. Originally released in 1991, the 20th Anniversary edition also includes an option for HD graphics, difficulty levels and remastered sound effects.
