What is Hotline Miami?

Hotline Miami is coined by its developers as a "top down fuck 'em up", wherein your character drives up to a building, puts on an animal mask, enters the building, and murder everyone inside. It's pretty damn brutal, and I love every part of it.

The majority of the gameplay consists of being resourceful enough to kill everyone inside the building without dying. When I say this, bear in mind that you are just as mortal as your enemies, all of which will die in one hit. If you do die, and you will, the time to respawn is instantaneous, forgoing any possible frustration with a GAME OVER screen or anything like that.

Hotline Miami is the best and most enjoyable release of 2012 that I've played this year. It's atmosphere akin to that of an unrelenting acid nightmare was enough to frighten me (in certain parts of the game) more than any part of Bioshock ever did. The gameplay is perfect, and it will appeal to you no matter how you like to play games in general. Especially so, because of the fact that Hotline Miami has been engineered to be played a number of different ways, whether you want to be stealthy, bold, gun-toting, or just damn crazy, Hotline Miami will feed your murderin' cravings.

What makes Hotline Miami so good?

Variety

Earlier I mentioned that the main character puts on an animal mask before entering the building to kill dudes. All animal masks (except for the first one you receive) have different attributes associated with them that will benefit your character, all with human names to boot. Tony the Tiger will allow your character to perform executions on downed enemies in one swift blow, as opposed to several, which may have costed you a death in the past. A personal favorite of mine is George the Giraffe, who will allow you to look farther into the map, and in most cases, this mask will allow you to see the majority or even the entirety of the map. I won't list any more masks for those of us who have not played the game yet, but masks are one of the factors of this game that make it a pleasure to play.

I also mentioned how your gameplay tendencies will be reflected in this game, and this is very true. In fact, after every level, the game not only acknowledges this, but the game will give you a title based on how you beat the level. Some titles you may get are: "Combo Expert", "Flexible", and even "Generic". If you strive to play a different way, the game will know how you've played, and tell it to you outright.

Soundtrack

Now, I've never heard of anybody along the likes of Sun Araw, M O O N, Perturbator, or El Huervo, but all of these people have contributed to the crazy electro face-melting soundtrack that Hotline Miami is so well known for. Even Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb has stated that this is the best soundtrack of the year, and honestly, he isn't wrong. In my opinion, if Hotline Miami did not have these songs in it, the atmosphere of the game would be so incredibly different that it would barely resemble what it is now, an unrelenting acid nightmare.

I think the fact that I'm utterly disturbed by the song that the main character wakes up to in his house every single time is fucking incredible. Damn, this soundtrack is awesome. If you don't buy Hotline Miami itself, at least by the soundtrack. It really is that good.

Seriously guys, just go pick this game up if you haven't already. It's kind of short, which allows for replaying over and over, just in case you wanted more of this beast of a game. On Steam, the regular price of this game is $10, however, Steam is having a sale on it for $7.49 until January 5th. Get at it!