This requires never missing a shot but never having time to aim one up perfectly - railgun reflexes, essentially, but from a top-down perspective with a limited view distance.Īnother comparison: Trials 2. The truly masterful, which I do not number among, may be able to survive on guns alone.
#HOTLINE MIAMI SOUNDTRACK HOW TO#
HOTLINE MIAMI's levels are navigational puzzles rather than battlegrounds - how to get from the entrance to the exit/next floor, killing everyone along the way, but with the minimum of actions and action. A dark god of patience, picosecond-perfect door-opening and perfect aim.Įvery action matters. You twitch your cursor a centimetre upwards, miss one guard and you die. Your shelter means they run straight into your bullets as they round the corner. The three stunned guards get to their feet, then rush you, with most of the other guards from this level right behind them. You open the door, kill the first guard, hit the second guard with your thrown crowbar then miss your punch on the third guard and you die. You open the door, kill the first guard then another one sees you and you die. You click fire then click fire then pause for a millisecond for the next wave to arrive then click fire then click fire then click fire then clickclickclick and you're spent but fortunately everyone's dead. You do not hold down fire, for you have only 24 bullets and they will all be spent on a single foe if you do this. You then pick up the dropped gun, move behind a door, fire one shot into the air then wait, just for a moment. You have pressed punch three times, and three times only. You rush straight through the door, hit punch just once to deck the guy, carry straight on up and do exactly the same to the other two before they have time to react. You punch the second one to the ground, grab the crowbar then beat them both to death with it when they stand up again. When the latter has his back to you, you sprint fowards, throwing the crowbar as you go to stun the one with the gun. You watch and wait as two more guards patrol up ahead. You grab the crowbar he dropped, sprint to a wall to remain out of sight. He falls to the floor, stunned briefly, at which point you jump onto his chest and beat him to death. You slam the door into a guard walking by it. Here's what might happen when you go through one of those doors.
Of course it's as amazing as you've heard.Įvery mission proper starts with a door. Hitman without the puzzles (though there are disguises, of a sort - more on that later). Every action matters - every bullet fired, every knife swipe, every door opened, every corner turned, every split-second hesitated. You won't last a quarter of a minute that way. The single most important thing to know about Hotline Miami, other than that it has the best soundtrack in the history of the universe, is that you cannot rampage in it. It is not a straight-up shooter, despite what those retro graphics and all that blood might suggest. Hotline Miami is, however, violence porn, fetishing the fact of the kill, the successful and expert accomplishment of it, rather than the gruesome act of it. If a Rockstar game must be mentioned then it should be Manhunt and its semi-stealth precision kills, though HOTLINE MIAMI's Gameboy graphics and the breathless speed of the kills keep it largely out of gore porn territory. The GTA comparisons arrive pretty fast when HOTLINE MIAMI is mentioned, but that's more because it evokes a hybrid of the first game and Vice City stylistically, and has a moral compass almost as broken as Donald Trump's. It is about the split second between encounter and reaction, and what you do in it. You will murder everyone, and you will leave untold bloodshed in your wake, but Hotline Miami is about the thoughts, the planning and the strategy that goes into each of those murders. It's just that that's the destination, not the journey). (Actually, I lied it, is also about this: You probably think Hotline Miami is about this: Dennaton's HOTLINE MIAMI has the style of Drive in a fever dream, the look of GTA 1, the tone of American Psycho, the presentation of 80s video nasties and the combat of a strategy game running at 100x speed.