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Hotline Miami
A top-down slasher/shooter with unlockable gameplay-altering masks and weapons, featuring a neon-flavoured electronic aesthetic, in which a hitman receives anonymous calls ordering him to travel to certain residences and crime dens and massacre those within, as he stumbles through unreal visions and inconsistencies without any answers to how, why o...
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Hotline Miami Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
“Dennaton Games delivers a solid PlayStation port of its delightfully gruesome retro-styled action game,'Hotline Miami.'”
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Like the Hollywood classic Drive which provided a large helping of inspiration during development, Hotline Miami is a visceral assault on the senses which often leaves you breathless and sweaty-palmed, but also isn’t afraid to offer up moments of shocking frustration. Part action game, part puzzle title, part subversive mind-bender, this is a game which delights in spraying the screen with gore yet has a surprisingly thought-provoking story at its heart.
If you have the stomach for lots of senseless violence in 8 bit form I would seriously recommend Hotline Miami.
Hotline Miami is a thrill ride worthy of any gamer's time. The frustration of repeated deaths may wear on some gamers, and the ultraviolent gameplay may, understandably, nauseate others, but the rush of playing a game structured like a combination of all the best and most brutal 80s action movies should be too good to pass up for most.
Hotline Miami’s momentum of mystery builds right up to its finale, where snarling cynicism is offered as a justification for why all this machinery of neon fuzz and thumping bass, bright blood and fractured identity was started up in the first place. Yet the justification is also disarmingly simple, the same reason why quarters were dropped into arcade machines built during the late ‘80s era Dennaton Games so clearly reveres. Why bother with Hotline Miami? Because it exists. Because it’s fun. Because it deserves to be played.
I know that I’m not going to finish this level, but here I am getting ready to face the same dozen goons all over again. It didn’t end well for me last time, and it’s probably going to end in similar fashion this time. I know what they’re going to do – after all, I’ve done this about 20 times over the past hour – but I still worry that what I’ve learned to this point isn’t enough to push me through to the end. I stab and shoot make my way through most of the guards, and victory is in sight – until a dog is suddenly on top of me and I’m dead. It’s time to do it all over again.
Hotline Miami is a treat for hardcore lovers of NES-era titles, but its insane difficulty and lack of replay value may not appeal to everyone.