"Cool, now try to do it with a mouse and keyboard."
Easiest thing in the world for most gamers, but the hardest thing in the world for me.
I'm not the type that hovers my face over a keyboard and pokes at keys with my pointer fingers, but put a PC game in front of me and you might as well ask me to pilot a space shuttle. I'm no better than my father was at controlling Lara Croft when he tried to play the original Tomb Raider once.
Now imagine someone like me firing up Hotline Miami -- a game designed around speed, skill and efficiency -- and trying to hold my own. When I wasn't accidentally making my character spin and moonwalk like the late great Michael Jackson, I was engulfed with the most deranged, Helter Skelter experience to ever grace the video game medium.
Hotline Miami is the kind of game that CNN would have a field day with. It's an experience so sinister, so taboo that the addiction it'll illicit will make you feel irreversibly dirty. And make no mistake -- you will get addicted... and need a shower. Even the strongest and sturdiest of moral compasses will be shattered by this trippy 1980's depiction of a gritty Miami underworld. Hotline Miami is mindless killing, unsettling gratification, timid introspection and psychosomatics all wrapped up into one potent cocktail.
It was only right that Hotline Miami called the PC home when it debuted in October of 2012. Despite it's commercial popularity and critical triumphs, Hotline Miami had more in common with private browsing, encrypted folders and the raunch of 4chan than even the shadiest of its software brethren.
Hotline Miami's home console absence wasn't the least bit surprising. There wasn't much about Hotline Miami that correlates to the console ecosystem, and that even includes the indie development scene. Not only that, but what console manufacturer in their right, sober, drug-free mind would take the chance of media scrutiny for a game like this?
One word, two syllables. Sony.
Ah, but we should have expected as much, shouldn't we? The same company that housed dubious titles like Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt and Thrill Kill (well, if we're counting 'close, but no cigar') rolled out another blood-red carpet again; except this time, Sony courted an indie star instead of Rockstar. And after dialing Hotline Miami for months, Dennaton Games finally answered the call to bring their controversial killing spree to the ever-willing PlayStation brand.
Deep in the underbelly of the PlayStation Network is a man on hands and knees, vomiting uncontrollably after his inexplicable slaughtering rampage left bodies draped over bodies and the blood of one slithering over to the puddle of another. Lying a few feet away from the weapons once wielded by the slain is a bloodied pig mask named Aubrey. It's but one of his many make-believe fair-weather friends. Once his stomach settles, he stands up, picks Aubrey up and wipes his crimson-soaked hands on his Letterman jacket while scurrying to his car before the police arrive.
The man stops on his way home to a local pizza parlor where an odd worker offers him free food for no apparent reason. Too dead inside to care, the man grabs the pizza and drives onward, watching the purple skies of dusk turn palm trees into shadows from his driver's side window. He already knows what happens from here -- tomorrow will come, as will another voicemail on his answering machine. The voice on the other end will speak in casual sounding codes with smug delight, knowing that the 'point and go do' man will always go do. And he will.
Killing is the only thing that matters in Hotline Miami. Not names, not narrative, not home, not dropping by diners or video stores and definitely not the beliefs of its few characters -- the game is designed with the intent to make all of those elements meaningless. Picking up a pizza doesn't restore the man's health or level up his abilities. It's purposely pointless because the only thing that means anything into the man is his next massacre. That's when he can finally utilize his dormant senses and feel alive.
And when he does snap out of it, Hotline Miami's top-down, two-dimensional gameplay goes into sensory overdrive. Callous thumps of electronic music, blistering movement, heartless kills and visuals tripping on LSD meld together to form Hotline Miami's smutty excellence.
'Kill or be killed' is one of the few central themes you'll uncover amid Hotline Miami's brash gameplay. All it takes is one swing of a bat, one slashing of a blade or one bullet from a gun to put someone down, but that also includes the man as well. When this theme isn't subliminally illuminating the fragility of life, it's the driving force behind Hotline Miami's learning curve.
You will die a lot; and in order to prevent that, players must treat each floor of a building like a killing puzzle. Determining when to bust through a door, when to bide your time, who to kill first and how to do it will be paramount to completing each chapter. In other words, it's only killing that makes you think.
Style and speed of completion is tallied in points that will unlock new weapons you'll gain access to in subsequent missions, along with new masks that come with individual perks to aid you in future bloodbaths. These elements allow players to not only diversify their approach to each job, but inject traces of tactics into the equation.
The only real drawback to these perks is that you can only change masks at the start of a mission. So, for example, if you realize you need the Ted mask to avoid dog attacks in a particular building, you'd have to restart the mission from the very beginning to do it. Without knowing what terrors lie in wait beforehand, you'll have to guess which mask you think will be most effective, which doesn't always work to the benefit of the player.
What does benefit the player is the copious amount of options Hotline Miami provides to complete each stage with it's arsenal of melee weapons, artillery and lethal fisticuff finishing blows. With enough finesse, players can wipe out an entire floor of enemies with flair.
Beginners will find the nearest assault rifle, fire off a single round to send enemies sprinting towards their location and pick them off one by one. Advanced players will charge through the first door, sending an enemy flying back-first to the nearest wall and triggering a swift kick to the teeth before grabbing the fallen enemy's baseball bat and hurling it at another guy in the adjoining hallway. Before the second enemy can come to his senses, that skilled player will dart over to him, pick up the bat, sit on top of the enemy and swing for the fences.
Right beside that second crime scene is a room with a cache of guns. The player reaches for a shotgun and makes his way to the last inhabited room with two armed enemies inside, waiting until one passes by the doorway to burst in, grab him as live cover and unload on the other man. With the last person to kill already in his clutches, the advanced player snaps the enemy's neck and proceeds to the next floor.
Initiating such a string of moves is made easy with the PlayStation 3 controller thanks to a simplistic, unobstructed control scheme that, for the most part, feels right at home with home consoles. Being that Hotline Miami was designed for PC gaming, however, there are moments when facing the protagonist in a desired direction to fire a precise shot or an accurate swing will be a chore, resulting in a few deaths that feel quite unfair.
One incredible intangible facilitated by the DualShock 3 is Hotline Miami's use of rumble. Each sickening blow is disturbingly tactile with the addition of force feedback -- making what became a run-of-the-mill controller feature feel as fresh as it did in the rumble pack days. You'll find strange solace in the fact that this is a top-down, 16-bit looking title. Any closer and it'll get a little too real, but there's only so much you can do to distance yourself from what's happening when Hotline Miami is being projected on an HDTV smack dab in your living room.
Hotline Miami's release on the PlayStation Network is the equivalent of a snuff film getting released on Redbox, with the only smokescreen being bright neons, hand-drawn cover art and a description that tells just a fraction of the truth. I wonder how many people purchased Hotline Miami expecting something else.
Technically, it is something else... just not the Miami Vice game most were expecting. It's the black sheep that cuts away all the filler that other kill-driven games incorporate to make digital murder less jarring. No epic setpieces to hide behind, no trite tale of revenge to portray, no military jargon to wrestle with.
It's just an empty, desensitized man in a Letterman jacket brainwashed to take lives in a warped world. Take your talents to South Beach and meet him. He's an interesting guy, but a loner, so don't get offended when he doesn't speak. He just has a lot on his mind... like which friend to put over his head and how to kill the 27 people in the building across the street.
It'll be fun. I'd stake your life on it.