It's 1989. You wake in a dingy
bathroom. The lights are out, flies hover lazily around the broken
furniture. A guitar wails over plodding bass strums. Staggering into
the living room, you find three masked men sitting, waiting. They
seem to know you. They speak in riddles, their animal faces betraying
no humanity. You've apparently done terrible things. Do you remember?
Time flashes back. You receive a coded phonecall, it tells you where
to go. The drive takes no time at all. You pull on a chicken mask.
Why? There you'll slam a door into a gangster's face, knocking him
senseless before spreading his pal's brains with a stolen baseball
bat. Techno thuds away, adding a pleasing rhythm to the bloody
action. This is Hotline Miami, and you won't have played anything
quite like it before.
A top-down sort of shooter with a
very retro sense of style, bringing to mind a more innocent era of
videogame violence, Hotline Miami is a little tricky to describe. Not
the look so much: imagine the bloody 80s haze of Vice City built in
the original GTA engine and you're close. Nor the action, which mixes
the twitchiness of a bullet hell shooter with Hitman's brutal
improvised violence, and Canon Fodder's simple “kill everything”
objectives. The punishing difficulty brings to mind Dark Souls as
well, another game where frequent death is as inevitable as it is
rewarding.
And Hotline Miami is a game built on
death. Missions have you hitting up a building full of thugs on the
strength of an answerphone message. The identity of the caller is a
narrative mystery, but the objective is always the same: Everyone in
this building must die. There are many more of them, they're better
equipped than you, but you'll still have to kill them all. Of course,
just as it would be if you attempted to take down scores of armed
gangsters by yourself, rushing in isn't always the best approach.
More often than not it'll result in a swift and messy death at the
wrong end of a crowbar. A playthrough can be over in a flash of blood
and noise. This isn't quite your standard shooter, you have to take
the time to plan things out.
Being aware of where enemies are,
and taking them on in manageable numbers, is key. Stealth, melee
kills, and patience will serve you much better than an itchy trigger
finger. You can spend a long time planning out every move before you
make it; Outside a room with two gun totting baddies. Boot in the
door to knock down the first guy, quickly throw your knife at his pal
with the shotgun, before sprinting over to grab it and blasting the
first now getting to his feet. The noisy shot will attract others, so
you'll stand behind the door and calmly blow away everyone that runs
in. Of course, while you're standing thinking this out a dog will
sprint up from behind and tear your throat out. Fuck. Hit R to retry.
Because of this, each level is as
much a puzzle as it is an action set-piece waiting to happen. Take in
your immediate surroundings and patterns begin to form. Tread
carefully and you'll be clearing rooms as cleanly and efficiently as
a SWAT team. Well, I say cleanly. As you'll be able to tell, Hotline
Miami is an almost unprecedentedly violent game. Blood sprays the
walls as you split skulls to pieces, limbs vapourise with a single
shotgun blast. The violence is brief, bloody, and brutal, almost
sickening despite the retro visuals. Half dead villains will
desperately try and crawl away, some end of level characters will beg
for their lives before you gouge out their eyes. But there is no
mercy, everyone has to die. And when all the floors are finally
cleared the action halts abruptly, the music swirls into an ambient
fuzz as you stagger back to your car, past all the pools of blood and
guts and staring eyes. It's the closest you'll come to regret.
But that's quickly forgotten when
the action is so damn satisfying. Few titles will ever make you feel
as slick as Hotline Miami when things go right. Whether it's as a
carefully laid plan comes together, efficiently smashing your way
through enemies faces with absolute precision, or when you
frantically improvise your way through a series of blundering kills,
you're in the zone for the duration. Neon combo messages flash up as
you speedily empty a room, the technicolour visuals pulse and warp
with the pounding music. Every death you suffer, and there will be
many, just makes it all the more satisfying when you eventually
triumph; bloodily battering that bastard with the pipe that's killed
you ten times in a row to beat the level. And as your car drives off,
and your kills are tallied up and scored, you can enjoy a satisfied smile. It may grow wider with the unlockable treats, including
various named animal masks, each of which gives you a different
quirk. This might be starting with a weapon, lethal door slams, or
longer combo chains. They add some extra strategy to the open-ended
action, and give completionists an excuse to chase some high scores.
All the atmosphere on offer owes a
great deal to the soundtrack, which in many ways is the true
masterpiece here. Oozing with retro cool, from the slightly sinister,
off-key ambience of the menu melody to the brutal electronic beats
during your assaults, you realise that Hotline Miami wouldn't be half
as brilliant without those tunes. The action takes on a measured
rhythm as you start to match hits with beats, lacing together with
the cocaine fuelled 80s style perfectly. A decent set of headphones
can add a whole new layer to a playthrough, and with the repetition
of the action and the sounds looping again and again and again you
mind might start to melt alongside your character's.
That's where the story comes in. A
surrealist trance of nameless characters and warping reality,
perfectly charting the steadily decaying mind of a killer. The
normality between missions clashes with the violent rampages. You'll
visit video rental stores and pizza places, happily chatting with the
bearded worker who calls you his friend. A love interest rescued
early on hangs around your apartment, saying nothing. But cracks soon
start to appear. The consequences of the violence catch up with you,
human elements in your life fade away. There's a lot to be said for a
a surrealist narrative, one that makes you want to keep playing in
the hope of having your questions answered. It's part of what made
Mikami and Suda's Killer 7 so compelling, despite the fact that you
so rarely had any idea what was going on.
In fact, you could be forgiven if
you mistook Hotline Miami for a Suda title. It shares his surreal
sense of style; from the brutal, almost comic violence and
collectables of No More Heroes, with similar hack and slash rhythmic
combat of Lollipop Chainsaw, to the twisted narrative and macabre
atmosphere of Killer 7. Swedish developers Dennaton have done a great
job throwing together something so compelling from such a simple
engine.
It ain't perfect. Simple WASD
controls come across as shockingly fiddly at first, though you'll
quickly adjust to the twitchiness. Enemy AI will see your foes fail
to spot you lopping their friend's head off mere feet away, or loudly
busting in on them while they're taking a piss. Glitches abound as
well, with disappearing weapons and flickering walls often the order
of the day. These are forgiveable. Less so is the occasionally unfair
level design, with perfect playthroughs often spoiled by the same unseen
enemies again and again; or the wickedly unbalanced boss fights,
which leap out of nowhere and offer screen-breaking moments of
frustration. It's short too: I blasted through it in about four
hours. Maybe too short for some, though the replay value is there. If
not for the high scores, then at least for the fun of it.
But you won't be thinking about the
flaws. You'll be too focussed on the sickeningly addictive violence, the
satisfying savagery of the kills. You'll be taken in by the beautiful
8-bit portrayal of an 80s underworld, all seedy clubs and drug
fuelled pulses of colour. You'll be attempting to make sense of the
twisted narrative, a feverish nightmare of masked killers and
revenge. Your ears will be busy with the brilliance of the
soundtrack, as it flows over the action and builds an atmosphere of
absolute cool. In a year that's seen so few quality releases Hotline
Miami stands out as something special. A delightedly demented orgy of
ultraviolence and retro style. It's the modern-day videogame-nasty:
cheap, brutal, and fun as hell.
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