Thanks for clicking on my post! if you like my content I invite you to follow me, I'm doing Power Up to all my posts to start other projects in the future that may interest you, by following me I will appear in your feed and you can see my posts first hand!
Neon and blood in a psychedelic trip: Miami Hotline
Do you remember when in Tarantino's movies we were in some intense shooting scenes, good background music and ultra violence in the foreground from the first moments? That's what Hotline Miami reminds me of with its neon pixels, I had already analyzed another game of this same 2D spirit with many signs of identity mounted on the aesthetics of the 80s and I think this game is a playable version of many of those heist we saw on TV, it's frantic, you go pure instinct against your enemies and it doesn't even let you take a breath to assume you're dead, you're immediately back on the battlefield, they never explain too much about the missions because we're not supposed to know, our boss has just instructed us to unleash chaos and finish them all off on the spot.
I played this game not too long ago when I still had my old laptop and I must say it's quite a frenzy of movement, the campaign not only has a devilish difficulty from the first level but it draws the player into some very focused shootouts in overloaded colorful aesthetics and where blood is a main protagonist, We take control of a nihilist ready to attack and slaughter the entire underworld of criminals just to quench the thirst for revenge, is a very eighties setup (speaking of similarities with my previous analysis of Narita Boy) that is reinforced with much of the aesthetics of the time including its soundtrack, its setting doing a sublime job with small details such as clothing, vehicles and generally how the environment feels combining everything.
The game deals with a very simple mechanics and takes you through a journey of movement through several areas in a zenithal perspective, we have a shooting and melee control but as we play we simplify the actions and reduce them to their minimum expression, the movement, if we are in front of the enemies we will shoot, we will stab, we will break down that door, Each action of the game is focused on a single goal, kill, there is a lot of arcade and that makes it even more attached to all that eighties aesthetic, even many of the markers that we see as score match the theme and style of play with a perspective that lets us see much of the map makes this design much closer to the popular arcades.
We are a strange character only recognized as Jacket with a mental disability that has been stuck in a single thought, to finish with the whole underworld from a series of strange phone calls that lead him through several lairs of the mafia and where before starting each massacre we must choose a mask that will provide us with certain skills, is a concept very inspired by titles like American Psycho but I think that where its inspirations shine more is in its aesthetics that at first glance remains in the retina and watching the movie Drive I can see more than one reference to its color palette, the question is that its developer studio (Dennaton Studios) combines all this aesthetics of pixelated graphics design and its synopsis to squeeze the most of that feeling of being again trying the essence of the eighties.
We move through the areas in a zenithal perspective (from above) where we will have to plan our strategy very carefully because in one shot we are dead and we must face many enemies using different concepts such as stealth (which is very well achieved and gives for many game ideas) or go with the adrenaline to the top, grab a machine gun, katana, pistol, revolver, and kill everyone against the clock, The truth is that Hotline Miami gives you those possibilities to be as sadistic as possible without falling into the monotonous because each section of each level will cost us several attempts to pass it, the narrow spaces and enemies capable of killing us with a bullet are to blame for this, Hotline Miami can not stand to throw us from the first moment the highest difficulty and that for my part I appreciate it (I like games where the level is progressively increasing but in games so simple to understand because it is overexposing too much).
One might think that being crashing into death all the time can make us get tired quickly but that's where another spectacular addition to this game comes in, its music selection is strong, iconic when we talk about video games, each song is a boost of adrenaline with themes that use synthesizers as a catalyst during the 15 chapters that the game has, Each of the zones has a groundbreaking theme in the background that encourages you to stay although this could also be attributed to the incredible setting that this game has that combines many typical elements of the eighties era such as vehicles, clothing, minimal details in the buildings and even makes reference to many important events of that year to make the immersion much more detailed.
Hotline Miami is a title full of personality that uses its neon and overexposed colors to present us with a festival of blood in which strategy abounds but much more adrenaline and instinctive movements to pass the levels, The character designs, while not too unique, I think it can be forgiven when we are presented with the settings and how they use small moments (such as when they cloud the screen with a bit of psychedelia) to give a unique style to the title, the difficulty is perhaps what attracts me most of this title and I recommend playing it if you like challenges and a good story.
Thank you very much for stopping by my post, I will be making content much more often this week and as always I will be betting everything to do Power Up in all my posts, I want to do this for at least a few weeks to have enough HP to support the community.