Crim at the Arcades: Hotline Miami

[video=youtube;UgXM7ivgYTo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgXM7ivgYTo[/video]​

"Do you like hurting other people?"

This is the question that you get asked in this top-down puzzle stealth shooter, and a question that we sometimes have to ask ourselves. Games that force the players to wonder about and to crush, kill, or shoot our enemies into brutal encounters. I mean, sure, we could just get told by people sometimes to look at some particularly nasty fellow and say "Kill that man". Anyone can enjoy violent video-games as much as the next person could.

But.... what if we have our own reasons to kill? What if that we can escape into conflict and have our reasons to murder the enemy, whether it's because of war, gangsters, monsters or mutants? The players are free from the burden of further thinking about the consequences of their actions But what happens when a game makes us constantly question our actions and morals? What happens when a game comes along and causes you to not only question your own actions and morals, but to question the violent nature of mankind?

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Hotline Miami. And I love this game....

Hotline Miami paints an incredibly dark picture out of it's retro appearance. Born inside the actions of repeated retry's on a level is an unbelievable story and ultraviolent arcade hook. With the addition of your own brilliant descent into madness and psychopathic tendencies, and you have a game that has the cojones to make Grand Theft Auto look like Little Big Planet. Our vacation into the late 1980's begins with a tutorial that asks you personally, if you like hurting others. And let's pray that you are ready for what you are about to get yourself into, because what happens next is a nineteen chapter (about five hours) killing spree that all begin with a strange phone call asking you pay a visit to different venues and kill anyone you run into.

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Each chapter follows in this seemingly simple pattern, but an occasional cutscene that show's you plagued by visions involving three masked strangers who discuss your identity and actions makes you question yourself without ever giving you answers. It’s a very bold and daring narrative style that works absolutely in Hotline Miami’s favor. This game takes you by the horns straight off the bat.

While this game gives you a psychological sense of what it means to be a psychopathic vigilante, Hotline’s chapters are purely made to play with nothing else but your own sharp reflexes. Using the keyboard to move and the mouse to look around and attack (If you play the game on PC, although it's available on PS4, PS Vita and PS3), you’ll be sneaking up on your unsuspecting foes with ease and smash into them with melee weapons of from shooting them from behind. Your typical door can also be used to slam into enemies, knocking them unconscious out of pure force and allows you to jump onto them to violently finish them off. Your protagonist spares absolutely no mercy and ruthlessly cuts limbs off with knifes or swords, beats people’s heads in with a baseball bat, and even rips their guts and internal organs straight out of the bodies they used to call home. It's absolutely brutal, but so its the game's difficulty spike in higher levels.

All it takes is one hit from your enemy, and your dead. This makes you think about a measure of planning to make it out of a level alive. All the while, Hotline Miami also plays like a stealth title, and the game’s AI is deliberately stupid on purpose, so it's easy to sneak up on someone and finish him off. Enemies react when they hear you using firearms, but they fail to react even after you've thrown a knife at their buddy standing beside them. I find it strange that this game would use a design aspect like that, but it works somehow. Hotline Miami soon becomes a game of trial-and-error as you learn from every new experience, like the fact that enemies can see through windows or that dogs can’t be punched. Combat is formatted to keep you guessing, but never ends up being a frustrating (yet ridiculously enjoyable) experience.

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As much as it is an intense journey from start to finish, Hotline Miami plays out like any other arcade game. The game will reward you with bonuses at the end of each level, depending on your performance. Running into a room full of enemies without a plan would get you killed, but it will get you extra points for boldness and will give you a better grade overall. Your scores on each level will unlock weapons and masks you can equip at the beginning of each level, which grant you different abilities like faster finishing moves or silent guns.

These perks are awesome, but....it never really explains it's scoring system very well. This makes you always outperform yourself on every level to reach that mask or weapon that is just out of your grasp. The controls take some getting used to, but work fantastically when you learn how to play this blood-soaked paradise. Your attacks have this strange hit detection that are easily exploitable, which I don't know was a glitch or purposely designed into the game after one of my own experiences where an enemy will be shooting right at you, but if you get really close to him, you’ll avoid getting hurt altogether. This is great when it works, but not so much if the enemy manages to kill you. The game also has other technical issues, such as glitches that result in hard restarts and a spotty checkpoint save system. Hotline Miami can be played in potentially one sitting, but but a severe difficulty-spike for the trickier levels make you wish the game had a better saving system.

Seriously, screw this guy...​

Luckily, Hotline Miami's soundtrack and visuals are executed perfectly, and help complete your descent into its grimy neon world. The upbeat, synthetic music you’ll hear may very well change the atmosphere of what you’re doing. While Hotline Miami, may appear on the surface to be no more than mindless run and gunner, there are a handful of unforgettable moments that shown me that this game has more to offer here than an arcade style slaughterhouse.

For instance, at the end of each stage; after you've executed every living thing in the level, the music suddenly cuts to a dull drone and you're forced to walk back to your car, through each room, and past the mountains upon mountains of corpses that have built up during your murderous rampage. It's not only confronting but it's used to intensify your own self-reflection. It’s quite chilling and very effective.

Under Hotline Miami’s 16-bit appearance lies a very powerful game. While it may lack some technical abilities, Hotline Miami manages to take players down a road not many games do. It’s as much fun to play through the game as it is edifying to reflect on what we’ve done, and for that, it is quite powerful.

This game is given 9 out of 10 Lionhearts