There’s something about Hotline Miami that really drew me in. Having finished the game twice now, (the first time being in one sitting) I can safely say that yes, Hotline Miami is a good game. Playing as a hitman that wakes up in his house, you get a phone call for a job, before setting off to murder everybody! Simple premise indeed, but it makes for some fun gameplay.
The first thing you need to know is that Hotline Miami is not necessarily about bloody murder and killing everyone, well it kind of is but the method of doing so is very different from what you may expect. Each area is split into rooms with guards in and you have to figure out the best approach. If you use guns, the guards in other rooms will hear you and come running, a lot of the time this is not a good idea as a single hit will kill you. Every level will require something new of you, asking you to try new things. The game doesn’t really force these on you as you could likely finish it through trial and error, but the way the game plays really helps get your mind going to try new tactics.
Here’s an example. At one point I was trapped in a tiny closet space with a gun and a hallway full of guards. I had two bullets left and if I had shot them then seven or so guards would come running. My tactic was to pop out of the room for a second to let one man see me, to wait for him to enter the room, shoot him to alert the other guards, then pick up his crowbar and hide behind the doorway to murder anyone that comes in. This may not the ‘right way’ of doing things but it got the job done. It’s also possible to finish levels without alerting anyone using just melee weapons, stood in a room full of shotguns mowing everyone down that came running in and even rushed into a room, pushing the guard down behind the door and punched a man with a shotgun in the centre of the room before he had a chance to react, finally finishing them off with a katana to the head each. This level of experimentation came after an abundance of trial and error as I tried new tactics to find out that worked for me, thankfully the second you die you can just hit R and you’re back in the game, a system that truly rewards death by experimentation.
What Hotline Miami does is provide a million possibilities in a single setting. The more the game goes on, the harder it gets. Eventually they add guard dogs that can’t be punched, fat men that take two good shotgun hits to die, and windows that enemies can see you and shoot through. One thing that may get overlooked, that I discovered by accident is yellow walls, these are drywall. In a tight spot you can shoot through it to kill enemies, the walls sadly go away after the first lot of levels but discovering that was one of my more proud moments in the game.
Before each level you get to select a mask of an animal, each mask has a new ability such as knocking an enemy over by swinging a door into them is lethal, starting a level with a knife, having guard dogs not attack you. Each mask has something good to add to your specific style of play and alters the approach you may now take in a situation, although sadly once you have picked a mask you aren’t able to change it until the next level or until you restart.
Here comes the bad, boss battles are sometimes forced on you, giving the same feeling that the boss battles in Deus Ex: Human Revolution did. The game does experimentation so well, you have freedom to play how you want and that’s a great thing, but the second a forced boss battle is thrown into the mix, you feel a little let down, there’s only ever one tactic to defeating them and you will die a lot while learning their moves and where to go. One of the worst of these was a van that pulls up, spewing enemies into the room while the driver threw Molotov cocktails at you, something I don’t feel the game had prepared me to face through its design.
Another terrible moment for me was a hospital level, without giving anything away story wise, it’s a stealth mission. My ability to sneak in games isn’t great to begin with, and I hadn’t done a great deal of it in previous levels so coming up against this was almost unbearable. It’s certainly a low point for the game but again, it’s just one level and does a lot to further the narrative.
Story wise the game is almost perfect, starting with you in a room full of floating animal heads talking to you in drastically different tones of voice. Foreboding messages of what’s to come (such as “you will wake up in a bigger house on July 4th”) and a strange shopkeeper that gives you everything for free after each level. The game certainly creates a lot of mystery around its events and it really does make you want to power through to the end and see what it all amounts to. One nice touch to each level comes in the form of completion, once you have killed the final guy in the level the music cuts off, everything goes quiet and you are told to go back to your car. The trip back has you retreading old ground over all of the bloody murders you have committed until you finally get into your Delorean and drive away. This isn’t a horribly depressing moment and it doesn’t pull you out of the fun but it does change your mind set in a way to help clear your head and really think about what’s going on.
Overall Hotline Miami does have some flaws and if they had given it an extra month or so I can see this polishing up to be perfection. The amount of variety in gameplay plus a great soundtrack and visual style really adds up to something special, and I will likely go right back to it after finishing this review. Sadly its downfalls stick out like a sore thumb and while they wont stop you playing, it will leave you frustrated here and there, luckily they don’t last long and overall I was a very happy gamer.