David MacDonald
Connector Contributor

Hotline Miami is a very interesting little game.  It’s an indie game by Dennaton Games about a man in 1980s Miami who receives strange messages over the telephone which prompts him to go out and perform stylized and bloody killing sprees.  It uses an overhead grid like gameplay system that isn’t that different from what the first two Grand Theft Auto games were like.  The main meat of the game is picking up the phone for instructions, getting into your car to head to the location you were given, and killing everyone there and renting a video or grabbing a pizza on your way home.

It’s just as random as it sounds, as there’s barely any context given to the massacres that the main character commits.  He never questions the vague directions given to him on the phone, which is usually just an address.  While it is hinted that the people he is killing may be the Russian Mafia, there’s this overall implication that he is doing it simply because he wants slaughter.

Throughout the game, it becomes clear that the sanity of the main character is very much in question.  Not only does he kill dozens upon dozens of people without explored motivation, he seems rather unhinged and only becomes worse and worse throughout the game.  Later into the game, you will begin to wonder how far this man’s mind has gone down the rabbit hole.

This general idea of the main character being a psychopath is captured perfectly in the gameplay by killing people every level in insane gore filled ways.  You start each mission by picking a rubber animal mask you can find throughout the levels that gives you one boost, go inside a building, and kill everyone.  You can only hold one weapon at a time and will have to learn to switch back between guns, melee weapons and unarmed to survive.

Unarmed will knock someone down where you can finish them off with a brutally over-the-top execution, but melee and guns will kill most enemies instantly.  However, both melee and guns have draw backs.  Melee has limited reach, meaning you have to get in close, whereas guns will send every guard running your way, so choose wisely.

It is surprisingly a very hard game.  Each enemy dies very easily, however, you do as well.  One good bullet will be enough to kill you, forcing you to restart.  The good news is that one key will bring you back into the game less than a second later.  Getting back into the action this fast keeps the flow going, keeping frustration to a minimum.

Hotline Miami is a rather twisted game.  The main character is an amoral thug, the violence is over-the-top, and the body count is through the roof.  With that being said, it does manage to capture an interesting story through the eyes of the main character’s madness, and is very much worth a buy.