Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Hotline Miami

Hotline Miami is a game I picked up a year ago in a huge Steam bundle. It has Steam cards so I eventually got around to installing it and giving it a shot. The idea behind the game, I think, is that you're a hitman for hire in Miami. Each mission starts with you at home getting a cryptic call to go help someone out somewhere across town. You have to leave your house and get in your car. You get out of the car outside another building without actually controlling the driving. Once there you have to kill everyone inside using your bare fists or weapons off of their corpses. Then you have to backtrack out of the building to get in your car. Drive to a bar, or a convenience store, or a movie rental place. Go into the building a click something for no apparent reason. Repeat.

I don't understand how this is a game. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of strategy to employ, or any discernible plot. It really seems to just be a game about going around murdering people for fun. I don't find that to be terribly fun. Don't get me wrong... I play lots of violent games. I don't know why this particular brand of killing seemed so wrong, but it did. I played it long enough to get all the Steam cards out of it, and have no intention of going back for more.

3 comments:

Neil said...

Man, Hotline Miami actually has a pretty great story running behind the madness. Theres a disturbing amount of replayability to it and the game is self aware of what it is.

Ive already beaten the damn thing and Im still finding stuff Im not entirely sure was or wasn't there in the first run. The whole thing plays with your mind but that is very much the point of the game.

Aside from that on a pure gameplay perspective its just a high energy high failure zero respawn time game. Its the super meat boy of murder. I enjoyed my time with it, but I like that genre of games. They are not everyone's cup of tea.

Sthenno said...

I assume your phone number in this game was 362-436WOOO!

Mark Cook said...

I got this as part of my PS+ subscription for PS3 and Vita, and had the same feelings as you (except that I am not all that into cards/trophies, so I only played the first mission after the tutorial and did not even bother to complete it).