Hotline Miami Cuts A Bloody Swath To OS X

Earnest Cavalli

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Hotline Miami Cuts A Bloody Swath To OS X



Rejoice all ye bloodthirsty Mac gamers! Dennaton Games' ultraviolent indie hit Hotline Miami is now available for OS X.

I have a confession to make: I'm a Mac. The one flaw with being both a games journalist and an Apple devotee is that videogame offerings on OS X generally lag far behind what you'd find on Windows PCs. The situation has improved massively in recent years thanks largely to Valve Software's efforts to port the Steam digital distribution platform and almost all of its games to the Mac, but I won't deny that my hyper-expensive computer just doesn't offer the same selection of games that you might find on a machine running a Microsoft-branded operating system.

To wit: When Dennaton Games released Hotline Miami last year, I spent weeks hearing from my colleagues about how awesome the game was. Not only was it an homage to classic gaming and a horrifically brutal action title, it was also a clever satire of both of those things. That's right up my alley, and yet I couldn't play the thing unless I wanted to go to the trouble of setting up Bootcamp or braving the perils of a Virtual Machine.

Happily, that all changed a few moments ago as Dennaton Games has finally completed its OS X port of Hotline Miami. If you take a quick trip to Steam and search for the title, you'll find that its previously Windows-exclusive label has been replaced by a pleasant icon indicating both Windows and Mac compatibility. What's more, Hotline Miami still features an exceedingly low price tag: For only $10 you can spend the next few weeks murdering anyone dumb enough to stand between you and your targets in gleefully bloody fashion.

For those of you just stumbling in who have no idea what Hotline Miami is, the quick and dirty version is that it's a pseudo-adaptation of 2011's Drive, designed both as an arcade-style action game and a commentary on the horrific nature of the sorts of things we regularly do while engaging in our collective pastime of choice. Unlike most games that claim to contain important messages about the nature of gaming however, Hotline Miami doesn't beat players over the head with its message, nor is it insufferably pretentious. It's quite obvious from the moment you fire up Hotline Miami that entertaining players is its key goal.

More directly, it's a game that casts you as something of a brutal assassin. You're given targets, then can choose how best to take them out. The game is designed in such a way that murder is neither easy nor clean, and having completed a stage you're likely to look back and see a sea of blood and an ocean of corpses.

Also maybe a fjord of eyeballs, depending on which weapons you employ in your grim task.

That's enough from me though. If you've got a Mac (or even if you're on Windows and have yet to buy Hotline Miami) you should rush to Steam this instant and download the game. It's absolutely worth the $10 price of entry, and I'd expect you to thank me for the suggestion, except you'll be too busy enjoying the gory mayhem to do anything else.

Source: Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/app/219150/]

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deathbydeath

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... haven't you heard of Parallels? Or Virtualbox? Or Wine/The Porting Team? There are tons of ways to play Windows games on OSX, just start looking.
 

Earnest Cavalli

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deathbydeath said:
... haven't you heard of Parallels? Or Virtualbox? Or Wine/The Porting Team? There are tons of ways to play Windows games on OSX, just start looking.
Yes, and I mentioned two such ways. Still, playing PC games on OS X is more of a headache than I'm are willing to put up with just to play a new action game that I can almost certainly find on one of the consoles I own.
 

DirtyLarry

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Nice, thanks for the heads up it was released. Purchased the PC version on Steam once I heard it was coming to OS X, and yes I do own Parallels, but native gaming is much better then emulated gaming, so was worth the wait IMHO.
 

deathbydeath

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Earnest Cavalli said:
Yes, and I mentioned two such ways. Still, playing PC games on OS X is more of a headache than I'm are willing to put up with just to play a new action game that I can almost certainly find on one of the consoles I own.
Oh, Bootcamp. I guess that's your problem? I obtained a copy of Parallels and Windows works wonderfully, assuming you have a disk/ISO for it. There are a few natural hiccups from the porting, but for me I just clicked "install Windows" and success spewed out of my monitor.

Admittedly Wine is really only for you if you're part masochist and part obscene nerd, but it's fun to mess with now and again.

Postscript: Also, I won't trust the HM Mac port until I see it myself. The Wine version was reeeeally sketchy when I played it.
 

Lovely Mixture

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Such a great game. Good on Dennaton to open it up for other gamers.

Looks like we will still need to wait for windowed-mode and other video options.
 

Earnest Cavalli

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deathbydeath said:
Postscript: Also, I won't trust the HM Mac port until I see it myself. The Wine version was reeeeally sketchy when I played it.
I've been playing it since I wrote this article yesterday. Steam's OS X-native Hotline Miami is phenomenal and quite solid. Could use a bit better V-sync, but that was an issue in the PC game as well. Quick verdict: It's as good as its Windows predecessor.

And that comment about Wine? Doesn't that prove my point about playing Windows games on OS X -- that they're a hassle compared to native software?

Or was that satire? I'm pretty sleep deprived so I can't tell if you're going for levity or a lack of self-awareness.

Lovely Mixture said:
Looks like we will still need to wait for windowed-mode and other video options.
Nope. Windowed/Full Screen toggles are in there. There aren't other video options available, but there weren't in its PC incarnation either. It's designed to look like an 8-bit game, so what do you expect?

Post Script: Maybe it's because the comments on this story are almost entirely populated by Mac users, but this is the most mature, literate group of comments I've seen on an article in a long time. Thanks for restoring my faith in the audience here Apple bros! (Well, with the exception of that first one. I think that was supposed to be a joke, but I welcome any of you to explain it to me. Again, sleep deprived, so maybe my brain just isn't processing the humor there appropriately.)
 

deathbydeath

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Earnest Cavalli said:
I've been playing it since I wrote this article yesterday. Steam's OS X-native Hotline Miami is phenomenal and quite solid. Could use a bit better V-sync, but that was an issue in the PC game as well. Quick verdict: It's as good as its Windows predecessor.

And that comment about Wine? Doesn't that prove my point about playing Windows games on OS X -- that they're a hassle compared to native software?

Or was that satire? I'm pretty sleep deprived so I can't tell if you're going for levity or a lack of self-awareness.
I was being serious when I said that Wine is often difficult to use. Parallels, however, is far on the other end of the usability spectrum (though it costs money if you aren't a pirate). Feel free to interpret my comment however you wish, though. It's up to you.