In light of a very good trailer being released recently for a game in no way related to Hotline Miami at all, I decided to look back on one of the best indie games of the past few years. It’s not exactly a secret that Hotline Miami is filled with ultraviolence, pixel art and all of the drugs in the world, but there many things which allow the game to rise just above being bloody fun, as well as allowing Dennaton’s Cactus and Dennis to sit at the big boy’s table in the cafe. Let’s just get it out-of-the-way first, yes I know that Hotline Miami has one of the best soundtracks ever, and no that will not be brought up again.
Okay, I lied, but it’s very difficult to ignore. The soundtrack of Hotline Miami is composed of many songs from a selection of unknown artists such as CoConuts, M.O.O.N. and Scattle. Every single bit of music in the game raises each stage in the game to another level, especially Scattle’s Flatline. which is pretty much the only thing which makes Trauma tolerable. It’s been stated by the guys at Dennaton that people have just been sending in their music to be used in the sequel without them having to pay any royalties because the game’s soundtrack had that much of an impact. Also, if it’s any indication, the new trailer for Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number basically confirms that it will top the original game, significantly.
Now, something that isn’t universally agreed to be fantastic is the graphics, or rather ‘art style’. Now, objectively, the game basically looks like a more modern 16-bit game, which by AAA standards is pretty pathetic. However, the art style is one of the major parts of Hotline Miami that separates from other games. The way the game is presented, and the way it looks during gameplay, just makes you forget that this game looks about fifteen years old. If Sonic 3 was released in 2014 and cited as a brand new experience, people would scoff at it, but Hotline Miami came out just over a year ago and people love how it looks. Presentation is key.
Now, after all that pointless stuff that doesn’t help a game be a good game, let’s continue that theme by talking about the story. It goes without mentioning that this game deserves it’s M rating, and no matter how they could’ve cut it, there was no way this would ever be T rated. If this game was in full 3D, this game would be banned, especially when compared to an actual banned game like Manhunt 2 which would pale in comparison to a version of Hotline Miami in a 3D AAA engine. Now, obviously a lot of this stems from the absolutely brutal violence, drugs and swearing, but it doesn’t help that this game has one of the most twisted and dark stories in recent memory.
Without wishing to spoil anything, the game deals with hallucinations, assassinations, gang culture and exploitation of women, which is somehow handled better by a game which basically has the unique selling point of ‘kill anything’ than a game which tries to be all serious and gritty. While not voiced, the dialogue is very well written and in some cases makes the player directly question their own actions, something that only Spec Ops: The Line had managed to do before, at least in my opinion. The story is seriously one of the reasons you should check out Hotline Miami, because it screws with your head, makes you question your own morals and is overall pretty damn fantastic.
Okay, so now I’ll actually break the trend and talk about the gameplay, and this game has brilliant gameplay. While you may be forgiven for trying to play this game by stealthily planning every single little thing you do, you will definitely be better off just throwing away your inhibitions and exploding through every level like the drug-fuelled psycho that you are. You could argue that Hotline Miami is almost entirely a twitch game in a similar vein to Super Hexagon with the amount of quick thinking and constant restarting you need to do. I have never seen someone play through the entire game without dying at least once, and if somebody has, please refer me.
Another thing that adds a hell of a lot of replayability, other than the levels being explicitly designed for it with all the scoring the game has, is the selection of secrets the game has to find. Alongside various masks, a subject we’ll finish on, you can also find various letter pieces, which lead to something rather interesting that I don’t want to talk about. Now, the aforementioned masks play a huge role in the gameplay, with each of them offering different abilities. The ‘canonical’ chicken mask offers no bonuses but others offer abilities such as lethal doors or killing punches, allowing you to use different tactics in each level.
But, the time comes to actually say if the game is worth your time or not, and it certainly is. It’s currently free for European PlayStation Plus users, so I highly suggest you go and download it now if you own a PS3 or Vita, and it’s not exactly expensive to buy, being only £6.99 on Steam at full price, with most sales bringing it down by at least 50% nowadays. With the trailer for the game that is completely unrelated to this game being released this week, which I will be looking at on Friday, as you’d expect, it was a perfect time to discuss Hotline Miami, and I hope you find it in your heart to punch everybody in the face to death.
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