HOTLINE: MIAMI .... Controversial ultraviolent indie game.

[II2]

Hotline Miami launched, just recently on STEAM and Impulse and GOG, and is making some unsually large waves for an $10 indie game, likely because it's surreal level of violence is normally found in the company of games like the original Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto and Postal games...

I think it's a great game, incredibly tight and rewarding action that's almost balletically ugly. It's caustic, psychotic gameplay is played pitch perfect with a polarized feel of "speed stealth" and a sadomasochistic vibe of attraction and repulsion. It's perfectly designed to make you love playing it and then pull the rug and ask you, "why, you sick bastard?"

That's my 0.02, but not everyone is happy about what it 'says' about gaming that it's such a home run smash at the last indie con it was featured - detractors have already slammed the subject matter and approach.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DevinWilson/20121026/180284/Why_Hotline_Miami.php - Article written by Devin Wilson and supported by Phil Fish, which in turn was met with counter articles on Gamasutra and a long thread seen here at Giant Bomb:
http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/hotline-miami/8746/why-hotline-miami/565158/?
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RamiIsmail/20121029/180408/Why_Hotline_Miami_is_an_important_game.php


What do you Escapists think?

 

[Zhukov]

Just been playing it.

I like it well enough.

I kinda wish all the talky bits would fuck off though. It better be building toward something that's worth clicking through all this asinine dialogue.

Speaking of dialogue, you know what is really bad design? Having a checkpoint, then some dialogue, then a big fight, all in a game where you die a lot because the protagonist dies in one hit. So you get to click through the dialogue every time you die. Joy.

I find the whole "Ohh, you're such a monster" angle tiresome as well. It's like trying to make someone feel guilty or reflective about stomping goombas in Mario. All the more so since the game doesn't give you any alternative to killing everyone.

Not sure why the violence is a big deal. It's not worse than anything in, say, Black Ops. And it's in pixel-o-vision anyway.

...

I probably sound like I'm hating on the game. I'm not, it's pretty fun.

 

[II2]

Speaking of dialogue, you know what is really bad design? Having a checkpoint, then some dialogue, then a big fight, all in a game where you die a lot because the protagonist dies in one hit. So you get to click through the dialogue every time you die. Joy.

I find the whole "Ohh, you're such a monster" angle tiresome as well. It's like trying to make someone feel guilty or reflective about stomping goombas in Mario. All the more so since the game doesn't give you any alternative to killing everyone.

Not sure why the violence is a big deal. It's not worse than anything in, say, Black Ops. And it's in pixel-o-vision anyway.

Fair points.

I found the unskippable dialogue just before (like everything) one-shot-kill boss fights perticularly vexing. The bosses are very trial and error / wipe x30 affairs, so it's a real pain in the ass.

I also agree that the game's confrontational, 'up in your grill' plot attitude about your behavior can feel like it's got a delusion of depth compared to more genuinely contemplative games like Spec Ops, but I do feel it's in keeping with the fast paced kill or die, listen or act kinda binary dynamic the game has. I feel you though.

I think people find the violence a "big deal", or moreso than equally rough material like Blops is that it's the total focus of the game, with a sleazy viciousness decoupled from the kind of heroic, "glorifying" (or what passes for it) elite-few vs evil-many military scenarios concocted as context. The style kinda brings it out too: simplification is amplifying, aesthetically.

That's what I take from it anyway... I probably come off like a know it all, but I'm just trying to think it out (loud), since I love the game and find it's critical reception particularly interesting.

 

[Zhukov]

I find the whole "Ohh, you're such a monster" angle tiresome as well. It's like trying to make someone feel guilty or reflective about stomping goombas in Mario. All the more so since the game doesn't give you any alternative to killing everyone.

Not sure why the violence is a big deal. It's not worse than anything in, say, Black Ops. And it's in pixel-o-vision anyway.

I also agree that the game's confrontational, 'up in your grill' plot attitude about your behavior can feel like it's got a delusion of depth compared to more genuinely contemplative games like Spec Ops, but I do feel it's in keeping with the fast paced kill or die, listen or act kinda binary dynamic the game has. I feel you though.

Thing is, I actually have no problem with a game calling out the player on the nasty shit they've been doing.

However, it really needs to be rooted in some degree of player choice. Choice begets responsibility for the consequences. Giving me just one course of action and then berating me for following it through just strikes me as cheap.

Spec Ops pulled the same stunt with the whole white phosphorous scene. Then turned around and said, "Oh, look at what you have done to your fellow man, you monster". To which I responded, "Hey, don't look at me. I couldn't find a wait-till-nightfall-then-sneak-around-the-outskirts button no matter how hard I looked."

The answer to the whole "do you like hurting people?" question seems to me to be an obvious one: "Yes. If I didn't enjoy simulated acts of violence I wouldn't be playing this game."