Hotline Miami

Developer: Dennaton Games
Steam Release: Oct 2012
Hours Played: 4.7
Similar To: 12 Is Better Than 6 / Hotline Miami 2 / Kick Ass Commandos / Mr. Shifty / Redie
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

Hotline Miami is a totally unforgiving top-down shooter that will pummel you so hard, you'll curse the day you allowed it a place in your library. At the same time, it teases you enough with tantalizing glimpses of freedom and little cracks of hope that you'll carry on playing even after the twenty-seventh death - convinced that you'll eventually beat it. Set within the plan-view of various buildings your job is to negotiate the rooms while fulfilling a straightforward objective and then to exit the building without dying. One shot or one hit will kill you and as soon as the bad guys fix their line of sight on you, they'll be at you as quick as a bee administering its sting. To counteract their shoot-on-sight policy and to dispatch all foes you simply have to be quicker at striking the first blow than they are. Suffice to say, this is no normal top-down shooter
  
 

BALANCE & PACE

Hotline Miami is no walk in the park and charging in with all-guns blazing will just not win the day. For one, you can only use the weapons that your enemy drops - so if it's a knife or a baseball bat then melee combat will have to do. Along with just the one weapon, ammo is also very limited. Oh yeh, and if they hear you nearby they'll come running to find you! With very few checkpoints (usually given while changing floors) a quick death results in being placed back at the beginning when you first entered the floor or building. Yep this is where all that hard work, to get to the final room after expertly killing a dozen gangsters with ninja-like panache, can get wiped out by one careless mistake... it's right back to square one with you! Careful planning, a large dollop of tactics and smooth execution of said tactics therefore just might get you through.
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

The game uses a retro, blurry pixel-art style with objects such as furniture and household appliances being rendered in basic detail. The same tile-sets with just a change in colour are used often but do a good job. Enemies consist of a small amount of pixels and seem to be made up of a cloned army of bald headed guys with blue hair sprouting from the sides. Still, as well as its absorbing gameplay what makes the game the cult classic it is, is its trippy vibe helped predominantly by one of the catchiest soundtracks to ever grace a videogame. I'd happily die in Chapter 3 over and over again so I could hear Hydrogen by M O O N coming at me for the nineteenth time. Most other tunes will also draw you in with their hypnotic hooks and thoroughly help to give the game its badass kick.  
 

PROGRESS SYSTEM

The game is divided into 12 unlockable chapters. After a short tutorial, you'll get thrown into Chapter 1 and progress if you clear it. Hitting Continue on the home-page does not immediately throw you into the last chapter you were on but allow you to scroll through each one - presented as one per page - and to choose one you'd like to try. The vast majority of players will be happy to just clear levels and to unlock further ones but serious players will not doubt go for a high-score and thus higher grades. Score chasing takes the game to another level and uses an elaborate system based on how kills are carried out and time taken to finish. The game doesn't give info on this so a bit of research is needed if smashing high-scores is your thing. There is also a leaderboard that ranks your score per chapter.          

   

CONCLUSION

If you haven't already gathered, Hotline Miami is difficult meaning those into conventional top-down shooters will need to give this a second look before taking the plunge. Being seen and then jogging backwards while mowing down your enemy just ain't gonna happen; you'll be dead before blinking an eye. This is why I have placed the game under the Stealth category. Personally, I'm still trying to get through Chapter 4 and have probably spent a good hour or two being stomped on and placed unceremoniously back at the entrance again. However, annoying as it is, I do relish trying out all the different tactics... and this is what the game gives you; the chance to work out all the different angles of what works and what doesn't while giving you the sense and determination that one day you'll crack it and be able to move on.