This review contains spoilers
The hype from my friends and general reception on this site means that Hotline Miami occupies a spot in my mental game library right next to Earthbound: they're both games that I hyped up in my mind before starting to play, and I don't quite 'get' them despite 100% appreciating what makes them so beloved. (Not forgetting a very similar musical style!)
Anyone who's played this game knows that there is barely any plot to speak of, though the mind-screwy nature of the little that's there makes it actually pretty fun to read plot interpretations and theories online. Especially at the beginning, almost no context is given for why you're running around slaughtering mobsters, but that's the point; the plot is a sort of meta-commentary on how the player character (and by extension, you the player) only needs the flimsiest of excuses to cut a path of bright pixelated red through these unsuspecting goons. In other words, this game is an experience that lives and dies on its extravagantly violent gameplay loop.
The gameplay, unfortunately, is where it stumbles for me. I know it's supposed to be a brutally difficult game where you're expected to die and retry a lot ("DON'T BE AFRAID OF DYING", one of the loading screen tips helpfully tells you). However, the controls don't help. Locking on is finicky, and the game seems fussy with aiming to the point where you'll miss an enemy if your crosshairs aren't on the exact pixel they're standing on; I lost count of how many times I fired a shotgun at two goons standing nearly shoulder-to-shoulder only to have every single pellet pass harmlessly between them! I died 911 times over the course of 18 levels and many of those deaths felt unearned.
The chaos and randomness that led to those deaths is quite understandably a strong selling point of the game, but the overabundance of cheap deaths and generosity of respawn points mean that success is down to random chance and feels just as unearned as death. Gameplay-wise, rather than feeling like I cleared a stage by getting better, I feel like I just bashed my head against a door until it opened.
Two stars.
......is what I was going to say. But despite my overriding experience with the game being one of frustration, and despite being relieved at being done, a small part of my brain inexplicably feels like going back and shooting some more mobsters...
Anyone who's played this game knows that there is barely any plot to speak of, though the mind-screwy nature of the little that's there makes it actually pretty fun to read plot interpretations and theories online. Especially at the beginning, almost no context is given for why you're running around slaughtering mobsters, but that's the point; the plot is a sort of meta-commentary on how the player character (and by extension, you the player) only needs the flimsiest of excuses to cut a path of bright pixelated red through these unsuspecting goons. In other words, this game is an experience that lives and dies on its extravagantly violent gameplay loop.
The gameplay, unfortunately, is where it stumbles for me. I know it's supposed to be a brutally difficult game where you're expected to die and retry a lot ("DON'T BE AFRAID OF DYING", one of the loading screen tips helpfully tells you). However, the controls don't help. Locking on is finicky, and the game seems fussy with aiming to the point where you'll miss an enemy if your crosshairs aren't on the exact pixel they're standing on; I lost count of how many times I fired a shotgun at two goons standing nearly shoulder-to-shoulder only to have every single pellet pass harmlessly between them! I died 911 times over the course of 18 levels and many of those deaths felt unearned.
The chaos and randomness that led to those deaths is quite understandably a strong selling point of the game, but the overabundance of cheap deaths and generosity of respawn points mean that success is down to random chance and feels just as unearned as death. Gameplay-wise, rather than feeling like I cleared a stage by getting better, I feel like I just bashed my head against a door until it opened.
Two stars.
......is what I was going to say. But despite my overriding experience with the game being one of frustration, and despite being relieved at being done, a small part of my brain inexplicably feels like going back and shooting some more mobsters...
Kago
1 year ago