Having played Hotline Miami to completion on the PC, there weren’t too many things setting apart the Vita/PS3 version from the original. I really need to work on my vocabulary but regardless I think I’ve made my point. So, just to make a point, I’m going to list every synonym for the word “perfect” that I can currently think of. Wait! No, I don’t think you understand just how perfect the soundtrack for this title is. The art presented in the game is ugly by design.Īlso, I would be doing a great injustice if I didn’t mention the excellent soundtrack which fits the game perfectly. Failing over and over again on a stage only to go back to the very beginning to change the mask that I was wearing and succeed only a few tries later really showed me the great role strategy played in this seemingly action only title.
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It was a common strategy for me to fire some shots on the other side of a room near a door to lure enemies into a doorway so I could take them out one at a time without letting them even take a shot at me. My personal favorite mask was one that gave me the ability to instantly kill enemies by bashing them with a door. Some masks come with traits that dramatically affect the combat by making punches instant kills or bring a more subtle effect like being able to see secrets in the stages easier. There are also masks that unlock by finishing stages, or even found lying around in the missions themselves, and they serve to add certain modifiers to the nameless protagonist’s abilities. With that information, it’s possible to plot out a path with a decent chance of success and it’s at that point the wet work begins. So instead, the players are forced to look at the weapon load outs of the enemies, their positions, paths and whatever resources are available to them.
Hotline miami reviews full#
However, the wet work takes a backseat to planning as in the latter stages going into a room full of shotgun wielding thugs will just end in failure. It’s true that killing is the solution to all the problems the player will face through the course of the title. However, in the later stages, when the difficulty hits a fever pitch, it’s heartbreaking to die on the last target after executing a dozen perfect kills just to get to him.Įven though Hotline Miami is an incredibly fast paced game, it’s also equal parts a puzzle game. Given a floor can take as short as a minute to finish, having to retry after a death isn’t that much of a hindrance. There is no penalty for death outside of having to retry from the beginning of the last checkpoint, which in most cases is the start of a floor. It’s a quick paced experience where one single hit of almost any weapon means the end for both player and the enemy. It didn’t take very long to familiarize myself with the controls as I began taking out dozens of enemies with brutal finesse. There’s a button for picking up items/weapons, finishing downed foes, attacking with said weapons and one to throw away the weapon in hand. The left analog stick controls the movement and the right controls the orientation of the character.
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I told you to bring that towel, didn’t I?!Ĭontrary to the story, the game play of Hotline Miami is rather simple. It’s unclear that others would have similar feelings about the narrative- or perhaps more accurately put- “message” of the game but I believe it’s well worth finding out for oneself. In the end, I was left with more questions than I had answers but by then, I understood the vision the developers of Hotline Miami had in creating the title and came away feeling more or less satisfied. Who were these people that were calling me? Why do I mindlessly carry out their orders? What am I getting out of this? All these questions flashed through my mind during the missions and I found myself grasping at every little bread crumb the game meticulously laid before me.
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Given that there is also a possibility of many of the events being drug induced nightmares that never really happened it’s easy to say that the story is ambiguous at best.Įven with this disjointed narrative, the story kept me interested from beginning to end by continuously hinting at the bigger picture. The whole story is told from multiple perspectives with little regards to chronological order.
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The story of Hotline Miami is one for debate as there are multiple interpretations to the various events of the game.