Hotline...HALLOWEEN

Happy Halloween!  I hope yours isn’t as sugary bittersweet like mine (I think I had one trick-or-treater!); I really wanted to scream “WHAT TIME IS IT?!” whilst wearing my sweet Finn hat. Yeah, bro. You heard right, big Adventure Time fan.

What the hell am I talking about? Uhm, so I wanted to make a Halloween special post, but I hadn’t really played any worthy games as of late.  I recently completed this indie phenom called Hotline Miami –you can find it on Steam for about $10.  The game’s not really scary, but it’s trippy and rather creepy at times. They wear masks!!!!!!!!  FITTING.

So this game is a 2-D top down fuck ‘em up.  Yes.  It’s like an old school GTA, and it’s in the best way possible.  Hotline casts you as a dude with a troubling career – a hit man.  The game is set in late 80’s, and you guessed it, Miami! At the beginning of each level your phone rings in your 8-bit apartment, and you are given a “mission” – The jobs are described as menial jobs like cleaning up a mess at so-and-so’s address.  It’s very blatant, but you can’t help to appreciate it.

Each level plays out generally the same; you are tasked to murder every thug in the building.  This is so much fun!  You are given either melee weapons, guns, or your fists to finish off your foes.  There’s a lot of depth here; if you use guns it alerts the nearby dumbbutts to your vicinity, but it gives you quicker kills.  Melee weapons can generally OHKO most guys (aka crack their skulls!), and can also be thrown at enemies.  Melee weapons are actually my favorite because they don’t alert bad dudes, and the kills are much, much more visceral. And lastly, the fists.  Oh the fists! So you cannot really kill guys with one hit like the crowbars, axes, knives, and other assorted headbusters, but you can knock them down!  When you knock them down…you can execute them!  This gets pretty crazy, and if nothing else, the scene in Drive comes to mind – When Ryan Gosling crushes that dude’s head repeatedly in the elevator.  Blood all over. Heavy breathing.  Brains on your shoes. It’s JUST like that, I swear! You have to mash the left button of your mouse like a madman to kill off this scum as quickly as possible.

Oh and there’s masks!  That’s probably what brings me back and back and back to this game.  This game has a score system that grades your quickness, variety, and combo chain score.  Depending on your score you unlock more weapons and masks.  Masks give you extra abilities.  My favorite is the frog because it lets you chain combos for a longer period of time; some other good ones are the giraffe (allows you a longer peek around your surroundings), monkey (allows you to kill and steal guys in one motion), unicorn (your guns are silenced), and the elephant (allows you to take more than one hit).

This sounds fun, albeit a little boring right?  Well, not even half-way through the game they drastically change up things.  I don’t want to give away too much, but the way they set it up is you get comfortable doing the same thing, and WHAM it gets real.  I’m talking police raids.  I’m talking you’re seeing dead people.  I’m talking serial killers are killing peeps right in front of your face.  

 

Hotline reminds me of the amAAAzing movie, Drive - The contrast of dark characters on bright colors of the background.  Hotline Miami’s colors are very bright and vibrant.  They do a great job of making the colors slowly changing/flashing – it makes the whole experience feel more surreal.  The music is probably my second favorite part.  It feels like they drew a lot from Drive, and they make a soundtrack that could fit in that movie.  It’s all dark, ominous, electronic/pop.  I was really blown away how well the music fits, and gets your blood rushing. (Here’s the soundtrack! http://soundcloud.com/devolverdigital/sets/hotline-miami-official)

The final thing I want to touch on is the story.  It’s presented to you in this Pulp Fiction meets Drive.  Hotline begins with you walking into a pitch black room that slowly reveals three figures wearing masks (you actually earn all three of them in the game) talking to you; pretty much demanding why you are such a psychopath.  There are a lot of trippy parts to this game, but the way the story unfolds you want to eagerly uncover why you’re sent on these ‘cleanups’. 

This game is what's keeping me from celebrating America (Fuck yeah!) and Assassin's.  IT'S THAT GOOD.