More bloody than Breaking Bad
Hotline Miami is an indie game that looks like the original GTA, is as difficult as Super Meat Boy with 8-bit music and a trippy storyline casting you as a hitman who receive hits via your voicemail. The game starts out with you in your house, while you direct your player to the phone to answer an ambiguous and innocuous voice message that requests that you go do some errand. What it really wants you to do is to go kill a person, and off you go in your DeLorean.
Dial-a-murder! Be discreet!
The game is is reminiscent of the difficulty of Super Meat Boy because it requires a lot of well planned, well timed acts. You can’t simply go in and expect to win by just shooting everyone. In fact, there are a number of methods to kill someone – you can use a melee attack, throw an object (both to attract attention and to knock someone to the ground), or shoot your gun. Each has different consequences – the most significant being shooting, which attracts the attention of everyone in the level. Melee attacks don’t make a ruckus and attract attention, but they are rather useless if you’re confronted with a bunch of weapon.
This is where strategy comes in. However, unless you go out of your way to read some guide, you’ll never know what the best way to proceed is until you’ve played through the level for a few times. And play the same level a few times you will… sometimes to the point of frustration.
The game runs moderately well, FPS varies depending on the number of characters in the level.
How you kill someone has a bearing on the number of points you get.
Oddly enough, this is a game which I would recommend playing on a netbook because it is slower. When I played the game on my regular PC, it was really fast paced. With a more powerful computer, it feels like you are forced to react faster and think on your toes more often. However, on a netbook, the lethargic processing power does play in your favour as the game slows down as more and more enemies enter the fray.
The game has some bugs with graphics as sometimes surfaces don’t show up, but otherwise, it is quite a install-and-play game. Hotline Miami is best played with a real mouse as you would be at a major disadvantage if you aren’t able to react as quickly as a mouse would allow you to.
Like
Violent, gory, fun.
Plays even better on a netbook.
Dislike
Frustrating when you have to retry time after time
Verdict
Great fun, plays even better on a netbook because of how weak the netbook is.
Gameplay: Good
Graphics smoothness: Excellent
Work needed to get game to play: None
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