I find it intriguing when people are this offended by something like a videogame. It isn't real. Maybe I'm just desensitized.

@DevWil: I suggest reading the Polygon review. It is here if you're interested. If you don't want to bother, he mentions that style isn't the only thing the game has got going for it. There is actually an important narrative to the game.. the extreme violence you see in things like the Quick Look serves a purpose, changes who the character is, and all leads somewhere in terms of story in the game.

@Demoskinos said:

@sixpin

I find it intriguing when people are this offended by something like a videogame. It isn't real. Maybe I'm just desensitized.

Not necessarily. Video games dont offend me. Neither do movies etc... My distinction of reality/fiction is clearly defined for me. I had the unfortunate displeasure of seeing one of the beheading videos that the radical Islamists were putting out in particular the one news reporter they captured. That shit disturbed me and real violence names me extremely uncomfortable in general. Yet I laugh at a good bit of sadistic things in movies/games.

just because I'm aware that something's a video game doesn't mean I won't feel offended about things in them (not that I feel offended about this obviously but you know), so I don't think it's just the distinction between reality/fiction necessarily, but more how you view that distinction; is fiction just fiction or is it representative of something FROM reality?

I mean this is all a moot point since he's making arguments about a game he's never played but still.

Thank goodness there is always some dude who can point out what's wrong with video games and who can make us feel bad for enjoying mindless violence. Personally I think it's much healthier to enjoy sick fucked up video games than to do this stuff for real. I'm obviously not as civilized as this ultra sensitive enlightened man. Because I know that I have a lot of crazy fucked thoughts in my head all the time but I've never hurt anyone. I would be far more likely to hurt myself than another person. If enjoying violent media in all forms makes me a sociopath then so be it. I'm just really sick of hearing all this grown up games shit! Play what you like and I'll do the same.

I think OP is getting caught up more in the fervor surrounding the game than the game and how it plays (which is more evident considering he/she has never played it). I think the people who like the game like it because of the challenge it presents. It can be both very methodical and because of some random elements such as A.I. pathing, it can also be knee-jerk, lightning fast. Similar to how Super Meat Boy plays out, which is a pretty apt comparison in more ways than one. I think because of the incredibly stylistic approach to the game and that whole package, it'd be easy to get caught up in all of that, but all that stuff just adds another layer on top of the (usually) pretty great gameplay. Would it have worked as well or have been as "hyped" as it were with a different take? Who's to say. I think the criticisms you (OP) hold seem misguided, but there is certainly some validity to them.

This game is powerful satire combined with rock solid mechanics and playability. The violence aspect reminds me of Spec Ops: The Line a lot.

@DevWil

No, no, no. You have it all wrong. Hotline Miami is about how fun it is to kill people in really satisfying ways if you're a fucking psychopath. Art is about more than just transmitting happy fuzzy feelings. Hotline Miami transmits horrible, unhinged feelings in a skillful way.

Also, you're completely off base if you think this game portrays women in a negative light. The specifics are a bit ambiguous, but the female character described in that RPS article is one of the best female characters I've seen in a video game, even though she only has a single spoken line. Her part of the plot is one of the shining high points of the game. I remember when I started living with my girlfriend this thing started happening where our stuff just started to collate into one big glob of belongings. Basically, Hotline Miami contains a romantic relationship more realistic than anything Bioware has ever done.

Let's let this be a lesson in not talking about stuff you don't know anything about. Hotline Miami is art. I can't get behind anybody saying stuff like "just ignore the aesthetic and enjoy the gameplay," and anything about it being wish fulfillment is a little unsettling on its own. These two posters did a great job of summing up all the greatness in the aesthetic, and how it all works beautifully together:

@ShaggE You're spot on with that assessment, I'd say, in saying that it's a critique of violent action games. The character's goals as communicated by the faceless being on the other side of that phone line are often nonsensical and don't hang together when the least amount of scrutiny is placed on them, but the ends are always the same. Hotline Miami is like a Bioshock that's actually awesome to play.

@AngriGhandi Awesome post. Great gloss of the purpose behind the aesthetic.

Please don't be a real person.

Hey guys, I just finished looking at the poster for the movie Shame, now pay attention as I provide a dissertation on why this movie I haven't seen glorifies men fucking women with no consequences. It's basically porn and you're all horrible people for thinking it has any merit at all.

@DevWil:

This is the impression I get of you from your post:

Wow, OP. That was very well-put. I mean, the game seems kind of awesome (at least the music - the rest seems kind of like a mid-90's flash game), but all of your arguments are incredibly valid.

You know what? I'm fed up with this. You keep talking about how women are portrayed wrong, how about men? Are you saying that all men are impossibly buff guys who has an 8 pack and shoots other people every day of their entire life? No. Don't read so much into it because it isn't as one-sided as you make it out to be. Besides, who cares about the ultra violence. Know what other media production was super gory? Kill Bill. People love Kill Bill. Don't make this game out to be anything other than what it sets out to be.

@Jrinswand said:

Wow, OP. That was very well-put. I mean, the game seems kind of awesome (at least the music - the rest seems kind of like a mid-90's flash game), but all of your arguments are incredibly valid.

How would you view any of those as valid? Addressing one of the key flaws of the post -- they haven't played the game.

Now that's a really key, as many users in this thread of already addressed, because doing that totally debunks virtually (if not) every point the OP puts forward

• Sexist agenda

There isn't one. That's all there is to it. Hotline Miami does not put one forward or make one discernible. The only way I can see someone else being able to identify one is if all of their information comes from secondhand sources and experience (See: OP)

• An immature product that glorifies mindless violence

Literally nothing about that statement is true. The story, while not necessarily complex, is dark and twisted, equal in my eyes to a movie like 8MM. It addresses the evil desires of a minority of humans, and while it brings these desires to fruition, it has no intention of glorifying it. While framing and empowering you whilst you complete a level, the feeling is literally no different than you would get for playing a high level of Pac-Man or completing a difficult puzzle. I would say the quote about feeling like an 'empowered homicidal maniac' is a bit misleading. You feel empowered, but it is in the same way that you would be in Super Meat Boy or virtually any other masocore game. It is because you, the player, are exhibiting skill and prowess over the game mechanics themselves in order to progress. While the music goes a great way to amplify this, it also is the very key to the deglamourization of the entire thing. You move, quickly and deadly through a floor of enemies. A thumping bassline plays in the back, growing in intensity to an all out smorgasbord of dark and energetic club music.

And then suddenly, you have finished the chapter. The puzzle is completed. The music is immediately silenced. It is replaced with a dissonant droning, and the player must backtrack through the very wake of blood they hath just cut. There is no triumphant theme. No gold, no shining light. Just the droning and the bodies, interlaced with cryptic cutscenes with other masked psychopaths, deploring your actions, questioning your humanity and berating your existence.

And I want to drive this point home, if nothing else. The reason there are critics who praise the violent gameplay, which has been unfairly cast as 'mindless', is because the story is frankly, weird, complex, and best experienced first hand. The game has had a short lifespan, and it seems only proper that critics would refrain from giving anything away about the story, provided they were able to wrap their mind around most of it in the first place. I'm not saying it's overly mind-bending, but it is twisted in such a way that makes it difficult to talk about without going in to gross detail of the entire plot, thus spoiling it.

Now as to your point, I suppose I could see how it could be construed as a sort of elaborate flash game. But the reason for that is that the gameplay is simple. Simple, but not mindless, or in a way that Nintendo used to like to declare, "Simple to pick up, but difficult to master."

This game has gotten praise because it is genuinely a good game. It adheres to an artistic vision that it delivers on handily, crafts levels the grow more complex and difficult as the player progresses and presumably develops mastery over the mechanics, it is visually appealing, aurally pleasing, dark and sordid for reasons beyond "Well, we made this because we just like blood, MK fatalities are basically what drove this", and frankly, the gameplay just feels real damn nice. The level of control that is granted the player, the timing, the simultaneously predictable yet random encounters with the AI, everything just feels sublime.

And hardly one goddamn bit of this can be made apparent to someone who would rather take umbrage to the fact that this game exists and has caught the fancy of many a reviewer than give it a go for themselves and attempt to discover why this hype exists.

You honestly raise some good points. Sometimes a bunch of little things can come together to make something "awesome" that would otherwise seem not so at face value. I can also see the point of people crying for games to get serious and then praising this game but that's only valid if it's the same people. This idea that games need to grow up is not paramount to me and if a game looks fun to me then I will play it. Simple as that.

ALL GAMES MUST BE ART FROM NOW ON BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON WE NEED GAMES TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. NO FUN ALLOWED.

@DevWil: For not "Giving them the time" or "having better things to do" you sure put a lot of thought and read way too far into the themes you assumed were at the surface of this game. The fact that you think writing your post was more important than actually researching it says a lot.

The girl in the artwork you posted is passed out from being an implied drugged out sex slave to the first boss. You rescue her from him and let her sleep on your couch. You never have dialogue with her and you only see her in various rooms of your house for the next few missions and then she is just gone. I personally didn't even notice my house was cleaner until you said something because you are in it just to wake up and click the answering machine, which takes all of about 8 seconds to do.

I haven't beaten the game yet but its been eluding to the fact that (sorry can't seem to get the spoiler warning to work) well its just leaning towards the everything is not as it seems story type.

The appeal of this game for me is the difficulty and strategy it takes to complete a floor. It is always extremely challenging but never to the point of fed up.

I just think you should play the game before writing why you supposedly hate it.

There is more to appreciate in any creative work than what is visible on the surface. View any work in this way and you limit your ability see past things like the reaction of the public or how the words or opinion of someone else made you feel. All things do not appeal to all people, that's the way it should be, don't commit so much thought to the things that don't appeal to you, you said you had better things to do than playing Hotline Miami and yet you spent that time writing an article that (judging by the amount of comments) may have brought more exposure to something you wished to denounce. Spend that time in the future writing about positive examples of how you want things to change, what games have you played lately that made you feel like it was a progression for the medium? Applaud that. This seems like a waste of your energy.

I take shit too seriously: The Blog

If you don't want to play a game, don't play it. If you don't want to play a game, don't post about it either.

@EveretteScott said:

I take shit too seriously: The Blog

Go read the bible again.

@DevWil said:

Most of you who are disagreeing with me are saying one of three things: 1. Don't take games seriously; they're just supposed to be fun. 2. Play the game and maybe you'll feel differently. 3. Movies are violent too. The second is the only disagreement I can entertain. However, it is a complete failure of both marketing and game criticism that I've read two reviews, watched a trailer, and watched a Quick Look and have the opposite impression that the game wants me to. Perhaps most importantly, you can't simply do something and say you're making fun of it. If Hotline Miami is satirizing violence, I don't see it. It seems like people are focusing their experience around how exciting it is to kill people in the game. Finally, movies and games aren't the same, and appealing to violent movies doesn't impress me anyway. Thanks to everybody who has responded, and I hope I cleared some things up. Sorry if I didn't answer your argument directly. This comment thread sort of blew up, and I'm typing this on a tablet, as I'm not home right now.

Well maybe if you played the game you would understand why it's a satire. Hell look at a let's play or something, because its really about that.

Some specific lines include

"You're a bad person."

"You've done horrible things."

"Do you enjoy hurting people?"

I mean if that's not a commentary on violence I don't know what is. It's really paining me to see you say this stuff because you seem like an intelligent individual, but you are severely misinformed. Also you unfairly quoted Chris Plante earlier saying he enjoyed the violence in the game. If you had finished the review you would have found he said this, "As the game approached its climax, I found myself asking, Why? Why is the world so inescapably violent and angry? Hotline Miami admirably does its best to provide an answer. You'll find it buried deep beneath the game's surface — figuratively and literally. It has more to say about our fascination with violence in games than the lion's share of its competition. That the killing is fun made me feel all the worse. Which was the point. Hotline Miami is exceptional not because it's violent, but because it's violent for a reason."

wow

I think the original poster confuses violence with the over saturation of first person shooters. Patrick seems to make this statement a lot, that he's sick of the FPS, which is similar to Jeff complaint about zombies. These are overused choices by developers, spurred by their popularity in sales.

That said, onto his original point. Aside from the fact you got the premise wrong, your conclusion is also wrong. The measure of a game should not be judged by how much violence it has, but by what it does with the violence. Hotline Miami uses that violence to make puzzles, which are unique. Whether you think the puzzles are fun are completely up to you, but you can say objectively, this mechanic they introduce is unique. The Homefront press X to commit genocide or the No Russian level in CoD4 can be looked at as inane ways to implement violence, in those cases they were either obstructing the characters progression artificially or reducing player action to a quicktime event. As far as I'm concerned whether it's done violently or not, those are two trends in games that need to stop because they aren't fun.

That is why it's been received well. The gaming public relation enthusiast collective(I refuse to call them press because they aren't) have responded well to the game because it is unique. They are predisposed to grabbing onto new things because they're new.

I haven't played the game but I can tell these things from the quicklook.

Honestly, if you're writing an opinion piece you should play it before you write the piece. There's a lot of good stuff to this game, I would even call it quite artistic (and I'm sensitive to all kinds of periphery/center dynamics i.e. discrimination of women).

Wow. That stick up your ass has majorly effected your brain.

You murder 100s of people in most games . This is one of the first that made me feel "man I really shouldn't be killing all these people, this is fucked up"

This game is simple, harsh, and blazing fast. It's appealing for these reasons, and it sort of makes me think about the things it's doing... most games do none of this, most games revolve around killing yet almost pride themselves on making you forget that fact. This game isn't about making you think though, but it does a bit anyways because it's punchy. Married game mechanics with very harsh actions that turn those actions into a mechanic make more meaningful use of games as a mechanic to look at human interaction than you would otherwise get from other games where everything has rounded edges and at the end you couldn't tell it apart from the last game you played besides it's core genre differences (fps, top down, rts... it's all shooting placeholder nazis and saving the world).

I haven’t played Hotline Miami.

Thank you for starting with this sentence, now I don't have to read the rest of this rant.

I agree with you on almost every point, and am mostly commenting just to add another voice of approval in the midst of this onslaught of childishly defensive over-reaction. You're brave to bring this discussion up on a forum like this. Like you I will not buy this game on account of its violence, even though the tactical puzzle action it offers, if moved to a more neutral or abstract setting, would absolutely intrigue me.

What I disagree with is something that others have already brought up: from the footage I've seen it does not at all seem like this game "glorifies" violence. To glorify is to portray as beautiful, virtuous or positive. Games that glorify violence include the Medal of Honor series (at least the last few) and the Treyarch CODs. In those games violins play unironically after hordes of faceless foreigners are dealt with by a small but infinitely more competent group of westerners, and it is explained to players that it is okay because they are defending democracy. Such games capitalize on our need to feel we are protecting those close to us, and our desire to test our strength and wit against others, to make sure we still have that edge our caveman minds think we need to survive.

Games like this and Manhunt do almost the opposite thing. They paint violence as ugly, unnecessary and above all disturbing. Horror movies work the same way. Here it is our need to test our courage and resolve in the face of life-threatening, stressful and disconcerting situations that is profited from. Our caveman minds believe that we will inevitably face such situations, and that we need to practice. This is certainly not as contemptible as glorifying violence, so it is an important distinction.

Nevertheless, the urge to be made uncomfortable by violence and gore is not needed by or helpful to the average video game-purchasing person today. I say we should do our part and suppress this urge as best we can, until we evolve past it. Once again though, between this and a xenophobic military game, Hotline Miami all the way.

I fully back the position that this entire first post is purely a knee-jerk, poorly thought out reaction based on only a cursory glance at the game in question, and thus pretty much utterly devoid of value. But unrelated to the story and aesthetics being discussed here, there's something else I keep seeing that I feel deserves to be discussed: having Hotline Miami referred to as "just another top down shooter" is a misnomer that is both hardly accurate, and that does it an injustice. It is certainly top down, and you can certainly do some shooting in it. But labeling it as a "top down shooter" is functionally equivalent to calling Thief or the recent Chivalry "first person shooters". I mean, you can shoot arrows at enemies in both of these, but nobody will ever consider those games as "shooters".

Similarly, in a game like Thief, you can (if you are good enough) certainly sword and arrow your way through everything in your path. But it's rather damn hard, and I think most would agree that it's hardly the ideal way to play. In Hotline Miami, going gung-ho with guns is also often a valid and workable strategy. But unless you're using a mask that supports it and/or are very carefully laid out your positioning and plan and are very good at both aiming and fire discipline, just thoughtlessly opening fire on whoever is around is a very fast ticket to getting slaughtered FAST.

First of all, the enemies are very fast when they're alerted, and they can fire on you VERY quickly. from well off the screen if you're not looking in their direction, and they have EXCELLENT AIM. Second, a single bullet nearly always puts you down. You can very rarely survive a hit from the rare smaller-caliber weapons, and there is a mask or two that lets you take like 1 or 2 bullets before death, but none of that will help you when you take most of a load of buckshot or when that one bullet you survive has a friend about half a millisecond behind it. In other words, 98% of the time if somebody gets the chance to open fire on you, you're dead.

Thirdly, when you find a gun, you get exactly as much ammo as is in the thing when you find it; fire at shotgun into some mook in a room, you better be aware of how many others are gonna come charging in and from where, and you better not waste a single shell. Because if you run out and the nearest gun is across the room and there's 2 or so guys coming at you, you are paste. Even then, safety is never fully guaranteed; a fully-loaded shotgun and careful firing and positioning might not save you if two guys bust through a door close to one another and the blast doesn't get them both, because during the so brief but oh-so-long pump delay between rounds, the remaining guy will splatter you across the wall. In other words, since silenced weapons are extremely rare, opening fire is nearly always a risky move, and even the best twitch reactions won't save you if you have guy coming in from every direction.

All this is to point out why eliminating enemies carefully and quietly with melee weapons is frequently the smartest and safest option. A lot of people are saying it's a great game because it operates purely on your "lizard brain" and your reactions, and that can be true, particularly if you are indeed basing your play on finding and using guns. But playing slowly and methodically is also usually a completely valid option, as you plan out a strategy for each room and finally burst in when the time is right, moving and attacking with precision and style such that everyone inside is dead in less than a second and nobody else is the wiser. Or you can often totally just rampage through an area like a madman, charging from room to room delivering precise blows with a bat or pipe, throwing them at far-away guys with weapons to knock them down so you can move in to finish the job and keep the steamroller moving.

Or maybe you just want to try playing with style and flash, bursting into a well-fortified room and knocking someone down with a door, flinging a knife at a poor sucker across the way, then grabbing the still-dazed guy on the floor's double-barrel and hefting his body up as a human shield to absorb the first few rounds coming at you from his friend while you carefully aim in a fraction of a second and let loose a blast from the scattergun that takes down your remaining assaults. And now you probably only have a second or two to determine whether or not the remaining shell in that gun is going to be enough to deal with whomever's rushing over to check what the hell just happened in there...

In other words, like many of the great games of our past, one of the reasons Hotline Miami works so well is because it allows great variation in how you want to play nearly every level, while also forcing you to modify your plans when somebody you counted on to have a gun didn't (many enemies will be carrying random gear from restart to restart) or when a guy who you didn't take into account randomly wanders into the room just as you charge in. The ability to restart immediately upon death (a la SMB) and the fact that no level is particularly long makes trying different strategies much more palatable. Then, it further rewards you for mixing up your play via the very well-considered scoring system, where playing dangerously and efficiently while utilizing varied moves provides you with much more points, which in turn gives you new masks and weapons that further allow you to try different play styles.

I guess to sum up: I just can't see calling a game where I defeated the vast majority of the opposition on my first playthrough with pipes, doors, golf clubs, fire axes, precisely thrown baseball bats to the knees, or often my own bare hands a "top-down shooter".

@gaminghooligan said:

@Animasta said:

and when you finish a level, and the music changes, you realize that you just murdered all of those people for no real good reason and it makes you feel guilty.

it's true. it's one of the few games where I go from the high of finishing a level to feeling like a total piece of shit for what I did.

Plus you go to the various quick stops and get food/drinks and that guy is all "dude you hear about all the killings? Shit's fucked up." That's usually what hits me.

As @MuttersomeTaxicab suggested, at least play Norrland and then tell us that the developers of Hotline Miami did not intend to have anything past the surface of the game. It's funny, because you're attacking the exact people that should by all rights be your champions, given your MO as a game designer.

@DevWil said:

But here's the thing with Hotline Miami: I think it'd be way more successful if it were just a short (like, 10 minutes or less) game in which you do some awful stuff to people and then are forced to reflect on it, and that's the entire arc of the game. However, the fact that the game asks you to do it over and over again (in the name of fun) really deflates any arguments for it being a strong commentary on violence. The reason people keep playing is for the violence, and most of the content really seems to be celebrating violence.

If your only criticism of Hotline at that point is that it's more than 10 minutes long, we both know that's really not much of an argument. There is clearly more to be said on what they're tackling then what they could manage in 10 minutes.

@joachimo said:

For the record, the girl who 'moves in' and cleans your apartment is not just some random girlfriend, well.. she is, kind of. But the point is that you save her life from being a drug riddled hooker, and I guess as payment for taking care of her she cleans up the house.

I think this might bear some discussion, because that wasn't how I interpreted it. The way I see it is attached to the ending of the game, so don't read on unless you've finished all the chapters and put in the password.

You don't save that woman. You only give her the opportunity to save herself. Hotline Miami's nameless female character with hardly any dialogue is one of the best female characters ever in a video game. Hotline Miami is art.

@DevWil said:

Quite simply: I’m baffled.

I haven’t played Hotline Miami.

That says everything that needs to be said for this thread.

@DevWil said:

Feel free to correct me on any details, but I’m not giving the developers of this game the time or money required to play it. I don’t feel bad about that. I have better things to do (including writing this).

But you are gonna take your time to make a thread to whine and about it... Go away please.

Also, the chick in the game was about to get tortured and murdered (and possibly more, who knows) by some big fat black guy that I bucked three times with a shotgun before rescuing her. For all I know, she cleaned up the goddamn apartment as a thank you for saving her life. She never speaks, and it's all interpretive. By the way (***SPOILERS***), she ends up becoming your girlfriend at some point, gets murdered on your bathroom floor, and you go after and murder the people responsible for that.

Again, you know not what the hell you speak of, @DevWil . Exit stage right >>>>>>>>>>>>

@jakob187: we have spoiler tags for a reason dude D:

Also her being killed doesn't really disprove his point (her dying is just motivation for the character to get revenge)

Hey everyone, this is copypasta from an article in Gamasutra. Except there, most people had enough sense to not reply to the topic.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DevinWilson/20121026/180284/Why_Hotline_Miami.php

Take your stupid feminist shit to a place with actual sexism

@Animasta said:

@jakob187: we have spoiler tags for a reason dude D:

Also her being killed doesn't really disprove his point (her dying is just motivation for the character to get revenge)

I literally just wrote a whole screed addressing this. I think it's tempting to misinterpret the woman's role in this game, but she's really fantastically done.

Like so many others have said, games are the only medium with nonsensical violence and misrepresentaion of women? For every Argo, there are a dozen Expendables. For every The Tree of Life, there are a dozen Savages.

On another point however, the violence in Hotline Miami is so over the top crazy that it can in no way be taken seriously. It's meant to be dumb. That doesn't mean the developers are giving some deep political message. It's bubblegum.

On the other hand, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

DevWil

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Achievement unlocked: Corpseman (Kill 500 enemies)...Simulated killing of humans

Total time played: 36.4hr

I personally think at Hotline Miami's core it's a puzzle game, requiring you to find a solution to strategically clear each room.

The game's developers endorse the pirating of Hotline Miami so you can always try it out guilt free. As for it being "adolescent nonsense" at least play it before making an uninformed opinion but I couldn't care less for DevWil's opinion he think's Minecraft is unethical.

@bvilleneuve said:

@Animasta said:

@jakob187: we have spoiler tags for a reason dude D:

Also her being killed doesn't really disprove his point (her dying is just motivation for the character to get revenge)

I literally just wrote a whole screed addressing this. I think it's tempting to misinterpret the woman's role in this game, but she's really fantastically done.

I agree with you but I'm just saying it's not hard to come to that conclusion (and that conclusion is neither right nor wrong)

DevWil

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Achievement unlocked: Corpseman (Kill 500 enemies)...Simulated killing of humans

Total time played: 36.4hr