Sometimes I glide through rooms
elegantly dispatching everyone, then
get shot by someone offscreen. Other
times I’m bludgeoned by the first
enemy I encounter. Eventually, long
after I should have gone to bed, I
succeed. A combination
of luck, persistence,
and frequent restarts
gets me through, but
the failures don’t
matter. However badly
it goes wrong, I’m
satisfied it’s my own
fault when my avatar
lies jittering on the
floor like a smashed crab. My
triumph is the only thing I remember
in detail: a crescendo of flying
swords, stolen weapons, and eyeballs
being popped like bubble wrap. I’m
sure I’m supposed to feel a degree of
guilt as I track back through the level,
sloshing through pools of gore, but I
don’t. I’ve made a brilliant mess and
had a wonderful time doing it—a
T
here’s definitely a quicker way of doing this. ‘This’, in the
introductory anecdote you’re currently enjoying, is
murdering a room full of people who intend me harm. And
my chosen method—the thing that’s slowing me down—is to
slice them all up with a samurai sword, especially those
enemies with automatic weapons. It’s a futile, ill-timed, self imposed
challenge that represents everything I love about Hotline Miami.
Jackson Pollock of fluids and meat. It
feels so good that I’d have forgotten
about the repeated failures had I not
had to write about them here.
Part of this re-review, then, is a
celebration of Hotline Miami’s restart
button—perhaps the
greatest use of the R
key in all of PC gaming.
There’s no shame in it.
You never press it by
mistake. It’s an
instantaneous do-over
that erases what came
before, and it’s the
reason I’m happy to be
stuck for 20 minutes so I can
eventually do something cool. It
celebrates how crisp and
compartmentalized Hotline Miami is.
Every room is a puzzle to solve in
milliseconds, and while the specifics
might change, it rarely feels random.
You can alter your plans instantly if
they don’t work. Or, like me, you can
keep trying until they do.WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY
It helps make Hotline Miami feel as
immediate and exhilarating as it did
seven years ago. It’s still better than
the sequel, and numerous other
top-down, one-bullet action games
that have followed. The relentless
nihilism of it all is slightly tiresome
now—it might be because I’ve also
been playing Gone Home, but I could
do without the fridged girlfriends
and clumsy psychosis—but it’s still a
compelling game. The soundtrack is
still thrilling, too—the music and
setting work in beautiful unison,
shoving you along and punctuating
each beat with squelchy, satisfying
violence. It’s a game with all the
warmth and depth of a semi-frozen
puddle, but I’m okay with that.
Because truthfully, deciding that I
want to kill everyone with a sword is
the only dramatic motivation I need
to have fun. Once upon a time, there
was a man in a horse mask who
killed everyone. It felt nice. Nobody
lived happily ever after. The end.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
Pulsing, top-down
murder simulator with a
fine line in animal
masks
EXPECT TO PAY
$2.50
DEVELOPER
Dennaton Games
PUBLISHER
Devolver Digital
REVIEWED ON
Intel Core i7-7700 CUP
@ 3.60GHz, 16 GB RAM,
NVIDIA GeForce GTX
1070, Windows 10
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
hotlinemiami.com82
Coming back to Hotline
Miami has reminded me
that it is brisk, brutal,
bloody, and above all,
absolutely brilliant.VERDICTHOOD RIDDANCE
While you were enjoying HOTLINE MIAMI, I studied the blade
I’ve made a
brilliant mess
and had a
wonderful time
doing itOLD GAMES REVISITED by Matthew Elliott
THEY’RE BACK
I made this.If you’ve played this level
you’ll recognize this face.