Set in an alternative 1989 Miami, you will assume the role of a mysterious antihero on a murderous rampage against the shady underworld at the behest of voices on your answering machine. Soon you’ll find yourself struggling to get a grip on what is going on and why you are prone to these acts of violence. One of the main reasons I love playing modern video games and also part of the reason Plug & Play began was because of games like Hotline Miami. We’re currently in an age of gaming when they are not only growing in popularity but also in capability. Capable in concrete ways like in their gameplay, interactivity, multiplayability but also in more abstract ways, ways that are redefining what games can do. Dennaton Games’ debut excels in both regards, with a solid foundation of concrete gaming and a fascinatingly surreal element which really pushes the envelope.
But what is perhaps one of the crowning stylistic achievements in this game, is the soundtrack riding shotgun with you throughout. The synthwave/electro medley perfectly matches the tone of every level, whether it’s the aforementioned amphetamine blaze of the gunplay-gameplay or the lethargic segments between levels. Now there’s one other audio flourish which I love but we’ll come to that later. First of all let’s plug into the gameplay itself. Forget the ‘mysterious antihero’ mentioned in the game’s introduction. In this game you play as a monster. Not a monster like THE HUGE FUCKING SPIDER in last week’s game, LIMBO, but a human. A human killer who doesn’t stop or care as they kill everything in sight in increasingly bloody and stone cold ways. But that’s not surprising, this is a video game after all. Killing droves of virtual enemies is not unheard of but the way this game empowers you to do so is straight out of the ultra-violence of 80s action movies. With a dash of tension and timing you’ll quickly find out however, you’re not as invincible as John McClane or John Matrix or John Rambo or… anyone else called John in the 80s apparently. A single hit from any weapon will be game over, and I’ll admit to being a little frustrated by taking out a room of goons only for one to sprint into the room and blow me away with the unerring accuracy of the computer AI. But the brutality of your enemies pales in comparison to the eviscerations and pummelings you pull off as you dispatch your foes. Approaching a room of enemies, you can adopt one of several strategies. At first all I did was throw everything at enemies so I didn’t have to get close to them like Gambit having a panic attack. Later I graduated to using stealth, grabbing an enemy through a doorway and ambushing his friends as they came loyally to avenge him. But what prevailed as the most frequent approach was something I reached after dying maybe 40, 50 times on one level. Descending into a red mist of frothing at the mouth and furiously hammering the mouse, this translated into the game like so: *run through door* *swing tire iron either side of enemy’s head, missing each time* *enemy kills me with pocket knife* *restart* *run through door* *enemy turns around and shoots a shotgun he’s decided to now own and kills me* *I mumble ‘FFS’ out loud and the well-being of my character and the enemies become meaningless to me like some Old Testament god* So yes, I genuinely felt like I was committing a massacre playing this game but you feel like such a badass doing it that you can shrug off the guilt with a sort of ‘well if the shoe fits’ kind of mentality. Especially with the heady mix of synths playing along through your bloody ballet until… it stops.
Hotline Miami is another contribution to one of the best things to come from modern gaming, the question, ‘When a game tells us to do something, why do we do it?’
Bioshock perhaps, has the most famous analysis of a player’s willingness to comply, with the phrase ‘Would you kindly?’ serving as a perfect metaphorical carrot and stick to make you obey the game’s rules. Hotline Miami similarly challenges the notion that you’re indiscriminately killing your way through the game because it asks you to and as the character's sanity unravels, people will begin to ask why you’re doing this. This becomes all the more painful a revelation when your targets stop being hired criminals but the officers inside a police precinct you’ve been aimed at. You’re aware that there's a surreal wrongness but the building looks just like any other level. The top-down pixelated 'enemies' look very similar to you when they start shooting back. Then before long you're leaving another empty building to get in your car and drive off. And all it takes is for the game to leave you a message on the answering machine and you'll dutifully start another bloodbath. As bittersweet conclusion to each level, when each level ends you're rewarded with a banal freebie like a pizza or a movie rental that you never get to enjoy as the next day fades in and you receive another kill mission. As I said at the beginning, this game challenges what a game can and should do. It could have been a decent top-down shooter with a cool aesthetic. Instead it’s a fascinatingly twisted game that strokes its 80s goatee and asks itself, “How long can I make you dance before you see the puppet strings?” And after you’ve noticed them, will you even stop? Click the links below to ask yourself that question. (Steam) Hotline Miami - £6.99 (Steam) Hotline Miami Soundtrack - £6.99
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Tom MidgleyI play, design and write about games when I'm not hoping for someone to pay me to do these things. Archives
October 2017
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