Hotline Miami

Introduction

Putting it bluntly, right up front, 'Hotline Miami' is a true enigma of a game, representing simultaneously both the best of indie game design and the worst. Released in late 2012, the game became a quiet hit through digital distribution. The appeal to most was simple: laced with a hyperkinetic 16-bit inspired retro design, 'Hotline Miami' offered a stripped down, top-down view, ultra-violent beat-em-up borrowing heavily in tone and theme from a number of films and games. The result is a sometimes frustrating, but ultimately serviceable exercise in the old adage of, "if it ain't broke, don’t fix it."

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

The plot and theme of 'Hotline Miami' is incredibly hard to do justice in words. The protagonist, the aptly named Jacket (for his distinct, 80s-era letterman jacket), serves as a hit man for an unseen, mysterious force. Given his assignments via phone through colorless messages (e.g. go check on the babysitters), Jacket carves out a trail of carnage from one mission to the next, in a repetitive gameplay style that fortunately throws viewers a much-needed narrative twist. Even with the carnage, 'Hotline Miami' doesn’t bring much new to the table and frankly, the atmosphere that sets it apart from so many other games on the market, feels like a shallow, contrived shell, never doing justice to obvious influences such as 'Drive' and games of the 'Smash TV' ilk. Instead it asks players to consume an overindulgent meal of nostalgia and grotesque violence.

The game play, while simple is definitely effective, with Jacket being controlled by a well-executed keyboard and mouse combination. Movement is handled via keyboard, while the mouse handles targeting and attacks. The levels are straightforward: go in, (generally) kill everyone, repeat ad nauseam. Spicing up this is a wide variety of weapons and the clever integration of the environment, in the form of doors, which can be thrown open to daze an unsuspecting foe.

The enemy AI is decent, although at times feels frustratingly precognizant, and more times than not, an approach more clever (and stealthy) than "guns blazing" is required. With 'Hotline Miami' almost approaching double digit numbers in hours of playtime though, the simple approach coupled with sometimes punishingly devised levels, not to mention sloppy randomization (I can’t count the instances of restarting a level, only to find enemies spawn in impossible to beat numbers, due to patrol patterns), the game's lack of variety wears out its welcome a bit too early.

The gimmick of dispatching enemies via ultraviolent, creative methods eventually wears off. The various masks that our protagonist can wear to provide gameplay boosts feels entirely contrived, a symptom of style over substance. While the story tries very hard to keep you entertained, the notion of some shadowy conspiracy and hazy memories never advances far enough and ultimately leaves the player with the distinct thought of, 'who cares?' Given the full experience of the game, it's a damn shame that 'Hotline Miami' is merely average, and honestly at times feels like a game that many love, but few finish. It’s a tremendous testament to the spirit of indie designers to produce something as audacious as this love-letter to retro gaming, but the highly stylized game feels full of unrealized potential. The nagging hollow feeling left by the whole affair makes that missed potential difficult to forgive.