Hotline Miami

This review is pretty late to the party, but I thought it would be worth writing just to get some diversity of opinion on the Hotline Miami franchise on the blog. Its not going to a difference of night and day but another opinion is for the most part a good thing to have.

Hotline Miami is a hyper violent top down action game, with huge influences being taken from the 1980's in regards to the game's story, soundtrack and level design. The develops themselves even explicitly thank Nicolas Rifen for the movie Drive and Cocaine Cowboy for being an influence on the game. It was developed a pair of indie Swedish developers at Dennaton Games and published by Developer Digital. Its a pretty widely distributed game for an indie title and you can find it on the PC, all current and previous generation Sony devices as well as Andriod phones. I played the game on my PC through Steam though.

The best part of Hotline Miami is the gameplay. Its fast paced and punishing as a result it is one of the most engaging games that could ever play. Granted, this entirely depends on your ability to deal with the frustration of having to do a level over a few times because you are learning how to get through it without getting killed. The variety of the weapons and levels is what really makes this game as its slightly randomized between different starts so you won't always happen across a shotgun when you need it and you will have to instead try and get through a part of the level with a brick. The frailty of your character was also a big positive for me, just a single hit was enough to force you to restart and that added a strong sense of fear and caution that really engaged the strategic part of your brain. That is what made it great for me, because it was so punishing I felt a sense of achievement when I got through a level or beat a boss or threw a brick that bounced off three people and kill them.

Beyond that though I have some pretty opposing opinions regarding the game's story, music choice and art style. The weakest offender was the graphics, since it was being developed by an indie team so resources are short and its the style they chose that really allowed the mechanics to shine but I wouldn't really call the color or design choices inspired. They were good, given the limitations. The music and story on the other hand were utter rubbish in my opinion. The soundtrack was so grating that I had to play the game on mute and yes I did unmute on several occasions to give it a second, third, forth and fifth chance but I just could not bare it. The story to me was just an excuse to tie together a bunch of levels and it didn't really make that much sense, I get it we are exploring sanity, morality and guilt but its hard to take it seriously when its being given through the head of chicken. The only saving grace if that the story didn't seem to take itself to seriously so it didn't see so up tight that it felt like it was trying to crawl up its own asshole.

Despite having some very strong negative opinions about some aspects of the game like the music being utter rubbish and the story being a poor written excuse to just tie the game together, I would still recommend this game. Granted, that recommendation comes with a little warning regarding the fact that game is punishing, but that is the best part of the game. The gameplay is far and away the best part of this experience it was easily able to capture me and distract me from the other aspects that I did not enjoy. This is a frantic, punishing, bloody experience that is tremendous to go through and if enjoy that kind of stuff then this is a game that you can't skip over.