Damn it, Hotline Miami is the best puzzle/murder sim I've ever played. I don't know what you would really call it, but I just played the same level like 50 times trying to find a way through it and it almost seemed like a strategy or a puzzle game or something to me.
Definitely deeper than the overhead shooter I thought it was going to be.
I normally get all grossed out by 80's stuff. I was alive back then and enjoyed it but looking back everything was just so gross. From the clothes to the attitudes to the politics to even a ton of the music. It's grossed me out for years. I keep saying "gross" for lack of a better term because it's almost like a conflicted anti-nostalgia. Some of the things I have an affinity for, but mostly I just get the heebie jeebies from the 80's for some weird reason. It's a weird relationship full of longing and revulsion.
Hotline Miami taps into the part of me that takes the shit I hate about from back then and just amplifies it intensely enough, and tempers it with such excellent gameplay, that it gives me almost a zen-like sense of sanctity and profanity. The highs of the gameplay and the lows I get from the excellently realized 80's sleaze really get to me.
As much as I love playing it, and have stayed up much too late doing so, it reaches a point after a bit where it almost becomes too intense an experience to be sitting there in a dark room, my sleeping children not far away, but feeling like the only person around for miles.
This game is really something special, guys. I don't normally give game storytelling much credit, but this is a hell of an engrossing story and gameplay experience here. I'd definitely suggest picking it up. Wait for a sale if you need to, but it's totally worth a 10 spot.
That's the sort of thing Cain should be saying in his own game when gunning down fools!
